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WASHINGTON -- The United States' inland waterway network has a
proud history that includes such fabled stretches as the Erie Canal. It
possesses undeniable economic importance, carrying hundreds of millions of
tons of barge-borne cargo each year.
What it increasingly lacks, according to numbers from the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, is the money to keep all approximately 12,000 miles open to
commercial shipping. The question raised by some corps critics: Should the
agency even try?
"We've got to make smart decisions about where we spend our money,"
said Steve Ellis, vice president of programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a
Washington, D.C. watchdog group. "Just because we decided 30 or 50 years
ago that we wanted to have a navigable waterway there, doesn't mean we have
to do the same thing in 2005."
In a report produced with the National Wildlife Federation two years ago, the
group found that 17 "deadbeat" river systems -- among them the J.
Bennett Johnston Waterway in Louisiana and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway
that runs through much of the Southeast -- got 30 percent of federal
operations and maintenance funding, even though they accounted for only 2.3
percent of total traffic.
On rivers where the economic payoff no longer comes close to justifying the
cost of keeping shipping channels navigable, the corps should consider
shifting financial responsibility to the states, Ellis said. If that's not an
option, the agency should pursue a halt to dredging operations and look at
dismantling locks and dams, he said.
If the idea of downsizing gets a chilly reception from industry organizations
and members of Congress, mounting financial pressures are making that
possibility harder to dismiss.
From fiscal 2001-2004, the corps' operations and maintenance (O&M) budget
for inland waterways fell 6 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars to $457.5
million, according to the agency's Institute for Water Resources. Comparable
data for the following two years were not available, but funding for all
corps' O&M -- including flood control and recreation -- continued to drop
during that period, once inflation is taken into account.
Meanwhile, the average lock has now seen more than a half-century of service.
Last year, the backlog of projects deemed in need of urgent maintenance --
the bulk of them navigation-related -- topped $1 billion. That was roughly a
500 percent increase over 1998, according to a corps report last year titled
"The Declining Reliability of the U.S. Inland Waterway System."
In fiscal 2004, the last year for which data are available, the waterway
system moved about 625 million tons of coal, grain and other cargo, primarily
in the eastern half of the United States.
But that number hasn't changed significantly in at least a decade. With
federal finances sagging under huge deficits and the cost of the Iraq war,
outside analysts foresee little chance of big budget increases to keep the
entire waterway system in good repair.
Although the corps is making at least a modest attempt to focus money on
higher-use rivers, Congress would have to bless any decision to shed upkeep
responsibilities for low-traffic systems.
Asked about that option, "I don't want to go that far," responded
Sara Perkins, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. David Hobson, the Ohio Republican
who old heads the House panel that drafts the corps' budget.
During his three-year tenure in that post, Hobson has prodded the agency to
do a better job setting priorities. At the same time, he has helped to
perpetuate lawmakers' preference for building new projects, not maintaining
those that already exist.
This year, for example, lawmakers awarded the corps a 16 percent budget
increase, by far the biggest since George W. Bush became president.
The lion's share of that new money is going to construction, not O&M.
For industry lobbyists, the kind of restructuring envisioned by Ellis is a
non-starter.
From 2000 to 2020, freight shipments nationwide are predicted to jump 70
percent, according to one government study. Railroads and highways won't be
able to carry it all, leaving waterways as the only alternative, said Worth
Hager, president of the National Waterways Conference,
a Washington, D.C. advocacy group.
"You've got a doubling of traffic that's ready to come down the
pike," Hager said. "Where else are you going to put it?"
Skeptics scoff at the idea of investing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars
each year in the hope that more commerce might one day materialize.
Studies show that some segments of the waterway system "are not
performing and probably never will," said David Conrad, senior water
resources specialist at the National Wildlife Federation, a Virginia-based
environmental group.
"What sense does it make to keep everything open when there's no traffic
even reasonably projected in the reasonably foreseeable future?"
If Congress is reluctant to provide an answer, other entities may be bolder.
Last October, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection refused to
renew the corps' permit to continue dredging portions of the Apalachicola
River in the northern part of the state. Besides environmental
considerations, the department noted that the low volume of commercial
traffic did not justify maintaining a 9-foot channel depth all year around.
An industry users group is challenging the denial in court. The corps chose
not to file its own appeal, but is still weighing its options, spokesman Pat
Robbins said.
March 13, 2006
(Sean
Reilly can be contacted at sean.reilly@newhouse.com)
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