WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2016 - The fact that stakeholders are
upset about the conditions of the inland waterways system is nothing new. The
fact that some of those same people have some reasons to be optimistic is a more
recent development.
A slippery slope of neglect and inadequate maintenance
funding led to many locks and dams using equipment about 30 years past its
intended 50-year projected usage schedule.
“The Corps has gone from a proactive means of doing
maintenance on these facilities to a ‘fix as fails’ and somewhat to a ‘fail to
fix’ scenario because their budgets continue to be restrained,” Marty Hettel,
the chairman of the Inland Waterway User Board, told Agri-Pulse Monday at the La Grange Lock and Dam in Illinois. The La
Grange has been deemed the lock most in need of repair and is at the top of the
list for Army Corps of Engineers planned rehabilitation projects.
The Waterways Council brought a cohort of reporters to La
Grange on Monday to see the visible concrete decay and archaic machinery; some
of it in operation remains from the lock’s 1936 installation, and the group was
advised not to trust the handrails around some parts of the lock for fear of
them giving way.
Perhaps a major driving factor in the slippage of conditions
can be attributed to public relations struggles surrounding the very nature of
the system itself. Outside of maintenance officials and towboat crews, no one
can see the sorry state of affairs used to move freight by water. By contrast,
long-haul truckers share the same highways with commuters and travelers, the
same people who may call their member of Congress in a fury after hitting one
too many potholes.
As Thomas Heinold with the Corps Rock Island District puts
it, most American citizens don’t realize how they benefit from the system. He
says the inland waterway system “is originally what made this country great.”
“When we built these things out in the 1930s and 1940s, it
was the most efficient system in the world at that time,” he told Agri-Pulse. “I think a generation or two
has largely taken that for granted.”
The public may be taking an “out of sight, out of mind”
approach to the system, but Congress isn’t anymore. Recently, some major
legislative victories have given a jolt to the inland waterways trust fund
after shippers agreed to a 9-cent per gallon fuel tax increase to go toward
infrastructure improvements. On top of that, the fund is now only on the hook
for 15 percent of costs of the costly Olmsted Lock and Dam instead of the
anticipated 50-50 split with the federal government thanks to some language in
the Water
Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014. Construction snafus have led
the cost of that project to more than quadruple, eating up a sizable chunk of
what the trust fund could afford to allocate for rehabilitation projects.
Hettel said it” seems like we’ve got the Congress’s ear,”
but that still means it will be a while before enough shovels can go in the
ground to make the desired improvements. Many locks, including La Grange, are
600-foot locks, but most of the towboats and barges that float down the river
are 1,200 feet. Under many of the current configurations, those longer outfits
must separate into two smaller rigs to get through the current locks, taking
more time and costing shippers more money. And when those projects are
appropriated, they can bid the project in one fiscal year, but must wait until
the following fiscal year to actually do the work, so any projects authorized
for Fiscal 2017 can’t actually be constructed until Fiscal 2018.
But the fact that construction looks like it will be
happening is a step in the right direction for many in the industry and in the
Corps. The current system, while in a state of disrepair, is still mostly
reliable, Heinold says, but relying on 80-year-old locks with a projected
50-year life span is not a sustainable path forward.
“We’re going to have a real problem in this country if we
don’t pay attention soon.”
#30
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