Editorial: Looming Big Issues Could Impact Navigation

In the last week or so big issues emerged (some resurfaced) that could impact navigation and perhaps not so handsomely.

A Missouri River proposal that we suspect will get nowhere was regurgitated by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who, during an Earth Day appearance at Columbia, Mo., proposed that land along the Missouri River from Kansas City to St. Louis be converted into a national park. Babbitt, a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist, served during the Clinton administration. We don’t think the U.S. needs a 366-mile national park that would eliminate agriculture and other activities from millions of acres of bottomland and bring an end to navigation on the Missouri. While navigation may be down now, it wouldn’t take much to restore it. Operators presently are waiting in the wings.

Perhaps one of the big shockers in recent days was the proposal by Mississippi Senators Trent Lott and Thad Cochran to spend $700 million to buy a Gulf Coast railroad and give it to the state of Mississippi for a new coastal highway. The measure, as described by the press, would actually relocate a railroad that has been rebuilt already at the cost of $250 million. The reason given was to protect the railroad from future hurricanes. Needless to say, the proposal is controversial, we think for two reasons.

First, the $700 million proposal is an add-on to the president’s Iraq-hurricane relief spending bill. So far, the Senate has added almost $15 billion to the $106.5 billion measure passed by the House in March. Some conservatives are hoping President Bush will threaten to veto the bill if these add-ons are not reduced to his satisfaction. Unfortunately, Sen. Cochran is chairman of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, and we suspect he has push and shove to spare. Both senators are well known for “bringing home the bacon” to Mississippi. So the battle is over money and who will get it.

All of this came about at a time when the National Waterways Alliance was working to muster support to get Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to bring the Water Resources Development Act 2006 (WRDA) to the Senate floor. The big “Ring for WRDA” day took place April 26.

Support for WRDA is huge, with thousands of proponents from a wide swath of U.S. industry and the private sector signing on to urge passage of S. 728. The reason, of course, is that water resource development impacts so much of the U.S., and we have not had a bill for years. The difficulty arises because history reveals that too often attention-getting prevailing issues cloud the importance of water resource development measures. But we are talking about inland waterway infrastructure, an asset that should, by all means, be maintained and modernized in order to meet future transportation demands.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said after returning from a recent trip to South America that waterway projects down there make ours look antiquated. Waterway proponents around the world look in wonder as they see our system in such a state. We are losing foreign markets for our agricultural products.

On the lighter side, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected challenges to three Missouri River rulings by letting stand decisions by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In one, North Dakota and South Dakota had challenged rulings that navigation has priority over all other uses of the river. A second challenge represented an appeal by environmental advocates who believe the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should be doing more under the Endangered Species Act to rescue fish and wildlife. The third issue involved a challenge by Nebraska to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; it challenged the Service’s methods of determining policies affecting federally protected species.

The spring rise issue on the Missouri remains controversial, but reservoir levels seem to indicate sufficient water to bring about such a release. There is concern over the possible flooding of farmland and the announcement recently that crops damaged by a man-made flood would not be covered under federal crop insurance.

To sum it up, we doubt Babbitt’s resurrected proposal to create a 366-mile park will get legs, but he could garner sufficient support to result in a lot of money being spent needlessly by those on both sides of the issue. The push by Senators Lott and Cochran is controversial and, because add-ons to the Iraq-hurricane relief bill are so huge, it may fall flat.

Our hopes are that the effort by the National Waterways Alliance will prove successful and that senators will see the need for passing WRDA 2006. The House passed its version by a margin of 406–14 last July. As for challenges to Missouri River operations, we suspect they will never end. As long as Congress fails to eliminate conflicts in federal law that support both sides of the environmental issue, litigation will continue to emerge.

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