Editorial: WRDA Passes Senate: Now The Fun Begins

It has been a long time coming, but on July 19 the U.S. Senate finally passed the long overdue Water Resources Development Act by a voice vote that took place almost exactly one year after the House passed its own version. As Waterways Council Inc. points out, “It was the first time in nearly six years that both the Senate and House have approved authorization legislation in the same Congress.”

The Senate agreed to an amendment by Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold to subject most Corps projects to peer review supervised by a “director of independent review” in the Pentagon, Waterways Council reported in its July 20 special edition of Capitol Currents.

The council said, “Passage of this legislation is an important milestone in a multi-year national effort by numerous stakeholders to authorize the construction of seven critically important locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers.”

National Waterways Conference President Worth Hager said, “I’m thrilled that WRDA has finally passed the Senate and look forward to working with all members of the National Waterways Conference and the National Waterways Alliance to educate our congressional representatives on the true ramifications of some of the bill sections. Our goal is to have a WRDA of 2006 that will ensure transportation and flood control/storm protection capability and reliability, adequate power and water supplies, and jobs and recreational opportunities so that America can continue to provide its citizens with an unparalleled quality of life.”

The next step is a conference during which both houses of Congress will work out their differences. Observers say that could take several weeks or even wrap up in September. There is a lot of detail to go over.

Passage of the legislation should not, we think, have come as a surprise to anyone, since 81 senators had signed a letter urging that the issue be brought to the Senate floor. However, the advent of Hurricane Katrina muddied the waters and brought delay. Still, proponents of WRDA felt confident that there would be sufficient votes to pass the measure handily.

Much of the debate over WRDA focused on Corps oversight, including some proposals that we would consider to be harsh and ill thought out. To put it bluntly, we don’t think there ever has been a serious need for more stringent oversight. The Corps’ methodology for evaluating projects has always been stringent. And while environmentalists have always been at the forefront of the war against the Corps, the agency has always made allowances for environmental-group participation during project evaluations. This means to us that criticism of the Corps is general in nature. It isn’t that a specific project has serious flaws. It merely means that any project gives Corps opponents an opportunity to attack and try to bring the agency down.

There are too many good water-project proponents to name, so we will simply thank them generally and specifically thank Missouri Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond for his tireless efforts on behalf of the river industry.

While opponents persist in making trouble, the need for lock extensions on the Upper Miss and Illinois seems clear to a very broad spectrum of this nation’s population. It has always been difficult to explain the expansive impact of water transportation on our nation. Just saying that 15 percent of the nation’s domestic cargo moves by water at a cost of 2 percent of the transportation cost doesn’t cut it. To say that water transportation brings in some $15 billion annually to the U.S. Treasury and only about $5 billion is returned for maintenance and construction on the inland waterways just doesn’t cut it. But it is true. Even the fact that the towing industry, through its 20-cent-per-gallon fuel tax, pays 50 percent of construction costs on many river projects carries no weight with opponents. They know all this, but they ignore it.

Opponents also ignore the fact that about $1.5 billion of the Upper Miss/Illinois project cost will be spent on ecosystem improvements and restoration. It doesn’t help their cause to admit it. Know what else they’ve ignored? By stalling the replacement of Locks and Dam 26 above St. Louis for almost a decade, they were able to increase the project cost from $383 million to about $1.2 billion. Because of this delay, the Association of Western Railroads said it was able to charge $750 million more per year for transportation. If they did, that would be in the neighborhood of $7.5 billion that eventually was passed on to customers in freight charges.

Critics have complained about the $3.8 billion project, but they have never raised an eyebrow at the $8 billion-plus planned for the restoration of a Florida swamp. They have never acknowledged Maritime Administration statistics that point out environmental advantages of water transportation over other modes. While a clean environment is written all over the banners they wave, they actually work diligently to obstruct a navigation system that provides serious environmental benefits to the whole country.

The benefits of the Upper Miss/Illinois projects will commence as soon as thousands of mid-nation workers report to construction jobs, a happening that will give a large economic boost to the region.

But first there is the conference. First there is the banter about reining in the Corps—an agency that has served us well for well over 200 years. First there must be the give-and-take over whose amendments should pass and whose shouldn’t. How much oversight should there be is going to grab more attention than it should, because we feel the oversight is adequate as it is.

Nevertheless, that is where we are today. We thank the massive army of supporters who worked diligently to bring about passage of WRDA. As we said in the beginning, it has been a long time coming. But water resource projects have been ignored too long, and the majority of the people who cast votes realized it.

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