The safety of the marine transportation system depends on a safe waterway infrastructure, including waterway maintenance, improvements, and management. Legislative support for the U.S. marine infrastructure should:
- Make maintenance dredging programs a priority. The safe and efficient movement of goods through the United States port system requires that channels be dredged and maintained at safe depths on a consistent basis. Among all the marine infrastructure activities, dredging programs, which facilitate commerce, must be given a priority for funding, and such funding must continue even while the harbor maintenance tax issue is discussed and debated.
- Generate Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund revenue. It is critical to ensure that funds are consistently available for meeting marine infrastructure needs and that funds collected for that purpose are not diverted to any other program. Revenue earmarked for the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund should be obtained from a variety of sources. Because of the broad benefits provided by United States waterways, general revenues should contribute to the trust fund in large measure. A user fee covering a portion of harbor maintenance costs is also acceptable if the fees are paid by all beneficiaries, the size of fees are commensurate with the cost or value of the service rendered, and the beneficiaries have input into prioritization and fund allocation.
- Revise nautical charts. Hydrographic survey data, which is the basis for nautical charts, should be collected using the latest hydrographic survey equipment. All available resources, both public and private, should be fully utilized, without limits placed on the sources of certifiable survey data. Funding for this effort should be increased so that the survey backlog can be eliminated in the shortest possible timeframe consistent with sound resource allocation and management principles.
The Department of Transportation projects that international waterborne trade will at least double, and perhaps triple, by the year 2020. For the United States to meet this demand and continue to compete on an international basis, the maintenance and improvement of our waterways infrastructure should be a priority in Congress.
More than 95 percent of U.S. international trade by volume and 75 percent by value move through our nation’s ports. The U.S. now imports 60 percent of our petroleum needs, as compared to 47 percent just 10 years ago and 35 percent in the 1970s. These imports will continue to grow as long as the United States energy policy does not include a concerted effort to increase domestic exploration and production of our nation’s oil and natural gas resources.
In the absence of such a policy, growing energy imports, some 10 million barrels a day of crude oil and petroleum products, will be delivered to the U.S. by tankers and come through some of the nation’s 299 deep-draft ports and 627 shallow-draft ports. Thus, infrastructure investments in navigation channels, such as dredging programs, are critical to the U.S. economy and U.S. competitiveness in international trade.
Safe navigation requires accurate and current navigational charts for U.S. waterways. To date, however, these programs have been and continue to be so severely underfunded that it will take the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 20 years to eliminate the survey backlog.