Waterways Council wants Congress to reject proposed user fee

Waterways Council wants Congress to reject proposed user fee An industry group representing the interests of U.S. inland waterways shippers, carriers and ports wants Congress to reject the Bush administration’s recently proposed new barge lockage fee.
   “Proposals to raise taxes on the barge industry, such as the one being advanced by the administration, are based on flawed and misguided premises and should be rejected by Congress,” testified Stephen D. Little, president and chief executive officer of Paducah, Ky.-based Crounse Corp. and general counsel to the Washington-based Waterways Council, before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s water resources and environment subcommittee on Wednesday.
   Little warned lawmakers that the user fee would have a negative effect on the transportation use of the inland waterways system by driving more freight back onto the nation’s already congested highways and railroads.
   The Waterways Council instead asked Congress to conduct a study into why it takes so much longer to build locks and dams than it did just two decades ago. This study should identify the structural and process changes, both within the Army Corps of Engineers’ control and external to it, that are required to “get more project” for the dollars the industry has contributed and invested in lock and dam modernization, the council said.
   “Clearly, something is seriously wrong with the way that construction of inland waterway lock and dam modernization projects is currently proceeding,” Little said.
   “The cost for Olmsted Lock and Dam, for example, has skyrocketed the most, having a current estimated completion cost that is 271 percent — more than two and half times — the $775 million construction cost that Congress originally authorized,” he said.
   The council proposed to Congress an alternative to the Bush administration’s new barge lockage fee by adjusting the Inland Waterways Trust Fund cost-sharing regimen.
   Instead of one-half of the cost of a waterway infrastructure modernization project coming from barge diesel fuel taxes paid into the trust fund, only one-fourth of the needed funding should be drawn each year from current diesel fuel tax receipts, with the remainder drawn from general revenues.
   The council said at the current $90 million to $95 million revenue the barge and towing industry pays into the trust fund each year, a revised cost-sharing regimen would support a trust fund-financed annual program in the range of $360 million to $380 million, about the level that the trust fund-financed program has reached in recent years.
   “If one makes the adjustment Waterways Council is seeking, every American who turns on a light, eats a bowl of breakfast cereal or drives a car will benefit from what you’ve done,” Little told the subcommittee. ' Chris Gillis