House committee calls for Great Lakes dredging

House committee calls for Great Lakes dredging    The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday approved legislation requiring the U.S. government to spend all tax dollars it collects for dredging, rather than using nearly half of it to try to balance the budget.
   Section 2007 of H.R. 5892, the 2010 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), mandates that all tax revenue annually deposited in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund be used to dredge the nation's deep-draft ports and waterways. Because the government does not spend all the tax dollars it raises for dredging, the tax has a surplus of more than $5 billion.

Stupak

   The WRDA provision was derived from parallel but separate legislation advanced by Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Charles Boustany, R-La. Their legislation, H.R. 4844, requires that amounts credited to the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund are used for harbor maintenance and has nearly 50 co-sponsors.
   House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., helped ensure H.R. 4844 was included in the WRDA legislation.    The committee approved the full WRDA bill, including the Stupak language.

Oberstar

   The Great Lakes Maritime Task Force praised the lawmakers for working to resolve the dredging problems for the Great Lakes shipping.
   'Every time a vessel leaves port with its holds less than full we are denying the American economy the efficiencies for which Great Lakes shipping was designed,' said James H.I. Weakley, president of Great Lakes Maritime Task Force. 'Even with the dredging crisis, the (Army Corps of Engineers) has estimated that Great Lakes shipping annually saves its customers $3.6 billion when compared to the next least costly mode of transportation.'

Weakely

   The dredging crisis has been particularly acute on the Great Lakes.    Decades of inadequate funding for the Corps' dredging program have left 15 million cubic yards of sediment clogging the navigation system, the task force said. The Corps estimates it needs $180 million to clear the backlog.
   The U.S. government has taxed cargo to fund dredging since 1987. In recent years, the Harbor Maintenance Tax has annually generated more than $1.4 billion in revenues for the trust fund, but expenditures have averaged less than $800 million.
   The task force said maintaining ports and waterways to their authorized depth is crucial for the efficiency of Great Lakes shipping.    The largest U.S.-flag freighters lose 270 tons of cargo for each inch of reduced draft. As July ends, vessels designed to carry about 70,000 tons of iron ore or coal each trip are loading only about 65,000 tons because of the falling water levels.
   'It takes 1.5 tons of iron ore, 400 pounds of fluxstone, and a quantity of met coal to make a ton of steel,' said John D. Baker, first Vice President of the task force, and president emeritus of the International Longshoremen Association's Great Lakes District Council, in a statement.
   'The dredging crisis is jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of family-sustaining jobs in our steel mills, our iron ore and coal mines, our limestone quarries and factories throughout the nation,' he said. ' The rebound in steel production has put many men and women back to work. An end to the dredging crisis can only result in more industrial activity and the jobs that would create.'
   Similar legislation requiring the federal government to spend the trust fund money is also moving forward in the Senate. S. 3213, introduced by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has 15 co-sponsors.