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--- Infrastructure Failures Now

Our lock-and-dam system is outdated and risks catastrophic failures

America’s inland waterways – the system of rivers, locks and dams used to transport various commodities, including steel – are in need of serious work to repair aging infrastructure, but scarcity of funding and the lack of consideration from the federal government are major concerns for the industries that rely on the system for the transportation of goods.

The issue was discussed at this week’s Critical Commodities Conference in New Orleans, which was sponsored by the American Institute for International Steel and the Port of New Orleans.

In the last 10 years, unscheduled outages within the locks-and-dams system are up some 200%, according to Jim Stark, executive director of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, and the lack of a coherent long term plan will result in even more unscheduled outages and other "catastrophic failures," he told conference attendees, which included Steel Business Briefing.

"It's a joke and a shame that we have to beg and plead [the federal government] for infrastructure investment," commented attorney Chris Kane of the Adams and Reese LLP firm.

Stark estimated some 624m shorttons of cargo are shipped on America's inland waterways each year, SBB notes.

Inland waterway infrastructure collapse is coming and will be costly

"This is a ticking time bomb. It's not a matter of if but when there will be a catastrophic failure on our inland waterway system." -- Michael Hennessey, chairman of the National Waterways Foundation, a research group funded by river transportation companies

Those who think this warning is just industry alarmism should read Post-Gazette reporter Len Boselovic's four-part series that began last Sunday. The facts themselves shout the alarm.

The Army Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with maintaining the system, agrees that the nation's 11,000-mile inland waterways are "a crisis headed for a catastrophe," in the words of a high- ranking corps official.

Pittsburgh, which owes its location and historic emergence to the meeting of three rivers, is particularly in peril. The region's 23 locks and dams, key to the annual passage of 33 million tons of coal, petroleum and other commodities, are some of the oldest in the nation.

At the Elizabeth locks and dams, 105 years old, chunks of concrete periodically fall from a collapsing roof in the tunnel that carries water to fill and empty the lock chambers. Farther up the Monongahela River at Charleroi, the walls of a lock built in 1932 sway back and forth with each filling and emptying.

What happens if or when a catastrophic failure occurs? River traffic will shut down for months. Local economies will suffer. Cargoes will be put on more expensive rail cars and trucks -- barges are estimated to be $14 a ton cheaper -- and this will have costly implications for businesses and consumers alike.

Electricity rates will go up; an October study by the corps estimated that a closure of the Lower Mon could increase electricity costs by $1 billion annually. Communities that take water from the river could experience problems.

When disaster strikes, it will come because of absent-minded, half-hearted political neglect. More than half the nation's locks and dams, built to last 50 years, are still operating years after their projected life.

To put it another way, previous generations have bequeathed great works of engineering to Americans living today, but the challenge of keeping up the system has not been met. While some projects proceed, others are put off or delayed. With each delay comes more complications and greater cost. The Corps of Engineers is forced to play a losing game of catch-up, making emergency repairs to put off the day of reckoning.

Congress bears the prime responsibility. The buck has literally stopped on Capitol Hill. While $8 billion has been authorized for locks and dams, Congress has failed to fund projects up front, setting up the cycle that is beggaring the system.

The first thing Congress must do is take the threat seriously and view barge traffic with as much consideration as it does road and rail transportation. Yes, the federal deficit is a problem and spending must be limited. But if ever there was a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach, it has been on the nation's waterways infrastructure. When it fails, a large part of the economy fails with it.

There's still time. A 2010 report produced by the industry and corps suggested raising the diesel fuel tax to between 26 and 29 cents and to use the trust fund exclusively for lock construction and repair projects costing $100 million or more, with other projects picked up by the federal government. Soon legislation will be introduced in Congress to increase funding to $380 million a year -- and that should be taken up as a matter of urgency.

The Post-Gazette has often editorialized about the problems of aging locks and dams and the need to do something, but never before has an in-depth series laid out the stakes so starkly and comprehensively. Will anyone listen? Or must a disaster happen in order to get the nation's attention? No one wants to write an editorial that begins, "We told you so."

--- AT: Repairs Solve

Repair policy is just a band-aid --- still leaves costly delays

Boselovic, 12 (3/18/2012, Len, “Locked and Dammed: The region's 23 locks and dams are on the brink of failure,” http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/environment/locked-and-dammed-the-regions-23-locks-and-dams-are-on-the-brink-of-failure-517289/?print=1, JMP)
'Fix when fail'

Faced with flat funding, the Corps has adopted a "fix when fail" approach to maintaining locks and dams.

Take what happened at the Montgomery Dam on the Ohio River near Shippingport in 2006. A week after the Corps concluded that the dam had structural problems, a runaway barge hit it, damaging two of 10 100-foot-wide steel gates used to control the flow of water.

"Since that time, we've only had enough funds to put Band-Aids on the gates," said the Corps' Mr. Fisher. "We are at the border of 'fix when fail' and 'failing to fix.' "

With preventive maintenance crimped, barge operators face more frequent and longer delays as locks break down. On the Ohio River, the number of hours lost annually because of outages has tripled since 2000 to 80,000 hours, members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure were told last fall.

"I have never seen the disruptions to traffic we have now," said Martin T. Hettel, the American Electric Power manager responsible for moving coal on AEP barges to the Columbus, Ohio, utility's power plants.

The delays occur even though the Corps spends millions each year to keep outdated facilities functioning.

"That's just throwing money down a rat hole," said William Harder, a former navigation manager in the Corps' Great Lakes and Ohio River division who retired last year.

Dams are used to generate hydroelectric power and prevent flooding. They are also used to hold back water, creating a pool deep enough for barges to move up and down the river. Because the water level rises and falls at different points along rivers, locks are used to raise and lower barges depending on the depth of the river where they are coming from and the depth of the river where they are headed.

Mr. Hennessey said that if the dam at Elizabeth collapsed, "instead of having 9 or 10 feet for commercial navigation, you might have 2 feet and then everything stops."

Corps and industry officials say it would take three or more years to replace a failed lock and even longer if a dam had to be replaced.

--- AT: ARRA Solved

ARRA didn’t help locks and dams

Petry, 9 (10/2/09, Corinna, Metal Bulletin, “Waterway shippers trying to get attention and federal funds,” LexisNexis, accessed June 18, 2012)
Noting that the Great Lakes ports and locks, river locks and dams have been largely ignored by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), two industry spokesmen laid out the dangers faced if little or no improvement is made. Barges in the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, Monongahela and Tennessee river valleys move iron ore, alloys, ferrous scrap and metallurgical coal to steel mills and, frequently, finished products from the mills, Dan Mecklenborg, chairman of the Waterways Council Inc. and senior vice president and chief legal counsel for Ingram Barge Co., Nashville, Tenn., said at AMM's Infrastructure and Steel Conference in Chicago. The Inland Waterways Trust Fund, containing money gathered from barge and towboat operators to co-finance dredging and lock improvements in a 50/50 cost-share arrangement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "is nearing depletion," Mecklenborg said. The fund has fallen from a peak of $412 million in 2002 to $112 million this year. With regard to river traffic improvements, the Army Corps "is the only game in town," he said, and although it has estimated $2.2 billion is required over the next 10 years to complete projects already started, "there is no money to address that. More than $280 million would be needed per year from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, assuming the 50/50 cost sharing continues." The ARRA infrastructure funding helps, he said, but only for one year. The Waterways Council, whose membership includes Nucor Corp., Charlotte, N.C., U.S. Steel Corp., Pittsburgh, and New Orleans-based Southern Recycling, also worries about the federal government's 2010 budget proposal to phase out the diesel tax, which helps finance riverway work, in favor of a lockage tax. "We think it's a bad idea," Mecklenborg said. First, every barge and towboat operator pays the diesel tax, but many barges do not pass through the locks, diminishing funding sources. In addition, "it is a disincentive (for barge operators) to use riverways with locks, including Pittsburgh and Chicago," major ports for steel raw materials. Much of that freight might end up with the railroads. "We are trying to work with the Army Corps to solve the funding problems and to promote efficiencies, especially due to the competition from rail," Mecklenborg said. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes fleets are plagued by two major problems, according to Glen Nekvasil, secretary of the Great Lakes Maritime Task Force and vice president of communications for the Lake Carriers' Association. One is the 16 million cubic yards of sediment that must be removed from ports throughout the system, according to an Army Corps estimate. For many years, iron ore carriers and other ships have had to move less than shiploads because ports are not deep enough. One port, Dunkirk on Lake Erie, which used to handle 500,000 tons of coal per year, has been shut down because the water is too shallow. "That business is gone for the lake fleet," Nekvasil said. "Eight or nine of 10 ships are less than full" because port channels are not wide and/or deep enough to match the ships' capacity, he said, adding that the 1,000-foot-long iron ore ships can haul 72,000 tons but most carry less than 67,000 tons. "Light loading hurts industry," Nekvasil said. Great Lakes U.S. flag carriers typically carry 60 million tons of iron ore, 40 million ton of coal and 35 million tons of limestone per year. This year is an exception due to significantly lower demand: cargoes were down 48 percent through July. Congress gave the Army Corps about $4.6 billion in ARRA funds, Nekvasil said. "The Great Lakes got 2 percent of that." The second major problem facing lake carriers is the condition of locks. Seventy percent of U.S.-flagged capacity is restricted to the Poe lock at Sault Ste. Marie. A second, wider Poe lock will cost $490 million. Ground broke on the project in June, "but it hasn't gotten a dime in ARRA funding," even though it was truly "shovel ready." Nekvasil said the lock system, funded by the federal government since 1855, is a national security asset as well as a critical asset for industry. "The country has been ignoring infrastructure for years, (but) shipping is not that visible to taxpayers, making it easy for Congress to ignore," he said. In contrast, highway funding gets much more notice by taxpayers and has advocates from every state.

The ARRA didn’t leave enough for maintenance

Envision Freight no date (Lisa Loftus-Otway, University of Texas at Austin Center for Transportation Research, “Waterways,” http://www.envisionfreight.com/modes/default.aspx%3Fid=waterway.html)
Waterway transportation is the silent workhorse of the U.S. freight economy. The massive amount of cargo moved everyday on U.S. waterways facilitates many types of economic linkages that would not otherwise be viable. Not all shippers in the United States have access to navigable waterways, but those who do have a highly attractive option of a low-cost and reliable means of transport. The Mississippi River system and its tributaries are by far the most important waterway freight corridors in the United States. As Figure 1 illustrates, the tonnage moved on some major river systems (e.g., Mississippi, Ohio) is equivalent to or greater than the volume moved on parallel road and rail corridors.

An element that is sometimes seen as a strength of the U.S. waterway system, but can also be a weakness, is its heavy dependency on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to perform dredging and infrastructure activities. For several decades in the last century, the USACE made steady investment in expanding and maintaining the water network of the United States, even establishing barge service to states that had never sustained viable river ports in the past. However, funding for the USACE has become uneven and unpredictable, even as the needs of the waterway system have risen due to aging infrastructure. In fact, the recently-enacted blanket ban on Congressional member-directed spending is expected to have a substantial effect on the USACE funding model. While the recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided a much needed surge of support for projects that had been long languishing on the planning books for lack of funding, this was only a temporary blip in an otherwise unsustainable course.

The consistency and reliability that attracts shippers to water transportation also tends to work against the mode in conveying urgency for investment. As an example, while being a significant threat to navigation, shoal area on a riverbed are far less visible than potholes on a road.

From a strategic standpoint, major support for the inland waterway system is relatively dispersed. Waterways generally cater to fewer commodity types than either truck or rail and, thus, have a narrower band of shipper advocates. Furthermore, because waterways facilitate distant trading relationships that may stretch from Minnesota to New Orleans, for example, waterway advocates tend to be rural and dispersed throughout the country, as opposed to being concentrated within a few heavily populated areas that would allow them to more readily pool their outreach efforts.

Out of the $390 billion needed, ARRA provided only $3 billion for the country

Bachtall, 11 (July 19, 2011, John, CPUSA Illinois organizer and a member of its National Board, “Beach Closings on the Rise,” http://peoplesworld.org/warning-beach-closings-on-the-rise/)
It is estimated that a downpour of 1.5 inches on Chicago causes storm water runoff into Lake Michigan and carries with it all sorts of garbage, E-coli, pollution, bacteria and contaminants. This runoff mixes with regular sewage and overwhelms the current systems, causing discharges into the lake, including that of raw sewage.

With increasing extreme weather events, these kinds of discharges are likely to become more frequent.

But there is some good news: the Environmental Protection Agency has begun a major overhaul of the Clean Water Act with the aim of imposing stricter regulations for how urban and suburban water deal with runoff into lakes and waterways.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 also specifically directed funding to what are called "green infrastructure techniques," that allow for innovative natural retention and cleansing of storm runoff.

The bad news is it's not nearly enough.

The NRDC goes on to say, "This vexing issue is not a unique situation in the region and will require significant investment to fix." Needless to say, such investment would create thousands of jobs.

The Illinois section of the American Society of Civil Engineers says Illinois's aging wastewater treatment system dumps billions of gallons of untreated sewage into surface waters each year. The EPA estimated in 2009 the US must spend $390 billion over next 20 years to upgrade the nation's wastewater management systems. Illinois would need to spend $13.5 billion.

An additional $13.4 billion is needed over the next 20 years to upgrade Illinois's drinking water treatment facilities and bring them up to national standards. It is estimated $20-30 billion is needed yearly to upgrade the nation's water treatment facilities, but only $3 billion was allocated for the entire country last year. This included $2 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It is clear the devastating cuts to domestic spending and the obstruction to increase spending on the nation's vital infrastructure needs by the Republican right wing and tea party zealots in Congress means ongoing and deepening crisis for the nation's beaches, lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. Without a plan to tax the rich and redirect resources away from wasteful military spending, the quality of life for the American people will continue to decline.

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