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Water resources bill to be considered by full Congress

The Soy Transportation Coalition executive director says passage of the Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, is close after Congress passed it out of conference this week.

Mike Steenhoek tells Brownfield, “Time is of the essence, but it’s looking quite likely once we get to next week both the full House and then hopefully subsequent to that the full Senate will entertain the legislation and hopefully pass it very swiftly.”

He says the legislation would adjust the cost-share of future inland waterway projects.

“The current proposed adjustment in the new WRDA Bill is 75 percent federal government, 25 percent Inland Waterway Trust Fund,” he explains “What that’s going to result in is a lot of these projects getting completed faster. We have a long list of other important projects in the queue that will allow us to make progress on those as well.”

The Inland Waterways Trust Fund helps underwrite the costs of construction and major rehabilitation of the nation’s inland waterway system through diesel fuel assessments collected over 12,000 miles of the nation’s largest rivers: the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, the lower Missouri, and the Gulf and Atlantic Intracoastal waterways.  

Steenhoek says farmers rely on robust inland waterways and ports to move products competitively into the global market.