Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Madam Chair, I appreciate the opportunity to come down and speak about a very important issue that I know is important to you as well as to myself.
The Great Lakes are facing a crisis right now. The Great Lakes Navigation System is a critical international waterway that extends from the western part of Lake Superior. In fact, that point in the western part of Lake Superior is further west than St. Louis, Missouri--the Gateway to the West--and it extends all the way along the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean, which is a distance of over 2,400 miles.
The U.S. portion of the system includes 140 harbors, 60 of which are deemed as commercial and 80 as recreational and harbors of refuge, and it includes over 600 miles of maintained navigation channels. The system can handle 200 million tons of cargo that generate and sustain nearly 130,000 good-paying jobs in the eight Great Lakes States, not to mention what happens to our friends to the north and east and in the Canadian provinces and how important that relationship is with the trade that goes on. While the Army Corps of Engineers' national Operations and Maintenance account has increased by 20 percent from 1995 through 2012, the annual budget for the Corps' maintenance of harbors and navigation channels in the Great Lakes has remained virtually unchanged during that same period.
We all know of the challenges we are facing as a Nation financially--fiscally--but that, Madam Chair, does not seem right or fair to me, and it certainly is not an acknowledgment of the importance of the Great Lakes to our vital economy.
There are 18 million cubic yards of sediment right now clogging the Great Lakes' ports and waterways, which has reduced the amount of cargo shipped by over 500,000 tons over the course of the navigation season. To put this number into context, I own a gravel pit. I have dump trucks that go out and around. A normal-sized, standard dump truck is 10 yards. To put it in context, 18 million yards of sediment would be like 1.8 million dump truck loads of sediment that is out there right now.
In fiscal year '12, the Corps received $45 million for maintenance dredging and $95 million for navigation structure maintenance in the Great Lakes, but it's going to cost more than $200 million to restore ports and waterways to what their designed depths and widths are. In order to make up that shortfall, the State of Michigan recently authorized over $20 million--State funds only--in emergency dredging funds to ensure that commerce, tourism, and jobs remained available in port cities, big and small.
I commend the State of Michigan. However, the Federal Government has a constitutional requirement to maintain interstate commerce through those ports in and among the States as well as internationally. The funds that come from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund are paid for as a user fee of 0.125 percent on the value of cargo shipped. In the previous year, that equated to $1.7 billion which was paid into the fund, but only $804 million was used for the dredging and maintenance of our harbors because the trust fund, frankly, has been raided over the years to pay for other projects and unrelated projects sometimes.
I would like to thank my colleague for working towards a solution to this problem by reprioritizing spending, which is really what this is all about. We know that we have to reprioritize and reflect a $1 billion disbursement from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund to the bill and encourage funding in the future.
I know that there is some specific language. Madam Chair, had I been able to have been down here, I would have offered an amendment that would have clarified our making sure that $30 million that is put in for small ports and subsistence ports would have been more clear. In the meantime, we must act before the crisis in the Great Lakes grows worse.
So I thank my friend from New Jersey for the work that he has done on this bill. While I would prefer more clarity, I am satisfied with the intent of the committee to help our ports, big and small.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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