Page 25: of Marine News Magazine (October 2010)

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www.marinelink.com MN 25 structure is critical to maintain a modern and efficient sys- tem of transportation for cargoes like grain, petroleum, corn, coal, steel, and aggregates that the United States and the world rely upon. In support of our nation’s labor force, our nation’s waterways have helped to make our country great. It is time to stop dismissing waterways transporta- tion infrastructure and instead work together to keep

America moving.”

Given the climate in Congress and the reluctance to increase the deficit, this plan may go nowhere in the end, but the absence of waterways infrastructure projects as critical to receive funding is puzzling, discouraging and more than frustrating.

Transportation on our nation’s rivers is simply the most energy efficient, congestion-relieving environmentally green way to move our critical commodities for domestic consumption and export. One jumbo barge is equal to 70 trucks on our already over-crowed highways. That means 1,050 trucks on your commute home are equal to just one typical barge movement on our waterways.

Our nation became prosperous in large part because of the existence of the rivers to budding ports and cities.

Commerce on those waterway routes allows our agricul- ture industry to feed the world, our citizens to turn the lights on each day and heat their homes, our pharmaceu- tical companies to develop life-saving medicines from chemical shipments, and our icy roads in winter to receive salt so that cars and school buses can move safely. To not include locks and dams in infrastructure spending is short-sighted to say the least. Leaving the waterways out of any equation is simply bad for America. MN

Cornel Martin is President and CEO of Waterways Council,

Inc. (WCI), and can be reached at [email protected] or 703-373-2261. WCI seeks to educate decision-makers, the news media and the general public about the importance of our nation’s inland waterways and the need to sustain and increase their reliability.

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