Page 40: of Marine News Magazine (November 2022)

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Feature

Inland Waterways Infrastructure

USACE

Infrastructure Improvements

Set to Boost Ef? ciency at

Lock and Dam 25

By Eric Haun he list of projects on the United States’ inland the rest of America’s long-neglected infrastructure.” waterways infrastructure to-do list is seem- Among other things, IIJA included a $829.1 million to- ingly never-ending as the U.S. Army Corps ward the Corps’ $7.9 billion, 50-year Navigation and Eco- of Engineers (USACE) continuously works to system Sustainability Program (NESP), which consists of maintain, repair and, when possible, upgrade more than 1,000 projects to improve navigation delays and

T aging locks and dams throughout America’s vast network restore ecosystems along the Upper Mississippi River. Spe- of navigable rivers. ci? cally, Congress allocated $829.1 million for two NESP

But there’s been progress toward modernizing the sys- projects, including $732 million for construction of a new tem, especially in recent years amid steadily rising annual 1,200-foot lock chamber at Lock and Dam 25 near Win- appropriations that fund the Corps’ Civil Works mis- ? eld, Mo., and $97.1 million for ? sh passage improvement sion, and Construction and Operations & Maintenance projects at Lock and Dam 22 near Savertooth, Mo.

(O&M) accounts funded at historic levels. Conceptualized in the late 1990s, it wasn’t until the

A major boost came in 2021 via the passage of the Infra- Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2007 structure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which according that NESP was authorized as a ? rst-of-its-kind Corps to Tracy Zea, president and CEO of the Waterways Coun- program to address both ecosystem and navigational cil Inc., “provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to projects together under the same umbrella. About a de- see real progress to build locks and dams and to upgrade cade later, Congress allocated some funding for the pro- 40 | MN November 2022