Marine Log - October 2007 - (Page 14) INSIDEWASHINGTON WRDA: Threatened by 20 extra lumps of pork? A ccording to a September Gallup poll, 71% of the public disapproves of the way Congress is doing its job. So it’s unusual to find one group that actually finds something to like about a Congressional action. Enter the American Association of Port Authorities. It has lauded Congress for passing HR 1495, the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2007, citing it as long overdue legislation that addresses a seven-year backlog of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers programs, including navigation projects, policies and procedures that are necessary to keep pace with today’s burgeoning trade. The praise came after a Senate 81-12 vote approved a House-Senate conference report for the WRDA, which the House adopted Aug. 1 by a vote of 381-40. “AAPA and our member ports have worked hard to get this crucial piece of legislation through Congress, and today we are extremely pleased that our efforts have been successful,” said Kurt Nagle, AAPA’s president and CEO. “America’s ports depend upon a regular, biennial cycle of new project authorizations to improve federal navigation channels to accommodate the modern world fleet of deep-draft ships, but it’s been seven years since the last WRDA bill was approved.” Although the WRDA legislation is supposed to be biennial, the last such bill was signed into law in 2000. In the intervening years, demand for critical water resources projects has accumulated, as have the costs to implement them. Numerous projects and provisions in the WRDA 2007 bill will help address port waterside infrastructure needs. Included are projects for navigation channel deepening, dredged material disposal and storage facilities, and policy provisions to improve the Corps of Engineers project implementation process. Policy provisions supported by AAPA include expanding the use of Corps dredges in the Pacific Northwest and providing for joint federal/local legal liability for project cooperation agreements, or PCAs. Other groups praising WRDA include the Waterways Council and the Missouri Farm Bureau. That’s because the WRDA has a lot of things in it that a lot of constituencies genuinely need. However, it does also have a strong flavor of pork. The Senate passed a $14 billion version of the bill in May, what came out of the conference last month was a $23 billion bill. According to one report, about 20 new earmarks were added at the conference stage. (Technically, because this is an authorization bill, the earmarks aren’t regarded as earmarks.) Groups like the AAPA and the Waterways Council liked the bill well enough before these extras got added in. Unfortunately, the earmarksthat-aren’t-earmarks mean the WRDA faces the strong possibility of a veto. But, the pork has been so liberally spread that there is sufficient bipartisan support for a veto to likely be overridden. Decide whether you want to cheer or sob. 14 MARINE LOG OCTOBER 2007 www.marinelog.com http://www.deltatsystems.com http://www.marinelog.com
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