The success of the American soybean farmer, and the broader economy, relies on inland waterway system—which provides close proximity to productive farm ground and the ability to accommodate commercial traffic.

But the condition of the nation’s locks and dams continues to deteriorate due to underinvestment of federal funding. The National Waterways Foundation (NWF) recently commissioned and released a two-year study examining the waterways’ national economic return on investment and the need for and benefits of an accelerated program of waterways system improvements that sustain and create American jobs.

“The research in this important study sponsored by the National Waterways Foundation is an effort to help develop a more effective framework for policy-makers to understand and measure the current navigation system and look to future possibilities and job creation if proper infrastructure investments are made,” said Mark Knoy, National Waterways Foundation Chairman in a Waterways Council, Inc. news release this week.

According to the news release, the study by the University of Tennessee and the University of Kentucky, “Inland Navigation in the United States: An Evaluation of Economic Impacts and the Potential Effects of Infrastructure Investment” (November 2014), evaluates the inland navigation system as it is currently funded and configured, and as it might be through renewed infrastructure investment. It begins with a basic analytical framework examining navigation’s role as a productive input in various industrial processes and reflects actual, real-world economic interactions and consequences if the system were to suddenly shut down and then if proper infrastructure investments were made.

The study found:

• Investment in badly needed modernization improvements to our inland waterways’ aging lock and dam infrastructure could lead to 350,000 job-years of new, full-time employment with a present value of more than $14 billion over the 10-year period examined in the study.

• If we invest in our inland waterways, we can sustain 541,000 jobs and more than $1 billion in new job income annually.

• If 21 priority navigation projects could be completed at an estimated cost of $5.8 billion total, the 20-year sum of related economic output activity would exceed $82 billion.

Click here to read more from the study and the study brochure.