Indications are that the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) could come to the Senate floor within the next few weeks. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Ranking Member David Vitter (R-La.) proposed a draft WRDA bill (S. 601) that was marked up on March 20 and approved unanimously.

The bill includes provisions to wall off the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, thus providing significant additional funding for port and harbor maintenance and dredging. The bill also includes prioritization of navigation projects, reforms of the Corps of Engineers that are intended to streamline the process for projects and reduce project completion time and backlogs, and a mechanism to allow for private investment in waterways infrastructure projects in order to leverage more funding. These are all provisions that ASA strongly supports.

However, as it currently stands, the bill does not fully address a top ASA priority, which is funding for locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River. It does not address the Olmstead lock and dam that is over-budget and currently consuming the entire annual funding available via the Inland Waterways Trust Fund and federal appropriations. It also does not provide any additional revenue (barge fuel tax increase, user fee, increased federal funding, etc.) to accommodate the backlog of infrastructure projects and the need to upgrade the locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River.

Members are encouraged to use ASA’s Soy Action Center, where helpful talking points have been made available, to contact each Senate office to urge support for soybean farmer priorities.

For more details on specific actions and policies to address inland waterways infrastructure needs, please refer to ASA's WRDA position paper.