With a vote of 83 to 14 this morning, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), a move cheered by the American Soybean Association (ASA), whose members rely on a healthy waterways infrastructure to move their soybeans to market.

“Improving and investing in our waterways infrastructure is vital to the U.S. soybean industry,” said ASA President and Canton, Miss., soybean farmer Danny Murphy. “With more than half of our crop exported, soybean farmers depend on an efficient transportation system to remain competitive in global markets. We face stiff global competition from many countries, and our ability to get our products quickly and efficiently to market is one of the aspects that sets our industry apart from those competitors. We simply cannot afford to ignore the needs of that infrastructure. We welcome the Senate’s overwhelming support of these priorities as evidenced by the vote today and call on the House to pass the bill quickly.”

S. 601 includes provisions supported by ASA to annually increase the amount of funding that is provided from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF) for port maintenance and dredging; to streamline the process for Corps of Engineers projects and reduce project completion times; and to free up money and increase the capacity of the Inland Waterways Trust Fund (IWTF) by taking the Olmsted Lock and Dam project out of the trust fund account.

Additionally, ASA was pleased that the Senate unanimously adopted an amendment to S. 601 offered by Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) to exempt certain farms that store oil in aboveground tanks from federal oil spill regulations. The amendment would set storage tank thresholds below which agricultural operations would be excluded from U.S. EPA's Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure Rule (SPCC).

“While ASA supports additional measures not included in S. 601 to increase revenues for the IWTF and establish alternative financing mechanisms in order to provide more money to address inland waterways infrastructure projects,” added Murphy, “we appreciate the significant progress that is made by S. 601 and we look forward to continuing work with Congress to achieve enactment of a final WRDA in 2013.”

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ASA represents all U.S. soybean farmers on domestic and international issues of importance to the soybean industry. ASA’s advocacy efforts are made possible through voluntary farmer membership by farmers in 30 states where soybeans are grown.

For more information contact:

Danny Murphy, ASA President, 601-906-3809, dpmurphy@bellsouth.net
Patrick Delaney, ASA Communications Director, 202-969-7040, pdelaney@soy.org