Rivers could relieve more truck congestion on interstates

Of the 3.5 million miles of U.S. rivers, 12,000 miles carry freight to and from our cities and ports.

Between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, our two congressional districts include an important portion of the river transportation network our farmers and manufacturers depend upon to bring inputs in and ship outputs out.

The century-old navigational machinery on America's rivers is seldom mentioned among transportation priorities. Now we are nearing a crisis point for the wide, watery thoroughfares that carry commerce from the interior of our country to the coasts.

Barge transportation is cost-efficient and fuel-efficient, one-tenth the price of trucking and two-thirds the cost of rail. The use of barges holds down costs and maximizes profits for most of Missouri's rural-based industries.

But the infrastructure of river transportation is failing, and Congress must address our aged locks, dams and levees or risk great hazards for barge workers and crippling transportation costs in America's breadbasket.

As the system grows older, down time at navigational locks is up. There were more than 100,000 hours of outages in 2001 and 2002, and over 90,000 hours in 2003 -- more than twice as many as in 1994.

Outages are expensive for the industry, as shown when a September 2003 three-week inspection became a two-month closure in Greenup, Ky. According to the Corps of Engineers, that stoppage cost towing companies alone $14 million.

If we do not improve the locks and dams on our waterways, costs like these will spread and become commonplace. Americans can expect losses of $526 million in farm income, 30,000 jobs and an additional $245 million added to our record trade deficit by 2020. All this in addition to increases in food prices, as well as in the rail and truck transportation rates that affect the price of nearly every good Americans buy.

Make no mistake, our competitors in South America and China are investing heavily in water infrastructure to avoid this catastrophe and remain competitive.

Environmentalists should like these improvements too, as clean barge traffic keeps trucks off of our overburdened highways, thus preventing more vehicle emissions. Just one barge of a typical multi-barge tow on the Missouri means 65 to 70 fewer trucks on I-70.

In addition, the number of barges on our rivers has been stable for the past 20 years. Instead of moving the traffic from rivers to highways, we should create a waterways system that can accommodate a reverse trend.

Our interstate highway system was not built with truck traffic in mind.

I-70, with its never-ending repairs, today carries about 45 percent truck traffic. It was originally intended for only 18 percent.

The unique safety concerns of semi trucks are very real to those who travel our highways daily in passenger vehicles.

The future of our waterways must include money from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund dedicated solely to construction needs and priority status for waterways among our transportation infrastructure.

The result will be good for farmers, our economy, our environment and the country.

Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents Missouri's 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kenny C. Hulshof of Columbia, Mo., is a Sikeston, Mo., native and represents the 9th District.