25 senators push spending for harbor repairs

Larry Thomas -- Furniture Today, September 3, 2012

StabenowHIGH POINT - A bipartisan group of 25 U.S. senators has urged the Obama administration to tap into the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for a variety of dredging projects at the nation's ports.
     In a letter to the acting director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, the senators said the multibillion-dollar trust should be used for its intended purpose - harbor maintenance - and not as a means to reduce the federal budget deficit.
     The letter noted a section of the federal highway funding bill signed into law earlier this year states that "the administration should request full use of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for operating and maintaining navigation channels."
     There was no immediate response to the letter from the administration.
     The trust, which was established in 1986 and is funded by a tax on containers arriving at U.S. ports, will total an estimated $8.1 billion by Oct. 1, 2013, when the government's 2014 fiscal year begins.
     "In stark contrast, over the past few years, the budget requests for operations and maintenance of harbors and ports for which this trust fund was intended to be used has averaged around $800 million," the letter read. "Clearly, the revenues that are collected are not being used for their intended purpose."
     The letter was spearheaded by Michigan Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, whose state is home to several ports on the Great Lakes. Stabenow and Levin are Democrats, but the letter also was signed by 23 other Republican and Democratic senators.Levin
     The senators said the Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that ports that handle about 90% of the nation's commercial traffic are dredged to their authorized depths and widths only 35% of the time.
     "Inadequate funding has resulted in channels getting narrower and shallower due to inadequate dredging, which has resulted in ships having to light-load, increasing the cost of shipping, the risk of vessel groundings, collisions, and pollution incidents," the letter continued. "This situation is totally unacceptable."
     Specifically, the senators asked OMB to budget an amount for harbor operations and maintenance that is equivalent to the estimated revenues collected for the fund during the 2014 fiscal year. They did not give a revenue projection, however.
     "With 13 million jobs and $4 trillion in economic activity dependent on these ports and harbors, we cannot let them fall into further disrepair," the letter said. "(And) we can longer afford to ignore the will of Congress and flout the purpose for which these funds are collected."
     Levin, in particular, has been an advocate of increased funding of harbor maintenance projects for years. In February 2011, he introduced a bill in the Senate that would require full use of the trust fund revenues for such projects. However, the measure was assigned to the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee and has never come up for a vote.