![]() Three pieces of legislation in the 108th Congress - H.R. At the end of the 108th Congress, the debate over the urgency, necessity, and national benefit of expanded UMR-IWW navigation capacity revolved around the possible congressional responses to the Corps’ recommendations. The feasibility report was approved by the Corps’ Chief of Engineers on December 15, 2004. The Corps recommended that the investments in the 50-year plan be made within an adaptive implementation framework, which would provide checkpoints for the Administration and Congress as more information was gained and project milestones were reached. Under the reformulated study, in September 2004, the Corps produced a final feasibility report recommending (1) a 50-year plan for combined navigation improvements and ecosystem restoration, and (2) authorization of an initial set of measures, including seven new locks, and an initial 15-year increment of restoration measures. The study objective for restoration is to identify measures that address ecosystem decline, including the ongoing effects of navigation operation and maintenance the goal is to benefit a broad array of species by reducing the loss of habitat, habitat quality, and habitat diversity. Ecosystem restoration was included to respond to criticisms that the study was too limited in its environmental analysis. Reformulated economic analysis and an ecosystem restoration objective. In response, the Corps halted the study, and reinitiated it in 2001 with a In 2000, a Corps economist alleged that the agency manipulated analyses to support navigation investments, and a series of newspaper articles criticized the Corps’ planning process for the UMR-IWW study and other Corps studies. The study has been the subject of much controversy. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the agency responsible for the system, began studying the feasibility of navigation efficiency improvements in 1993. Since the 1980s, the system has experienced increasing traffic delays, raising concerns about competitiveness of U.S. Louis on the Mississippi River, and along the Illinois Waterway from Chicago to the Mississippi River, thus facilitating low-cost barge transport of agricultural and other products to and from upper midwestern states. The UMR-IWW makes commercial navigation possible between Minneapolis and St. Thirty-seven lock and dam sites and thousands of channel training structuresĬreate a 9-foot-deep, 1,200-mile-long navigation channel known as the Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway (UMR-IWW) System. Resources, Science, and Industry Division Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway Investments: Resources, Science, and Industry DivisionĪnalyst in Environmental and Energy Policy Received through the CRS Web Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway Investments: Proposed Authorization Legislation in the 108th Congress Updated April 5, 2005
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