BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WICKER. I rise this afternoon to express my strong support for a new Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which we can send to the President this very week, and it will be a great bipartisan accomplishment. It will be a major win for economic development also.
I am proud to have worked on this legislation as a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and I am excited about the potential the WRRDA bill has to make a difference in States such as my home State of Mississippi.
Like many States, we routinely depend on water infrastructure. In Mississippi, our ports and waterways are crucial to commerce, and our system of levees protects us from natural disasters. These modernized ports and commercial waterways are critical to maintaining competitiveness in a global economy. They are essential to boosting trade and job growth across the Nation.
The House-Senate agreement on this new water resources bill--the first in 7 years, I might add--would accomplish a number of goals, from restructuring the inland waterway system to completing storm protection projects. It would help ensure that U.S. industries have a reliable, navigable, and cost-effective transportation network to do business.
In particular, I am encouraged by reforms to the harbor maintenance trust fund which promise to help our ports with much needed dredging. The fund, which was established for port improvements, is currently underutilized. Using this money for its intended purpose would help facilitate critical port upgrades--an especially important investment in preparation for the upcoming completion of the Panama Canal expansion.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that America's busiest ports, including the Port of Pascagoula in Mississippi, are operating at their full capacity only 35 percent of the time or less. This is unacceptable. As a matter of fact, for other ports around the country, the situation is worse than that.
A lapse in maintenance can become a vicious cycle, impairing a port's ability to secure future maintenance dredging. Coastal ports, such as Mississippi's Port of Gulfport, have been disadvantaged as a result. We haven't received the maintenance. We have less traffic. Therefore, we are entitled to less future maintenance dredging.
I am pleased to report to my colleagues that thanks to an amendment by Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi on crediting authority for navigation projects, ports such as the Port of Gulfport would have greater flexibility in making dredging upgrades.
Other provisions in the new water resources bill seek to ensure fiscal responsibility by streamlining project requirements and timelines. This means allowing greater private contributions to infrastructure repairs and deauthorizing projects no longer in the national interest.
Mississippians understand why water resource infrastructure matters. In recent years we have faced very different challenges because of extreme conditions on the Mississippi River. First, historic flooding put flood control mechanisms such as the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project to the test. Then the very next year severe drought turned large stretches of the river into nothing more than sandy beaches. These situations can have a big impact. Any disruption in the movement of goods along the Mississippi River has the potential to affect staple products such as corn, grain, and petroleum. When that happens, consumers are often left with higher costs. The Mississippi River alone is responsible for more than $100 billion of America's gross domestic product.
For our coastal communities, this Water Resources Reform and Development Act would also advance beneficial storm protection projects. Many of these projects, developed after Hurricane Katrina under the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program, have been left unfinished. Their completion would help create more resilient coastal communities and lower the risk of future hurricane and storm damage.
Of course, our work is not finished. Implementing this legislation will require oversight, and more can be done to improve our inland waterway trust fund and to protect medium-use ports. I hope in a couple of years we will be considering another Water Resources Development Act. In other words, I hope we don't wait another 7 years for a WRDA. But today and tomorrow we have an opportunity for a great step forward, demonstrating the strong bipartisan cooperation that exists in the House and Senate for America's future vitality and competitiveness.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT