Members’ Submissions FY2016
Committee on Appropriations
Request Type Programmatic or Language:
Programmatic and Report Language Request
Subcommittee and Agency:
Energy & Water Development Subcommittee
Corps of Engineers
Brief Description of Bill Language Request:
Provide a total of $10 million in FY 2016 from the Investigations
account of the Corps of Engineers to continue pre-construction
engineering and design (PED) for the Navigation & Ecosystem
Sustainability Program (NESP)—Upper Mississippi River &
Illinois Waterway System as authorized in title VIII of the Water
Resources Development Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-114).
FY 2016 Request:
Corps of Engineers, Investigation Account State Funding Tables:
Illinois, Add Project Line titled:
“Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway System--$5,000,000 to continue pre-construction engineering and design
(PED).”
Missouri, Add Project Line titled:
“Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway System-$5,000,000,000 to continue pre-construction engineering and
design (PED).”
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Requested Report Language:
“The Committee has provided $10,000,000 to continue preconstruction engineering and design (PED) for the Navigation &
Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP)-Upper Mississippi
River & Illinois Waterway System as authorized in title VIII of the
Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-114). The
funding will continue design activities of smaller-scale measures to
improve navigation efficiencies and ecosystem restoration plans
and continuing PED funding for already authorized project
construction elements in Missouri (1,200-foot chamber at Lock
and Dam 25 on the Mississippi River) and Illinois (1,200-foot
chamber at LaGrange Lock and Dam on the Illinois Waterway).
Both of these components of NESP have been identified in the
Inland Marine Transportation Systems (IMTS) Capital Projects
Business Model, the joint U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Industry
Capital Development Plan from April 13, 2010, as priority
authorized projects.”
Additional/Background Information:
The governors of 5 states from both political parties---Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri---and more than 50 U.S.
Senate and House of Representative lawmakers on a bipartisan
basis have recently written the Administration in support of
moving forward immediately to position these Navigation and
Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP) lock modernization
projects for construction readiness as soon as fiscally possible.
The Corps of Engineers has already identified $54 million for
NESP projects that can be ready for construction within a year as
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well as another $164 million “ready for construction projects” in 2
to 3 years that will create approximately 600 new jobs.
The Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) includes the Upper
Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway and tributary rivers, with
38 lock and dam sites stretching from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
Chicago to just south of St. Louis.
The Upper Mississippi has 29 locks and 858 miles of commercially
navigable waterway, and the Illinois Waterway has eight locks and
is navigable for 291 miles. Also, part of the UMRS is the Missouri
River, which has no locks along its 735 navigable miles from
Sioux City, Iowa, to St. Louis. There is one lock along the 26
navigable miles of the Kaskaskia River in southern Illinois.
NESP’s navigation efficiencies, includes modernizing seven
existing facilities with new lock chambers that will be 110 x 1,200
feet, ensuring efficient passage for modern barge tows. Each of the
locks to be upgraded are approaching 90 years of age and constrain
traffic with their 600-foot length. Additional chambers of 1,200
feet will provide more efficient transportation not only from their
size but also via making possible two-way transit at locks, where
river transportation is currently only one way.
With enactment of the 2007 Water Resources Development Act,
Congress created a historic opportunity for the UMRS. Congress
recognized its economic and ecological importance by directing
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers a new, dual-purpose authority
to integrate management of the river’s navigation system and
ecological habitats in an unprecedented way. This builds on the
recognition by Congress in 1986, declaring the UMRS “a
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nationally significant ecosystem and a nationally significant
commercial navigation system.”
NESP’s authorization included improved navigation efficiency by
constructing new 1,200-foot locks at Locks & Dams 20, 21, 22, 24,
and 25 on the Upper Mississippi River, and at LaGrange and
Peoria on the Illinois Waterway. The plan also includes
construction of navigation efficiencies including mooring facilities,
lock guide-walls, switch-boats and mitigation projects.
Concurrently, NESP will also restore and preserve more than
100,000 acres of habitat in a manner that is entirely compatible
with navigation. Restoration projects will focus on restoring
system-wide natural processes vital to the river’s health. Examples
include creating and enhancing side channels, planting bottomland
hardwoods, construction and enhancement of islands, and
mimicking natural flow regimes by drawing pools down in the
summer to promote vegetative growth for riverine and riparian
habitat. Because the UMRS is a vast and ecologically complex
system, NESP includes an adaptive management strategy, in which
sound science, learning and monitoring guide the most efficient
and effective allocation of resources.
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