Inland Navigation System Planning The Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-7
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in order to relieve increasing waterway congestion, particularly for grain moving to New OrIeans for export. With passage of the Flood Control Act of 1936, Congress required that the Corps conduct a benefit-cost analysis as part of its water resources project planning; Congress will fund water resources projects only if a project's benefits exceed its costs.
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Nonetheless, the National Academies and the Department of the Army agreed that an interim report would be useful. The committee's report thus focuses on a July 2000 draft of the feasibility study, on a draft environmental impact statement, and on numerous studies and reports that the Corps presented to the committee as key supporting documentation in the draft report.
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The Corps also developed the ESSENCE model, which calculates equilibrium values for barge traffic and waterway congestion and calculates changes in barge shipping costs that are consistent with waterway traffic forecasts and with past delay patterns at locks. The ESSENCE model does not, however, adequately use the more important concepts of the spatial equilibrium model that were advocated in the draft feasibility study.
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Environmental effects of changes in barge traffic have economic implications, but these are not considered in the feasibility study. A thorough analysis that supports informed decisions must address environmental impacts with the same comprehensiveness and sophistication that is now expected for the evaluation of the National Economic Development alternative.
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Effects of the Navigation System on the Environment The construction of dozens of locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers, the creation of a series of huge navigation pools, wing dams and other river-training structures, and barge traffic have had numerous and complex environmental effects. Although there has been some systematic research into the environmental effects of human and social activities on the Upper Mississippi River (the federal Environmental Management Program being a good example)
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Adaptive Mitigation Strategy The draft feasibility study describes a strategy for mitigating the environmental effects of incremental increases in barge traffic from lock extensions and from the site-specific impacts of construction. The draft study explains a strategy for monitoring the results of mitigation activi
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But on a broader scale, this adaptive mitigation strategy is insufficient. The environmental effects of additional barge traffic and construction are not known with a reasonable degree of precision.
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