Review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Restructured Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway Feasibility Study Second Report (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-10
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. This executive summary addresses the topics of integrated river system planning, ecosystem restoration, managing waterway congestion, forecasting river traffic levels, and the Tow Cost Model.
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The challenge is to find a balanced program that promotes individual uses while increasing the aggregate value of the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway to the nation. To its credit, the Corps has creatively expanded its feasibility study over time in an effort to broadly consider these interdependent issues, while also recognizing that the agency has neither the authorities nor the resources to plan and manage all of these issues across the entire UMR-IWW.
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ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION It should be emphasized that "restoration" of ecological structure, functions, and habitat in a system as large as the UMR-IWW is essentially unprecedented, and there is no perfect blueprint for restoration efforts on the UMR-IWW. Broad principles of large floodplain river science and management, as well as large river management experiences in the United States and around the world, may hold useful lessons for managing UMRIWW resources (Europe's Rhine and Danube Rivers, for example, are sites of ongoing restoration activities)
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a system for prioritizing management actions that have the best prospects for restoring ecological functions and processes. In moving to strengthen the scientific dimensions of the feasibility study and to explicitly incorporate adaptive management principles, the Corps should make full use of the federal-state Environmental Management Program (EMP)
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recommending implementation of more efficient management systems. To respond to calls for more efficient waterway traffic management systems, the Corps has considered a variety of nonstructural measures for managing waterway traffic congestion.
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The near lack of any analysis of the viability of nonstructural measures for managing waterway traffic represents a considerable analytical gap within the feasibility study, because it is not clear how the benefits of lock extensions can be reliably estimated without first managing waterway traffic more efficiently within the existing system. More efficient nonstructural measures for managing UMR-IWW traffic are needed regardless of whether lock extensions on the UMR-IWW system are constructed; if extensions are not constructed (or if it is decided to delay construction)
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. The creation and application of credible forecasts represent key analytical challenges within the feasibility study, because locks have a design life of several decades and the accuracy of waterway traffic forecasts diminishes considerably after 5 to 10 years.
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For example, some legislative incentives could encourage increased grain production; other incentives could encourage increased ethanol production, which would tend to reduce grain exports. Increases or decreases in export levels will be driven by changes in these types of factors that influence supply and demand in global and domestic grain markets.
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Instead, it estimates an approximate upper bound on economic benefits. The Tow Cost Model contains assumptions and functions that do not adequately reflect responses of shippers to changes in shipping costs.
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The study still lacks adequate analysis in this realm, however, and some promising nonstructural approaches for managing waterway traffic appear not to have been considered at all. The failure to fully consider nonstructural measures precludes any statement about the desirability of structural measures.
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