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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3 Technical Issues
3 Technical Issues
Pages 28-63
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From page 28... ...
This chapter reflects that organization, as it first reviews technical issues related to the ecosystem portion of the study, then reviews technical issues within the navigation component of the feasibility study. ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION Ecological Issues and Proposed Actions in the Feasibility Study Over the past several years, the feasibility study's initial focus on Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway commercial navigation issues has been broadened considerably.
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From page 29... ...
for the Upper Mississippi River, sponsored by the Corps, has produced a large body of scientific reports that have made notable contributions to the river science field. At a 1994 conference held on the Upper Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wisconsin, several internationally recognized scientists synthesized the guiding principles of floodplain river ecology.
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From page 30... ...
This disconnection is system-wide, but it increases as one moves downstream on the Upper Mississippi River. In the southern portion of the Upper Mississippi River, it is estimated that roughly 50 percent of the approximately 1,006,000 floodplain acres are behind levees (Delaney and Craig, 1997)
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From page 31... ...
(Delaney and Craig, 1997) The field of river science and restoration, and findings generated within the federal Environmental Management Program, point to the importance of fluvial processes in maintaining and restoring ecological productivity and diversity in large river floodplain systems such as the UMR-IWW.
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159) , which describes an effort "to seek the long-term sustainability of the economic uses and ecological integrity of the Upper Mississippi River System." The feasibility study recognizes this primary goal and lists a host of subsidiary "systemic ecosystem goals."
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8. Restore natural hydrology.
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is identified as the preferred ecosystem restoration measure" (p.
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The areal extent of restoration efforts may be important in cases such as island construction projects, but this single metric is not well correlated with ecosystem function across the wide diversity of restoration projects being considered and is, thus, an inadequate metric for ranking and comparing all restoration measures. A more comprehensive, sciencebased system for prioritizing restoration actions would explicitly consider a broader variety of metrics, emphasize those that focus on ecosystem processes and functions, and consider restoration actions within the broader context of the entire UMR-IWW system.
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From page 36... ...
Ecosystem restoration projects are presented in the feasibility study as a large menu of possible selections, but without clear, science-based and system-wide themes to help prioritize possible projects. Although all of the projects could conceivably have merit and contribute to restoration goals, the prioritization, constraints, and prospects for success of these individual projects could be better explained because there is no clear sense of which projects would be the most useful and in what sequence they might be implemented (given the large number and variety of proposed measures, along with limited resources for their implementation, some type of sequencing is inevitable)
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From page 37... ...
Such trade-offs will be controversial, and decision makers should be provided good economic and environmental information in order to anticipate such trade-offs and forge polices that reflect society's best interest. The ecosystem restoration plans presented in the feasibility study, however, pay scant attention to how restoration measures might affect other users of the system, such as commercial navigation.
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From page 38... ...
. It uses management actions as tools to not only change the system, but as tools to learn about the system." This may be a reasonable definition, but the ecological section of the feasibility study does not explain how adaptive management concepts, such as ecosystem monitoring, policy adjustments, and stakeholder collaboration, are to be used during implementation of various ecosystem improvement measures.
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From page 39... ...
During that time the EMP has sponsored a broad array of ecological investigations and research on the Upper Mississippi River. The EMP produced one of the more comprehensive reports on Upper Mississippi River ecology and changes over the past century (USGS, 1999)
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Finally, restoration efforts on the UMR-IWW should continue to look for scientific guidance to the evolving literature on large river floodplain science and restoration, and to findings from the Environmental Management Program, one of the nation's best examples of a large river ecosystem monitoring and science program. Linking proposed restoration actions to larger, science-based theories would lend structure to overall restoration efforts and help prioritize restoration measures.
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From page 41... ...
The Corps feasibility report presents five alternative scenarios of unconstrained river traffic, in which postulated year 2050 movements on the UMR-IWW system range from 78.8 million to 138.0 million metric tons, compared to year 2000 levels of 81.8 million metric tons. Four of the five scenarios assume significant positive growth rates in total commodity movements (USACE, 2004, pp.
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. According to Figure 3-1, annual commodity movements on the Upper Mississippi River in 2002 were approximately 83 million metric tons; the corresponding figure for 1984 was roughly 81 million metric tons.
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43 sei odit m moC s Feed er Oth eriziltreF & s ina ofsp Gr Corym 20 20 Ar.S.U CE: 7 991 SOUR 29 .rev 19 Ri ra 7 Ye 981 Mississippi Upper 2 981 the on 7 971 mentsev mo 2 ity 197 0 0 00 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 0, 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Commod 10 ) tons 000 (1, c i f Traf arge B 3-1 2004., FIGURE Engineers
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In the absence of improvements or other actions to reduce congestion, increased traffic would lead to increased congestion, increased shipping cost, shifts of commodity movements to other forms of transport, and potentially (in extreme cases) reduced grain exports.
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exports. Mississippi River exports are then restated as barge movements on the Upper Mississippi River system.
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46 ario. ensc byst men move product rmaf talto ofs forecast Systemre Riv 75.
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grain exports, but it is hard to believe that Scenario 1 reflects a similar, extremely pessimistic future. Since neither scenario reflects uncertainty in the prediction of non-grain shipments, the range of possible future conditions is
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, changes in international terms of trade, rising grain production in other countries, or rail competition for movement of non-grain commodities. In discussions with Sparks Companies officials, as well as other experts, the committee attempted to determine the reason for believing that the grain export trends implied by Scenario 3 should be considered the "most likely" as compared to, say, a continuation of more than 20 years of a flat or declining export trend.
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other measures that reduce average processing time at existing locks such as operational changes and small-scale structural alterations. The actions included in the second category are described here as nonstructural measures.
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Accordingly, no measures for increasing the efficiency of recreational vessel lockages are considered. The 2001 report from the Phase I NRC committee recommended that all feasible and beneficial nonstructural measures should be implemented prior to any determination of the merit of structural improvements (NRC, 2001)
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From page 51... ...
These were found to be feasible and beneficial when applied to UMR locks 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24 and the IWW LaGrange lock; included in the Preferred Plan. · Deck winches combined with an excess lockage time charge.
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Excess Lockage Time Fees. The excess lockage time charge pro posal was defined in the Volpe report as a fee high enough to cause all op erators to install permanent deck winches on all barges.
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. Similarly, there is no reason to believe that third-, second-, and firstquartile lockage times will not be reduced at all.6 Much of the data on the effectiveness of this measure used in the Volpe study was available because one large towing company had previously installed deck winches on its barges.
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From page 54... ...
In any of these cases, it appears that avoided short-run costs may underestimate the true benefits of congestion reduction. It should be noted that it was suggested in the Volpe study that partial implementation of deck winches would lead to an even lower benefit-cost ratio (Dyer et al., 2003, p.
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. Measures Not Considered: Nonstructural Waterway Traffic Management Despite a decade of review of "small-scale" measures, the consideration of nonstructural approaches to congestion management within the feasibility study is substantially incomplete.
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From page 56... ...
A real-time traffic management system would allow the place-in-queue permits to be assigned as tows depart the previous lock, providing time for operators to negotiate trades while under way, and further allow for re-sequencing to occur before tows reach the queue. A potentially more effective strategy may lie in a large body of Corpsfunded research performed on the Ohio and Upper Mississippi Rivers over the past decade that has explored a range of decision rules for lock operations and for minimizing transport costs (see, for example, Kim and Schonfeld, 1995; Ting and Schonfeld, 1996, 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2001a, 2001b; Wei et al., 1992; Zhu et al., 1999)
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From page 57... ...
major construction projects should not be undertaken when acceptable, less costly, and equally effective nonstructural means can achieve the same end, (2) substantial uncertainty with respect to the volume of future river traffic calls for flexible, incremental approaches, which are typically best achieved through nonstructural measures, and (3)
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From page 58... ...
A comprehensive evaluation of UMRIWW traffic management alternatives will identify and thoroughly evaluate all plausible measures. The failure to consider and evaluate the prospects of all potentially beneficial nonstructural measures for better managing waterway traffic undermines the conclusions and recommendations regarding proposed structural improvements.
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Economic Models In the case of the navigation improvements described in this report, which are generally designed to reduce congestion at specific locks or to reduce transportation cost in other ways, two general approaches to benefit estimation can be considered: 1. A spatial equilibrium model -- which reflects grain demands, supplies, prices, and transportation costs -- can be used to determine commodity movements on the river and via other transportation modes with and without congestion reduction.
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ESSENCE model. The use of the underlying concepts behind this model was applauded within the NRC Phase I committee report.
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Through the course of this committee's study, several academic and other experts and practitioners in the fields of grain production, shipping, and commercial transportation provided comments regarding grain shipments and multiple end uses, markets, and shipping options available to farmers. These comments indicated a strong consensus that small changes in market prices as experienced by grain producers (driven, for example, by changes in shipping costs)
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-- Benefits calculated by the ESSENCE model, using parameter values selected to produce a low number When combined with the five barge traffic scenarios, this approach produces 15 alternative estimates of project benefits for any given configuration of future navigation system infrastructure improvements. Given the long planning period and the considerable levels of uncertainty associated with future values of most key variables, this is a reasonable way to proceed.
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This model would, as presently planned, generate a spatial equilibrium picture of commodity movements ultimately exported from U.S. ports (e.g., grain)
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