US Congress short on meeting its plan to boost port funding

Nearly 300 shippers, port authorities and transportation groups are urging the U.S. Congress to follow through with its plan to send more money collected via harbor maintenance taxes back to ports.

Major water resources legislation, signed by President Barack Obama into law on June 10, set a schedule where U.S. ports would receive more HMT funding each year and receive all annually collected taxes back by fiscal 2020. But it’s up to congressional appropriators to make sure that the plan set by Water Resources Reform Development Act is implemented. The House has already passed legislation that would meet the port funding target for fiscal 2015 of nearly $1.2 billion, but the Senate bill is $91 million short.

“Full use of HMT is urgently needed for safe and efficient freight transportation and is desired by navigation stakeholders,” the American Association of Port Authorities wrote in a letter to the heads of the Senate and House appropriation committees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, BASF and the National Retail Federation were a few of the nearly 200 companies and organizations that signed the letter.

Before the passage of the bill, appropriators siphoned roughly half of the $1.8 billion collected annually through the HMT, a 0.125 percent tax on the value of U.S. cargo, to plug federal budget holes. That left many ports’ maintenance dredging and jetty work unfunded, limiting the amount of cargo that vessels could ship and safely access marine container terminals. Only about half of the nation’s shipping channels are dredged to their federally authorized depths and widths, AAPA said in the letter, quoting U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports.

“This drives up the cost of U.S. exports and imports, which threatens U.S. economic growth and increases the risk of vessel groundings and associated oil spills,” AAPA said in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; the Senate committee vice chairman, Richard Shelby, R-Ala,; House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky.; and the House committee ranking member, Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.

Under the WRRDA, U.S. ports will receive 67 percent, or $1.166 billion, of annually collected HMT dollars in fiscal 2015, which begins Wednesday. The share rises to 69 percent in fiscal 2016, 71 percent in fiscal 2017, 74 percent in fiscal 2018, 77 percent in fiscal 2019, 80 percent in fiscal 2020, 83 percent in fiscal 2021, 87 percent in fiscal 2022, 91 percent in fiscal 2023, and 95 percent in fiscal 2024. The House met the WRRDA target for fiscal 2015 in July, but the Senate appropriations bill is $91 million short of the target.

Source: Journal of Commerce