The U.S. House is set to take on a long-awaited bill next month that deals with funding water projects, some of which will take place in Wisconsin.
The Water Resources Reform and Development Act is better known as WRDA. The biennial bill has not been passed in six years, but the U.S. Senate passed its version earlier this year and hopes are high that the House will, also.
One aspect of the bill would close the first lock on the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities, the Upper St. Anthony Falls lock, because of low use and invasive species threats. There are concerns about how this would affect local industries and some say it’s really benefiting riverfront developers.
Kent Pehler is the COO of Brennan Marine, a La Crosse port management and river shipping company. He says he’s worried that in the future, more locks could close, affecting how products move on rivers. “The dangerous precedent that they set with the language,” Pehler says, is setting a too-low trigger for closing locks. “There are 60 other lock and dams on 33 rivers in the nation that would not meet this [standard of] 1.5 million annual tonnage.”
There is one change in WRDA that Pehler says he likes. The government would spread money out more evenly to all inland water projects, like lock and dam maintenance.
WRDA also calls for the “de-authorization” of two Wisconsin sites, meaning they’d no longer be federal property.
In Milwaukee, a contaminated part of the Burnham Canal would be turned over to local authorities, who want to make it a wetland.
A small portion of Manitowoc Harbor could be de-authorized, so high-end yacht maker Burger Boat Company can have more space to build larger boats.
