Jack Kingston: “I thank the chairman from Ohio for yielding to me. I wanted to speak tonight, Mr. Chairman, about the Atlantic…”

“I thank the chairman from Ohio for yielding to me. I wanted to speak tonight, Mr. Chairman, about the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway, which stretches 161 miles from the South Carolina border to the Florida border going through the 1st District of Georgia; and if one measures the number of miles by the coastline, it is probably five or six times that. I live by the Intercoastal Waterway. I have a boat. My friends have boats. My constituents have boats. The water is filling in, and it is a big problem in terms of recreational boating. My concern is that the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB, in their formula does not consider the economic impact of a recreational boater when deciding if a waterway should be dredged or not. In Georgia, for example, the last time we had serious dredging of the Intercoastal Waterway was in 2002. We have asked for $2.5 million for dredging for Georgia 2 years in a row, and because of the tight constraints, the committee has not been able to do that. It has been the same way with the Senate. They are trying to work on something, too. Senator Saxby Chambliss and Senator Johnny Isakson and I are all in agreement that this needs to be addressed, but when the Office of Management and Budget is looking at the commercial traffic ranks of the Intercoastal Waterway, they only consider the big tonnage, the commercial shipping. They do not consider the light loading, the recreational boater.…”