On the recordSeptember 15, 2016
I am here today to urge our colleagues to support the Water Resources Development Act. Missouri has more than 1,000 miles of navigable waterways that transport over $4 billion worth of cargo every year. I will say for the benefit of the Presiding Officer that it is hard at this moment not to stop and talk about what the EPA thinks navigable waters should be and what navigable waters have always been thought to be in Federal law. My State has 1,000 miles of those waterways--as I have just said, $4 billion a year. There is no reason, with world food demand anticipated to double between now and 35 or 40 years from now, with people wanting to bring some manufacturing jobs and hopefully lots of manufacturing jobs back to this country, that $4 billion number won't be much bigger than that over the next few years, and so this bill really matters. Maintaining and improving our waterways and the infrastructure surrounding our waterways is critically important. The Mississippi River Valley is the biggest piece of contiguous agricultural ground in the would. One of the great benefits of the interior port system is it is a port system that uniquely supports some of the most productive agricultural land anywhere in the world but also that it is a natural network that has allowed our country to compete in the way it did early and the way it can now. So it is important that we maintain that system.…
