Max Baucus: “I rise to support the Daschle-Baucus amendment to strike section 103 from the energy and water appropriations bill. One…”

“I rise to support the Daschle-Baucus amendment to strike section 103 from the energy and water appropriations bill. One might ask why. The answer is very simple: Because section 103 is an anti-environmental rider that prevents the sound management of the Missouri River. It is that simple. I begin by endorsing the points made so well by Senator Daschle. The Army Corps of Engineers is managing the Missouri River today on the basis of a master manual that was written in 1960. Guess what? It has not changed much since then. It is 40 years old. It is like trying to run the Internet based on a plan that was written in the heyday of rotary telephones. Conditions are different. Priorities are different. As Senator Daschle explained, the master manual favors some uses of the river, such as barge traffic, that may have made sense in 1960 but makes little sense today. That is a very important point. In effect, a 40-year-old master manual favors the barge industry, which may have made sense in 1960 but makes virtually no sense today based upon the Corps's own economic analysis of the river, and it favors those uses over other uses, such as recreation, which are much more important now than they were in 1960. As has been pointed out, the master manual also wastes taxpayers' dollars. We are today spending more than $8 million a year in operation and maintenance costs to support a $7 million barge industry. That is a bad deal for taxpayers.”