Oklahoma’s and the nation’s inland ports and waterway system might get a vital enhance in monetary help if one Oklahoma elected official will get his method in Washington.
The National Association of Counties NACo is the group that lobbies on behalf of the nation’s 3,069 counties. One county commissioner from Oklahoma took the preliminary steps at NACo’s legislative convention this week to get it to foyer Congress for a everlasting supply of funding for the nation’s inland waterways.
“Highways got it now, the deep draft ports, which are the ones with all the ships with the containers, they’ve got dedicated funding,” stated Rogers County Commissioner Ron Burrows, “the inland waterways do not.”
And Commissioner Burrows says that is a giant concern in Rogers County, house to the Ports of Catoosa and Inola, and the 3,000-plus jobs he says they supply.
“We are really good in this country at building things,” stated Burrows in an interview Monday, “and we do a poor job maintaining them.”
The U.S. inland waterway system, 12,000 miles of rivers and 237 locks, strikes near twenty % of the nation’s freight yearly, together with about 11 million tons of cargo out and in of Oklahoma’s ports every year.
“The biggest export that Port of Catoosa has is agriculture,” stated Burrows, “so, Western Oklahoma is a critical part of that, Southern Kansas is a big part of that, even as far as the Dakotas.”
From the 2 Tulsa-area ports, barges navigate 445 miles down the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System (MKARNS) to the Mississippi River, however solely, Burrows factors out, if all 18 locks and dams alongside the way in which are functioning.
“If one of those fails, the whole system completely shuts down,” stated Burrows. “They are all 50-plus years old, and they’ve had some maintenance, but they are really in need of some replacement and serious maintenance.”
The MKARNS is getting some funding via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, however Burrows says that is a one-time grant — his proposal would assure ongoing help. He says the supply of the funding is not but clear and would finally be as much as Congress to find out.
But within the meantime, Burrows says his decision handed out of the NACo Transportation Committee yesterday “unanimously, I’m happy to say.”
It will go earlier than the complete membership this summer time in Austin.
The convention wraps up tomorrow with an tackle on the convention lodge by President Biden.
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