Eight senators and an industry-and-labor coalition are lobbying for 2017 funds for a long-delayed Army Corps of Engineers navigation and environmental program in the Midwest. In a March 11 letter, the senators—three Republicans and five Democrats—urged Appropriations Committee leaders to consider an unspecified sum for the Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program in the fiscal 2017 spending bill, which they will draft in the coming weeks.
The plan is an unusual package deal that includes five new, 1,200-ft-long locks on the upper Mississippi River and two locks on the Illinois Waterway, plus ecosystem restoration projects in the region. The new locks would replace 600-ft-long locks built in the 1930s and 1940s, according to the Corps.