The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association (AIWA) works hard on the local, state and federal levels to keep our waterways open – and please join Waterway Guide to support its efforts. Lately, it has been coordinating legislative support at the federal level to make maintaining "Marine Highway 95" (AICW) and "Marine Highway 10" (GIWW) a national priority. The following is a Fiscal Year 2016 and 2017 Appropriations Snapshot, as presented in AIWA's latest newsletter (used by permission):
In December 2015, Congress passed the FY 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations (E&W) Bill as part of the year-end Omnibus Bill. The E&W portion of the bill included $45 million in funding for Additional Dredging Needs for Inland Waterways, and $48 million in funding for Small, Remote or Subsistence Harbors or Channels totaling $93 million. This amount is more than was proposed by the House of Representatives and slightly lower than the Senate amounts.
These funds have now been allocated by the Corps of Engineers through a work plan and the AIWW received an additional $6.7 million for a total of $13,931,000. This additional funding increased the original amount in the President’s budget by over 90%. Looking forward to FY 2017, the President’s budget included $6.911 million for the waterway. While this amount is not nearly enough to cover the operations and maintenance needs for the waterway, we are working to encourage Congress to include Additional Dredging Needs funding in the final appropriation bills.
The table below shows how the AIWW faired in federal funding in FY 15, FY16, and the current funding proposal in the Presidential budget request for FY 17:
State |
Final FY 15 Funding |
Presidential Budget for FY 16 |
Work Plan Increase in FY 16 |
Final FY16 Funding |
Presidential Budget for FY 17 |
VA |
$6.94M |
$3.655M |
$1.1M |
$4.755M |
$4.030M |
NC |
$2.6M |
$2.6M |
$3M |
$5.6M |
$1.75M |
SC |
$2.4M |
$0.1M |
$0 |
$0.1M |
$0.1M |
GA |
$0.176M |
$0.176M |
$0 |
$0.176 |
$0.181 |
FL |
$1.2M |
$0.7M |
$2.6M |
$3.3M |
$0.850M |
Total |
13,316,000 |
$7,231,000 |
$6.7M |
$13.931M |
$6.911M |