• Development of industrial property – Some goods are transported more cost-effectively by barge while others are too large for land transport. Regardless, this cargo is frequently transferred from a barge to an ocean vessel (or vice versa) in a port, and sometimes the final recipient is also at the water’s edge. These areas often also have rail, road and sometimes pipeline connections. Consider the Port of New Orleans and surrounding areas, which export more than 50 million tons of grains and pulses annually and support nearly 50,000 direct and indirect jobs.

• Commercial Property Values ​​and Waterfront Development – Many cities are redevelopment of their riverfront properties, reintegrating rivers into the identity of their cities. In some cases, this property is repurposed due to the decreased need for industrial property, and in others, this property may simply be better utilized by waterfront development. Regardless, there are opportunities for massive commercial and mixed-use redevelopment to take advantage of the landscape and convenient urban locations. We’re looking at Nashville’s “Imagine East Bank” project to redevelop 550 formerly industrial acres along the Cumberland River into a mixed-use development with community parks and a new performing arts center.
• Residential Property Values – For most waterways, one of the secondary benefits inherent in maintaining navigability is flood control and maintaining relatively constant water levels. We are looking at Kentucky Lake and adjacent Lake Barkley, dammed for inland waterway navigability, but creating residential lakefront property currently valued at over $125 million.

• Jobs and community impact – Improving waterways attracts businesses and creates jobs. We look at the Southern Indiana Marine District along the Ohio River, where river-related industries support 60,154 jobs and generate more than $9 million in personal income per mile of shoreline. Consider the Port of Memphis, which accounts for 2.5 percent of the county’s jobs and has an economic impact of $6.25 billion annually. And we’re discussing a new steelmaking facility located in Osceola, Arkansas, that will be accessible to Barge Service, which has hired more than 500 Mississippi County residents for good-paying jobs.

• Tourism and leisure – We look at the Quad Cities, where navigation improvements a century ago have brought enormous recreation and tourism benefits, drawing more than 6 million visitors a year to the region today. We also refer to the wider benefits of the boating and fishing sector, the renewed popularity of domestic river cruises and the historical importance of rivers to different cities. Many cities along the Mississippi River, such as Dubuque, Iowa, and Memphis, Tennessee, are home to numerous museums and monuments spurred by migration, commerce, and other river-related activities.

• Hydroelectricity – In addition to flood control, hydropower provides another inherent benefit that comes from building the necessary facilities to ensure that large ships can navigate between the upstream and downstream of the river. The United States currently has 101 gigawatts of installed hydropower – carbon-free electricity that can be consumed at night, when solar generation is impossible and wind significantly diminishes – and much of that energy comes from the system. of controlled inland waterways. We examine the specific benefits of hydropower to inland waters in the Pacific Northwest and the Tennessee Valley.

• Irrigation – About 80 percent of water used in the United States is for irrigation, and controlling the water supply needed for inland waterways also helps keep water storage at a constant level so that it is available for irrigation when needed. We examine specific agricultural benefits along the Columbia River-Snake River system, where 350,000 acres of irrigated farmland produce enough food to feed tens of millions of people.
• Water supply – Just as controlled water levels for navigation support irrigation, they also help municipalities provide drinking water, industrial water, and other public waters to their citizens. The Corps’ Mississippi River Division manages 1.2 million acre-feet of available water storage, with profits of more than $500 million annually. Approximately 20 million people live in and directly benefit from the Mississippi River in more than 120 counties. A controlled water supply is also a key element of the National Action Plan for Water Reuse.

• Cooling – Water is many times more effective than air for cooling and having a constant supply of fresh water on hand is a necessity for industries old and new. We look at how a Google data center in Oregon and a new xAI supercomputer in Memphis cool their facilities with water from the inland waterway system.

• Beneficial uses of dredged materials – Dredging a waterway to maintain a minimum depth involves collecting solids and placing them outside of the navigation channel. Fortunately, there are new emerging uses for these dredged materials other than landfills. We examine how dredged materials are used to create healthy marine habitats in the Upper Mississippi River system.

• Transport safety and reduction of traffic jams – Although the specific benefits of maritime freight transportation are beyond the scope of this study, this movement has advantages for other modes of freight transportation. Rail and road modes have the possibility of diverting part of their goods on certain routes to river barges during periods of congestion. And, conversely, when existing barge traffic is disrupted, diverting these additional cargo to other modes would cause significant congestion and delays on those modes. We cite studies showing that diverting all river traffic to trucks would increase daily truck traffic on interstate urban segments by 138 percent. And if grain barges along the Mississippi diverted their traffic to trains, average train speeds would decrease by nearly 10 miles per hour because of the additional traffic.

• Flood control – Flood control became a central mission of the Corps of Engineers after the disastrous 1927 Mississippi River flood, which killed hundreds and forced half a million people from their homes. Today, the 13,500 miles of federal levees and flood walls bring in more than $250 billion a year in profits. Specifically, we look at Chickamauga Dam near Chattanooga, which has avoided more than $5 billion in flood damages since 1940 and provided the safety to achieve many of the aforementioned benefits.

• National security – Physical control of entry points to the inland waterway system has always been a cornerstone of U.S. national defense, first to prevent invasion and then to ensure that materiel intended to support U.S. troops at home abroad can be shipped as quickly as possible. Much of the missile and rocket industry has settled in the Southeast because of easy access to waterways, and the report examines NASA’s use of inland waterways to transport rocket components from New Orleans to Cape Kennedy. We also examine the role of river and hydroelectric access in the siting of the Manhattan Project and the development of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (the Oak Ridge complex consumed one-seventh of all U.S. electrical energy during the Second World War).

• Global competitiveness – The relative efficiency of inland waterway transport compared to other modes has long been evident. In 2022, Eno produced a study showing that other economic competitors (China, Brazil) were increasing their investments in river transportation much more than the United States, harming American competitiveness in global markets. The delay in the maintenance and construction of the American system persists, which particularly hampers American agricultural exports.

The original federal mission was to make inland waterways safe and secure for navigation by large vessels. But the nature of the infrastructure needed to provide these navigation benefits has also simultaneously provided hydropower and flood control benefits in many areas, using the same infrastructure, and Congress has seized this opportunity .

The combination of easy access to river navigation, cheap electricity and controlled water levels with little risk of flooding has made possible a multitude of economic, energy and environmental benefits, as well as safety and security, of the controlled inland waterways system. Many of these benefits are not directly related to the primary navigation function of the system, but are important assets to the nation. But these benefits also depend on the federal government continuing maintenance work to keep the waterway system as a whole as close to peak efficiency as possible.