Despite President Trump’s budget proposal to cut federal funding for waterway projects by 31 percent next year, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, wants more money for building locks and dams in the federal budget in 2020.
Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, urged members of Congress Wednesday to include more money for projects like the replacement lock for the Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
“Funding for construction of the new Chickamauga Lock has been provided for the past five years, so it doesn’t make sense for the administration to not include the project in the budget request,” Alexander said. “In my opinion, we should spend more, not less, on our nation’s water infrastructure.”
The Trump administration is again proposing to cut the civil works budget for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which builds and maintains most locks and dams and other water projects in the United States. The Trump budget proposes a budget in fiscal 2020 of $4.8 billion, down from $7.1 billion in the current fiscal year.
Congress boosted funding for the Corps this year above the administration’s request, allowing the Corps to allocate $89.7 million this year for continued work on the replacement lock at the Chickamauga Dam. The lock project has more than doubled in cost to an estimated $758 million since it began nearly a decade and a half ago, but Alexander blamed much of the increased expense on the unreliable funding schedule for the project.