Funding to revive work on the stalled new Chickamauga lock could be in the works in fiscal 2016 under a budget plan taking shape among Congressional appropriators.
The House Appropriations Committee is set today to approve a spending plan that would add $142 million next year above the current funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for building and maintaining America’s dams and locks, including the crumbling 75-year-old lock at the Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga.
The budget plan adopted by the House Energy and Water Development subcommittee would provide $865 million more than what President Obama had proposed for the Corps for next year. The House spending plan also will ensure that all of the additional money raised from the recent 9-cents-a-gallon increase in the barge fuel tax will be matched with public funds to boost the Inland Waterways Trust Fund.
That increase should be enough to provide at least some money to resume construction of the new and bigger lock at the Chickamauga Dam, where building has been suspended for more than three years due to a lack of federal funds.
“I believe this is a good bill that prioritizes national defense and important water infrastructure projects, like the Chickamauga Lock,” said U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., who has made funding for the Chickamauga Lock one of his top legislative priorities. “The bill includes an additional $108 million dollars for Inland Waterways construction funding, which will be spent at the discretion of the Army Corps of Engineers.”