Despite a new calculation last year that cut the benefit-cost ratio for the new Chickamauga lock, construction of the new and bigger lock in Chattanooga remains one of the top priorities among new federal inland waterway projects.
In its 20-year capital investment strategy released last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintained the new Chickamauga lock as its fourth highest priority among new locks and dams under construction in the United States. The Chickamauga replacement lock, which is about one-fourth complete, trailed only the Olmsted Locks and Dam on the Ohio River, the Monongehela River projects in Pennsylvania and the Kentucky Lock addition on the Tennessee River in the Corps’ assessment of the need to finish the projects.
“This is one more piece of good news for the replacement of Chickamauga lock,” U.S Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, said Thursday after the Corps report was released. “If the Corps of Engineers plan had dropped Chickamauga lock out of its fourth place priority, there could have been no possibility of funding it for the foreseeable future.”
Alexander has worked to complete the new Chickamauga lock to avoid a potential cutoff of the upper third of the Tennessee River if the existing, 76-year-old lock continues to crumble and has to quit operating. Congress agreed to raise the barge diesel fuel tax by 9 cents a gallon to help improve funding for the Inland Waterways Trust Fund which pays for projects like the new Chickamauga lock.
“Hopefully, we can continue funding the Inland Waterways System sufficiently, so that there is money each year to continue funding the lock,” Alexander said a a statement Thursday.