IWUB Gathers In Arlington, Va., For 104th Meeting

Spencer Murphy clearly believes the Inland Waterways Users Board (IWUB), the advisory board he has led as chairman for several years, has done its part to help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers succeed.

To increase funding, Murphy said, board members have taken their cause directly to key members of Congress. Previously, they even pushed for increasing fuel taxes on their own industry to put more of their dollars in the system.

“In return, we have been hoping to see an improvement in how the Corps delivered these projects, both in terms of their budget and timelines,” Murphy said days after chairing meeting No. 104 of the board in Arlington, Va.

Instead, he said, the Corps is still running into major delays, even on legacy projects that date back decades.

After a break in the recent meeting, Major Gen. Jason Kelly, who was attending his first meeting with the board after assuming his new duties in September as the Corps’ deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations, returned to deliver an update. Kelly said he wanted the record to show a key deadline at Kentucky Lock would not be met in 2029.

In an interview after the meeting adjourned, Kelly was asked if he had been surprised by the frustrations from board members.

“I was not,” the West Point graduate with three decades in uniform replied. “There is no one in this room who would not agree that collectively we have to do better.”

Kelly then spoke of the unprecedented opportunities the Corps has to address critical infrastructure and contribute to the strength of the nation’s economy and its security.

Murphy, general counsel for New Orleans-based Canal Barge Company, said Kelly’s update on the sliding deadline was the first on that possibility to come from such a high-ranking officer in the Corps.

“We appreciate Gen. Kelly being candid with us,” said Murphy, who wondered how long the Corps had known about the delay at Kentucky. “We would like to think as their partner we would know as soon as possible.”

Murphy described the exchange he shared with the general as positive and said he left the meeting with the belief that Kelly shared the board’s sense of urgency for getting Corps projects back on track with “more ribbon cuttings and fewer ground breakings.”

“I know he feels that way,” Murphy said.

In a separate interview, Matt Woodruff, a board member who works for Houston-based Kirby Corporation, acknowledged the concern with communication has been long running.

“I don’t know if the problem is the Corps not keeping the board up to date or whether the Corps is not keeping itself up to date,” Woodruff said. “It is definitely a problem when we have these projects where we are 10 or 20 years into them, and we don’t seem to know what it is going to take to finish them.”

Still, Woodruff stressed the Inland Waterways Users Board is an advisory committee.

“We have no authority,” he said. “We can only make recommendations.”

Brazos River Floodgates

During the meeting, the Inland Waterways Users Board approved a motion to encourage the Corps to explore all alternatives to accept up to $140 million from the state of Texas to remove the west gate of the Brazos River floodgates or, if that cannot be done, step aside and allow the state to tackle the project at its own expense.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the 75-foot floodgates were built in 1943 to prevent the Brazos River from flowing into the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and depositing sediment in the channel.

Annually, 30 million tons of cargo, valued at $117 billion, pass through the floodgates, with petrochemicals making up 67 percent of that traffic, according to the state agency.

The outdated floodgate requires barges to be tripped across the river individually, causing significant delays. According to TxDOT, the floodgates are struck roughly 65 times a year.

The Corps plans to create a 125-foot open channel on the west side of the Brazos River where it crosses the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, with a new 125-foot-wide floodgate on the eastern side of the river.