BY SKIP ALLEN, SR.

While we may harp about many issues affecting boating–mandatory PFD usage, no-wake zones, decreasing available slips, fishing regulations, etc.–none are more important than access to our waterways. If we can’t navigate the Intracoastal Waterway due to shoaling, those other issues don’t even come into play. Unfortunately, this is a situation that by nature only gets worse if left alone.

Lately, we have been hearing about numerous places along the ICW where navigation is nearly impossible and repeated requests to the government for funding to dredge sections have gone unheard. In fact, according to figures released by the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association (AIWA), overall federal funding for ICW maintenance has decreased each year for the last five years with the 2007 final federal budget at $8,866,000 for the entire Atlantic ICW from Portsmouth, Virginia, to Miami, Florida. Meanwhile the AIWA estimates that $33,000,000 is needed annually to maintain our Southern ICW sections.

While the AIWA continues to seek federal funding, it has also urged the individual states to take responsibility for their ICW maintenance. The AIWA continues to push an agenda that calls on conducting economic impact studies to demonstrate the value of a healthy ICW. A key element in gaining any sort of funding, these studies put abstract concepts into hard numbers that cause officials to take notice.

Florida has led the way with its ongoing studies, which have led to the Florida Inland Navigation District funding dredging in five areas of major concern. The state of North Carolina has also stepped up and funded its own economic study, now in phase II, and hired a federal lobbyist. Meanwhile, the AIWA has engaged South Carolina and Georgia representatives along with local business leaders to push forward their own area studies. In South Carolina, the AIWA was successful in getting Congressman Henry E. Brown, Jr. to make ICW dredging his number one energy and water appropriations priority, just about guaranteeing government funding.

As proof that these studies have power and carry weight with the federal government, when the AIWA assisted the Corps of Engineers in documenting high-use ICW sections in North Carolina and Florida, the President included $5.6 million for Waterway maintenance and dredging in his 2007 recommended budget for these high-use sections.

In some areas, however, local businesses have been forced to bite the bullet and pay for dredging on their own, citing the potential of disastrous economic losses if ICW traffic no longer flows. While individual businesses may be able to slow the bleeding, it is only a tourniquet on a large, open wound. To really make a difference we need to continue putting pressure on our local and federal representatives and shed light on this major concern. These representatives are inundated with pleas for funding from special interest groups every day, but it’s the voices of their constituents that can have the most power.

If the traffic stops flowing through any part of the ICW, we will all feel the effects. For more information about how you can make your voice heard, visit the AIWA Web site at atlintracoastal.org and click on the “Working with Congress” page to find links to your local representatives.