Approved by the Transportation Policy Committee on February 20, 2025
Approved by the Public Policy and Practice Committee on May 7, 2025
Adopted by the Board of Direction on July 10, 2025

Policy

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) supports a program to modernize and maintain ports, harbors, and inland waterways as they are key to the nation’s ability to efficiently import and export goods. Such a program should: 

  • Provide a fully dedicated funding source for the maintenance and improvement of ports, harbors, and inland waterways.
  • Fully utilize the Harbor Maintenance Tax (HMT) and ensure tax revenue is appropriated and distributed to all port classifications via the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF) in accordance with its authorized levels.  
  • Provide the U.S Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with contract authority for projects to avoid the stop-and-start of construction currently happening because of the appropriations process. 
  • Fully appropriate the United States Marine Highway Program (USMHP) expanding the use of America’s navigable waters to leverage marine highway service options and further integrate them into the U.S. transportation system.
  • Prepare ports, harbors, and inland waterways to accommodate the newest generation of ships and implement new technology.
  • Fully appropriate funds for the Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) to ease supply chain congestion.
  • Streamline the project permitting process for improving ports, harbors, and inland waterways.
  • Pass a Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) on a two-year cycle. 
  • Reuse clean dredged material as an economic and environmental benefit.
  • Improve ports, harbors, and inland waterways to be more resilient to natural and manmade disasters.  
  • Utilize alternative financing and delivery methods, such as public-private partnerships, when appropriate.
  • Develop and implement a standardized measurement for delays at locks on the Inland Waterways System to compile data to measure efficiency.
  • Engage with business leaders, members of the community, and other stakeholders during project development. 

Issue

The need for a dedicated funding source to maintain and improve the nation’s ports, harbors, and inland waterways is vital to the nation’s economic growth. Deficient port gateways negatively impact the nation’s ability to export essential commodities and high-value manufactured goods at competitive costs and could raise the cost of imports and the advantages that these imports bring for production by U.S. business. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), signed into law in November 2021, designates $450 million annually over five years for PIDP.

The WRDA of 1986 enacted the HMT and was intended to fund 100% of the Operations and Maintenance of deep draft federal navigation channels administered by USACE, with collected funds placed in the General Treasury and then credited to the HMTF. Despite this long-standing process, decades of partially appropriating HMT collections have left navigation channels across the country with depth and width restrictions, leading to inefficient movement of the growing freight volume. While WRDA 2024 provided authority to appropriate an additional $59 million, the full HMTF revenue should be distributed appropriately and efficiently to ensure effective channel maintenance and specific port needs are met. 

An effective regulatory program is also needed to safeguard the sensitive and natural attributes of estuarine and coastal environments within which port, harbor, and waterway maintenance and improvement dredging projects take place. Specific issues within the current regulatory program are the lack of concurrent reviews and firm deadlines for action by the various agencies; delay by agencies in setting up uniform criteria; delay in setting up permanent disposal sites for dredged material; and the complexity of procedures for routine maintenance. Streamlining the regulatory process at all levels of industry and government will serve the overall environmental benefits and public interests of the projects. Stakeholders should also be engaged in improvements and project features. 

The country’s 25,000 miles of inland waterways and 218 locks form the freight network’s “water highway.” This intricate system, operated and maintained by USACE, supports more than half a million jobs, and delivers nearly 830 million tons of cargo each year. Most locks and dams on the system are well beyond their 50-year design life, and nearly half of vessels experience delays. The IIJA provided almost $17 billion over five years for infrastructure at coastal ports, inland waterways, harbors, and land ports of entry along borders. However, upgrades to the system will take decades to address deferred maintenance and improvements. 

Rationale

The United States has more than 300 coastal and inland ports which are essential to the nation’s competitiveness, serving as the gateway through which nearly 80% of traded goods that Americans rely on is moved. U.S. ports and inland waterways facilitate a significant portion of exported goods to other countries. Ports are responsible for $5.4 trillion in economic activity — roughly 26% of the U.S. economy. Similarly, on the water side, larger ships require deeper navigation channels, which only a few U.S. ports currently have. As witnessed with the Suez Canal obstruction of 2021 and the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse of 2024 in Baltimore, ships that become disabled and create an impassable situation can cause catastrophic repercussions to the global economy.

ASCE Policy Statement 218
First Approved in 1977