The Europeans settled the United States via waterborne transportation. Settlements, and then cities, first arose where there were natural seaports. They later developed along rivers as far upstream as the boats of the time could manage. Beginning in the Jacksonian era, the federal government took on responsibility for keeping those inland waterways navigable and properly maintained.

Today, this commercially navigable waterways system, under the supervision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies, currently extends almost 12,000 miles and transports over 500 million tons of goods annually, including bulk, oversize, and overweight commodities.

This federal support for inland waterways yields significant societal benefits in a variety of areas, completely aside from the obvious freight movement advantages. Using case studies, this report describes 14 benefit areas derived from federal support for inland waterways, grouped into three categories: (1) economic development, (2) energy and sustainability, and (3) safety, security, and resiliency.

Category 1: Economic Development

• Industrial property development – Some cargo is more cost effectively moved via barge while others are too bulky for land transportation. Regardless, this cargo is frequently transferred from barge to oceangoing vessel (or vice versa) in a port, and sometimes, the end recipient is also located by the water. These areas often also have rail, highway, and sometimes pipeline connections. We look at the Port of New Orleans and the surrounding area, which exports over 50 million tons of grains and legumes per year and supports almost 50,000 direct and indirect jobs.

• Commercial property values and waterfront development – Many cities are undergoing a redevelopment of waterfront property, reintegrating rivers into the identity of their cities. In some cases, this property is being repurposed due to waning need for industrial property, and in others, this property is simply able to be better utilized by riverfront development. Regardless, there are opportunities for massive commercial and mixed-use redevelopment to take advantage of the scenery and convenient urban locations. We examine Nashville’s “Imagine East Bank” project to redevelop 550 formerly industrial acres along the Cumberland River into a mixed-use development with community parks and a new performing arts center.
• Residential property values – For most waterways, an inherent side-effect benefit of maintaining navigability is flood control and the maintenance of relatively constant water levels. We examine Kentucky Lake and the adjacent Lake Barkley, dammed for inland waterway navigability but creating lakeside residential property now worth over $125 million.

• Jobs and community impact – Improving waterways attracts business and creates jobs. We examine the Southern Indiana Maritime District along the Ohio River, where river-related industries support 60,154 jobs and produces over $9 million in personal income per mile of shoreline. We look at the Port of Memphis, which supports 2.5 percent of the jobs in the county and has an economic impact of $6.25 billion per year. And we discuss a new steel facility that is located in Osceola, Arkansas to be accessible to barge service, which has hired over 500 Mississippi County residents for high-paying jobs.

• Tourism and recreation – We look at the Quad Cities, where the navigation improvements of a century ago yielded tremendous recreation and tourism benefits, driving over 6 million visitors per year to the area today. We also reference broader benefits from the boating and fishing sector, the renewed popularity of domestic river cruises, and the historical importance of rivers to different cities. Many cities lining the Mississippi River, such as Dubuque, Iowa and Memphis, Tennessee maintain numerous museums and landmarks spurred from river related migration, commerce, and other activities.

Category 2: Energy and Sustainability

• Hydropower – Along with flood control, hydropower is another inherent benefit that stems from building the facilities necessary to ensure that large vessels can navigate between upriver and downriver. The U.S. currently has 101 gigawatts of installed hydropower – carbon-free electricity that can be drawn at night, when solar production is impossible and wind drops off drastically – and much of it is on the controlled inland waterway system. We examine the specific benefits of inland water hydropower in the Pacific Northwest and the Tennessee Valley.

• Irrigation – About 80 percent of the water used in the U.S. is for irrigation, and the control of the water supply necessary to support inland waterways also helps keep water storage constant so that it is available for irrigation when needed. We examine the specific agricultural benefits along the Columbia River-Snake River system, where 350,000 acres of irrigated farmland produce enough food to feed tens of millions of people.
• Water supply – Just as water levels controlled for navigation supports irrigation, it also helps municipalities provide drinking water, industrial, and other public water supply for its citizens. The Mississippi River Division of the Corps manages 1.2 million available acre-feet of water storage with benefits of over $500 million per year. Around 20 million people live in the over 120 counties that directly border the Mississippi River, who directly benefit from the river. A controlled water supply is a key part of the National Water Reuse Action Plan as well.

• Cooling – Water is several times more efficient than air at cooling and having a steady supply of cool water close at hand is a necessity for industries both old and new. We examine how a Google data center in Oregon and a new xAI supercomputer in Memphis cool their facilities with water made available from the inland waterways system.

• Beneficial uses of dredged materials – Dredging a waterway to maintain minimum depth involves scooping up solids and placing them outside the navigation channel. Fortunately, there are new and emerging uses for this dredged material other than landfills. We look at how dredged material is being used to create healthy marine habitats in the Upper Mississippi River system.

Category 3: Safety, Security, and Resiliency

• Transportation safety and congestion alleviation – Although the specific benefits of waterborne freight movement are outside the scope of this study, that movement provides benefits to other modes of freight transportation. The rail and highway modes have the option of diverting some of their cargo on some routes to inland waterway barges in times of congestion. And, conversely, where existing barge traffic is disrupted, the diversion of that additional cargo to other modes would cause significant congestion and delays on those modes. We cite studies showing that diversion of all waterways traffic to trucks would increase daily truck traffic per lane on urban Interstate segments by 138 percent. And if grain barges along the Mississippi were to divert their traffic to trains, average train velocity would drop by almost 10 miles per hour due to the additional traffic.

• Flood control – Flood control became a central mission of the Corps of Engineers after the disastrous Mississippi River flooding of 1927, which killed hundreds and flooded a half-million people out of their homes. Today, the 13,500 miles of federal levees and floodwalls yield over $250 billion per year in benefits. Specifically, we examine Chickamauga Dam, near Chattanooga, which has prevented over $5 billion in flood-related damages since 1940 and provided the security which allows several of the aforementioned benefits to be enjoyed.

• National security – Physical control over the entrance points to the inland waterways system has always been a cornerstone of U.S. national defense, at first to prevent invasion, and later to ensure that the materiel to support American troops overseas can be shipped as quickly as possible. Much of the missile and rocketry industry settled in the Southeast because of easy waterway access, and the report examines NASA’s use of inland waterways to bring rocket components from New Orleans to Cape Kennedy. We also look at the role of river and hydropower access in the siting of the Manhattan Project and the development of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (the Oak Ridge complex consumed one-seventh of all U.S. electrical energy during World War II).

• Global competitiveness – The relative efficiencies of transport by inland waterway versus other modes has long been obvious. In 2022, Eno produced a study showing that other economic competitors (China, Brazil) were increasing their investment in inland waterway transport by significantly more than the U.S., hurting American competitiveness in global markets. Lagging maintenance and delayed construction on the U.S. system still persist, which particularly holds back U.S. agricultural exports.

The original federal mission was to make inland waterways safe and secure for navigation by large vessels. But the nature of the infrastructure needed to provide those navigational benefits also provided hydropower and flood control benefits at the same time in many areas, using the same infrastructure, and Congress seized that opportunity.

The combination of easy river navigational access, cheap electricity, and a controlled water levels with little danger of flooding has made possible a host of economic, energy and environmental, and safety and security benefits from the controlled inland waterways system. Many of these benefits are not directly related to the system’s core navigation function but are significant assets for the nation. But those benefits also still depend on the federal government continuing to do the maintenance work to keep the inland waterways system as a whole functioning as close to peak efficiency as possible.