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Building 21st century water infrastructure for our 21st century economy

By: Mike Collins - March 26, 2025

Infrastructure projects that provide safe and reliable access to America’s ports and inland waterways are a vital part of our economic engine. If America wants to remain a prosperous superpower, we need meaningful reforms that speed up maintenance and modernization of our decades-old locks, dams, ports, and levees.

As the new chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, I am committed to working on those reforms. My subcommittee has jurisdiction over the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and specifically, its Civil Works program, from which the agency supports commercial navigation and flood mitigation to grow our economy and shield communities and agricultural land from devastating flooding.

Unfortunately, many of our most vital water resources projects that achieve those goals are old. Some dams are approaching or have surpassed 100 years in age, and 80% of locks are past their 50-year design life. But federal bureaucracy, red tape, environmental regulations, and nonsensical budgeting methods so often the obstacles to American innovation are preventing us from moving water infrastructure into the 21st century.

For example, one of the most vital locks to our nation’s national security, the Wilson Lock and Dam on the Tennessee River in Northwest Alabama, was completed in 1924. According to the Tennessee Valley Authority, 3,700 vessels, many carrying defense and space industry assets, pass through the lock annually when it’s working. The main lock, put into service in 1961, is beyond its service life and has been out of commission since September 2024, when cracks were discovered in the chamber gates and prime assembly. That means commercial interests trying to move goods down the Tennessee River to the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of America are relying on a smaller auxiliary lock until at least June 2025. That is significantly extending shipping time and causing terminals on the river that rely on the lock to shut down. USACE should start the process to modernize the locks immediately.

The Wilson Lock is a big project, but even something as simple as dredging a port moving dirt from a channel so ships can come in and out safely has in many circumstances become a years-long fight. Take for instance Georgia’s Brunswick Harbor, which is the nation’s busiest port for moving cars and heavy machinery. A project to deepen the harbor was completed in 2007, and the only time it has been dredged to that authorized level was 15 years ago in 2010.

Why has it been 15 years? That depends on who you ask, but in my meetings with stakeholders and USACE, it seems to come down to at least two reasons: the Corps’ inability to issue multi-year, commonsense contracts to dredgers, causing annual delays when the bid process breaks down, and a limiting regulation called the “Turtle Window.” That environmental regulation is a seven-month period between April 1 and October 31 in which hopper dredges are not allowed to operate, even if there are hopper dredges available to limit or prevent the loss of turtles.

These are just a few of the many examples of challenges to water infrastructure modernization throughout the country. These failures do not mean that USACE doesn’t perform a lot of good and important work it does. But as we work to streamline the federal government under the Trump administration and make agencies do better for the American people, we need to bring the Corps along and help them serve taxpayers more efficiently and effectively by getting new construction and maintenance projects done faster, on budget, and on time.

That’s why I will be working with full committee Chairman Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and the rest of our colleagues on Transportation and Infrastructure to find real solutions to these problems as we do our work this Congress. Together, we can and must build 21st century water infrastructure for our 21st century economy.

Rep. Mike Collins has represented Georgia’s 10th congressional district since 2023. He is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.