Inland waterways of the United States
Most navigable rivers and canals in the United States are in the eastern half of the country, where the terrain is flatter and the climate is wetter.
The Lower Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico allows ocean shipping to connect with the barge traffic, thereby making this segment vital to both the domestic and foreign trade of the United States.
The Intracoastal Waterway runs along the Gulf Coast from Texas, past the Mississippi River, around Florida, and up the Atlantic Seaboard to Massachusetts.
The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) and Mississippi River System connect Gulf Coast ports, such as Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houston, and Corpus Christi, with major inland ports, including Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.
The steep grades and variable flows of most other West Coast rivers make them unsuitable for large boat travel.
Though navigable-in-fact, parts or all of the following have been excluded from the definition by Congress: A principal value of the inland waterways is their ability to efficiently convey large volumes of bulk commodities moving long distances.
The inland and intracoastal waterway system handles about 630 million tons of cargo annually, or about 17 percent of all intercity freight by volume.
[citation needed] These are raw materials or primary manufactured products that are typically stored for further processing or consumption, or transshipped for overseas markets.
The shippers and consumers in these states depend on the inland waterways to move about 630 million tons of cargo valued at over $73 billion annually.
According to research by the Tennessee Valley Authority, this cargo moves at an average transportation savings of $10.67 per ton over the cost of shipping by alternative modes.
These locks provide the essential infrastructure that allows tows to "stair-step" their way through the system and reach distant inland ports such as Minneapolis, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.
In the 1960s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to modernize the locks on the Ohio River and added 1,200-foot (370 m) chambers that permit a typical tow to pass in a single lockage.
Altogether, this ongoing work represents an investment of over $3.5 billion in inland waterway modernization that will be completed over the next decade.
Over the next few years, these studies will identify the navigation and natural environmental actions needed to support the inland waterway system.
