Maybe it would mean that I wouldn't eat so dang much:
Locks are intended to make it easy for … barges, with their cargoes of grain, coal and oil, to navigate the uneven waters of the Mississippi, Kentucky [1] and Ohio Rivers.
But largely out of sight of most Americans, the locks are crumbling. There are 192 locks on 12,000 miles of river across the country; most were built in the 1930s, even earlier than Kentucky Lock and Dam, and have long outlived their life expectancy. …
President Obama has asked Congress for billions of dollars for infrastructure improvements, and last year, he signed a $12.3 billion water resources bill with money to complete construction of a major lock and dam project near Olmsted, Ill. But the president has also called for cuts in the United States Army Corps of Engineers budget, which includes money for repairs of locks and dams.
Transportation advocates say the funding is vastly insufficient to deal with the construction backlogs of locks and dams. The Corps of Engineers, which maintains most of the system, says it will take $13 billion through 2020 just to fix the decaying locks. Without the money, Corps officials say it will take until 2090 to complete all the projects.
In the United States, the equivalent of 51 million truckloads of goods move by river each year. …
Rick Calhoun, the marine and terminal division president for [Minnesota-based food giant] Cargil, said the company could still get its products to market by using trucks or trains. But he said barges were cheaper: 15 barges can carry the same amount of cargo as 1,050 tractor-trailers or one train with 216 cars.
“We prefer that all three modes of transportation be robust in order to maintain healthy competition and keep shipping costs down,” Mr. Calhoun said. “Otherwise, there is a rise in price for transportation that is passed on to the consumer.”
I'm sure Cargil prefers the subsidy of federally supported river, rail and road transportation. On the other hand, putting money to fix locks into the federal budget isn't the most efficient way to pay for their repair. The cost of maintenance would be better supported with user fees.
If the maintenance cost is $13 billion annually (or is it one-time, I can't tell from the article), 51 million truckloads move by river and 15 barges equal 1050 trucks then a toll of about $18,000 [2] per barge trip through the lock would fund the system ($255 per truckload). The goods that travel by barge would cost more and we would consume less of them (grain, coal and oil). Still, that seems like a better system than taxing most everyone to fund river transportation.
[1] Most of ya'll are familiar with the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers but what is the Kentucky River? It moves from southeastern Kentucky (i.e., the coal region) north to the Ohio River. The Kentucky River
Authority says that the locks are used by recreational boaters but the article suggests coal as well.
[2] Did I get that number correct? One truck carries 1.43% of a barge (15/1050), so 51 million trucks equals 728,571 thousand barges. $13 billion divided by 728,571 barge trips is $17,843 per barge.
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