ILTA Echoes Bipartisan Calls for Tapping of Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund

ILTA on February 12 issued a press release, echoing calls from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-MO) that President Biden request in his fiscal 2022 budget the full disbursement of the $10 billion balance in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund. In a letter, the pair asked that, at minimum, Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget request provide the $2 billion in HMTF allocations called for in the 2020 Water Development Resources Act (WRDA) for the coming year. “ILTA echoes the call of Chairman DeFazio and Ranking Member Graves of the House T&I Committee for requesting complete disbursement in fiscal 2022 of the $10 billion available in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund. ILTA has long encouraged full use of these funds to make needed investments in our nation’s ports and harbors,” ILTA President Kathryn Clay said in the statement. "Our ports and waterways are essential channels for trade and interstate commerce. Most of ILTA’s terminals are connected to waterways, which help facilitate movement of essential products internationally and domestically. For decades, maintenance and upgrades to critical port and waterway infrastructure have been woefully underfunded. We need to put the trust fund to work now to make up for the time we have lost and to position ourselves for the future.”