Full year-round navigation on two federal inland waterway projects in the Southeast United States has not been consistently achieved since their construction. Many variables and circumstances have contributed to and sustained the condition. The U.S.Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) has performed many studies to investigate methods and operations that may maximize thepercentage of time that full navigation is maintained. The states of Alabama. Georgia, and Florida have joined together in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River (Basin) Compact. A similar compact exists for the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) river basin. The compacts direct the parties to the compact to "develop an allocation formula for equitably approtioning the surface waters of the ACF basin among the States while protecting the water quality, ecology, and biodiversity of the ACF and (ACF)." A programmatic environmental impact statement is being prepared by the Corps to evaluate the impacts that may result from an allocation formula proposed by the parties to the compact. This paper presents the methodology used to assess the economic impacts to commercial navigation on the ACT waterway, without knowledge of the final allocation formula. River flows over a 55-year period of record were used to calculate the percentage of time incremental navigational depths are available. Waterborne commerce forecasts for a future 50-year period, seasonally distributed, were moved on the waterway at full and less-than-full navigation depths when appropriate or shipped via railway when navigation was not possible.
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