Inland navigation and the environmentalists

Excerpt

PROPOSALS to improve and maintain U.S. rivers for navigation have come under increasing attack in recent years. This opposition to sustained development of inland navigation systems comes mainly from citizen groups concerned about environmental quality. These groups contend that the use of rivers for commercial navigation should be curtailed because of the environmental damage it brings about. Is this a valid reason to oppose needed navigation improvements on the inland waterways? Are there other, less environmentally harmful ways to meet our transportation requirements?

Apart from those who oppose economic growth per se, most environmentalists would probably concede that we must find a way to move large quantities of bulk commodities between distant parts of the country. If the coal, grain, steel, petroleum, and chemicals we use do not move by water, then these commodities will have to be moved by one of two land modes, railroads or trucks. Thus, our transportation requirements require that we do more than decry the environmental costs of moving bulk goods by water. The question that environmentalists ought to be asking is this: What are the relative environmental costs of moving a given quantity of bulk commodities by alternative modes of freight transportation?

The volume of goods to be moved …