The American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) said the US Senate\u2019s approval of a fiscal 2020 appropriations bill will cut funding by more than two-thirds to a US Department of Transportation Maritime Administration (MARAD) programme that provides critical grants for port infrastructure projects nationwide.<\/p>\n
Chris Connor, AAPA\u2019s president and CEO, said: \u201cMARAD\u2019s Port Infrastructure Development Program is the first and only federal grant program dedicated to our nation\u2019s ports, and direct investment into port-related infrastructure is a top AAPA priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cBecause ports are the center of trade and transportation, AAPA will continue to aggressively advocate that port-related infrastructure programs be a high priority in annual federal appropriations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huge cut ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n MARAD\u2019s Port Infrastructure Development Program, initiated last year and funded at US$292.73 million, would be slashed to US$91.6m if the Senate\u2019s appropriation mark is upheld in the final bill, noted AAPA.<\/p>\n Not only would funding for the program be severely cut, the Senate bill requires deep-draft coastal ports and shallow-draft inland waterways ports share those funds, which wasn\u2019t the case last year, said AAPA. The organisation advocated that the programme be funded at a minimum of US$300m for deep-draft coastal ports.<\/p>\n AAPA said it will \u201cfight hard\u201d to achieve a higher funding level for the programme in the final Congressional negotiations for the bill. The House approved US$225m for the program in FY 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A US port association is \u201cvery concerned\u201d over approval of a bill that cuts funding to a maritime programme and could slash port infrastructure grants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-north-america"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}