Cruisers Net is proud to be a member of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association whose lobbying work is crucial to keeping the Waterway navigable. Your membership dollars directly impact their vital work. Please join and encourage your boating neighbors to do likewise, regardless of their homeport.

Greetings from the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association (AIWA).  This year is going to be very busy for the AIWA in every state along the waterway and we rely heavily on the support of our members. Below is a list of some of our major accomplishments from 2018 and early efforts this year.

• Worked with Congress and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to increase funding for the dredging of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AIWW). For federal Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19), which started in October 2018, we received a total of $23.944 million. This is the highest non-disaster amount we have received in years and is in addition to over $40 million in FY18. As of this letter, maintenance dredging projects are underway in all five
states along the AIWW.

• In early March, our Board of Directors met with twelve Congressional Offices in Washington, D.C. to request funding for additional dredging needs for FY20 and they were supportive of our efforts. We also met with staff at Headquarters of the Corps during the visit to highlight the importance of the AIWW. From our advocacy efforts, we were able to secure support from Congressional offices in six states (FL, GA, SC, NC, VA and NJ) to join a multi-state, bipartisan delegation letter asking for a total of $180 million in additional funding for dredging projects that could include the AIWW. We don’t yet know how much more money will be included by Congress, but this is
a major step forward in highlighting the AIWW as a project with national significance due to its interconnectivity along the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

• We presented our annual meeting to bring decision-makers and stakeholders together to discuss issues impacting the AIWW. Our annual meeting was held on November 15-16, 2018 in Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the topics included: State of the Waterway and ongoing maintenance efforts after Hurricanes, Engineering with Nature and beneficial use of dredge materials including a pilot project in Georgia, commercial and industrial waterway access, and dredge material management challenges and opportunities. We were also joined by Mayor John Tecklenburg, City of Charleston, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Palazzini, Charleston District Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Captain John Reed, 5A Market Street Beaufort, SC 29906 (843) 379-1151, Charleston Sector Commander for the U.S. Coast Guard, Kyle Ward of NOAA, and Fran Bohnsack of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration in addition to many other stakeholder groups.

• We are working with non-federal partners to establish non-federal funding for the dredging of the AIWW. Florida and North Carolina have established non-federal funding programs and we are raising awareness of the benefits of providing non-federal funding in South Carolina and Georgia. This will be critical in the long-term maintenance of Marine Highway 95.

• We participated in regional and national coalitions to increase awareness of AIWW issues. We are an active board member and on the Executive Committee of the National Waterways Conference, Inc., and partner with numerous other national organizations. In 2018, we were presenters at the Local Government Meeting of NCBIWA, America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association Rendezvous, and the American Boating Congress in Washington, D.C. We also participated in the National Dredging Meeting, Western Dredging Association Meeting, and were invited to participate in the U.S. Army Corps’ of Engineers Engineering with Nature initiative due to our work on the Jekyll Creek Pilot Project. This March, we gave a presentation at the Marine Trades Association of New Jersey 2019 Conference to build support in the northeastern U.S.

• We continue outreach with other federal agencies such as the Maritime Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, NOAA, and the U.S. Coast Guard to support many efforts including the Marine Highways program and chart mapping efforts, especially in areas where maintenance dredging is needed.

• We publish monthly newsletters of our efforts and distribute to our members. We hope you saw the March 2019 issue, and it can be accessed from the News section on our website at https://atlanticintracoastal.org/news/.

As you can see, we had a fruitful 2018 and we have hit the ground running in 2019. We hope that we can
continue to be the Voice of the Waterway in 2019 and beyond.

Respectfully,
Brad Pickel
Executive Director