(The Mississippi Press posted the following article by John Surratt on its website on April 19.)
MOSS POINT, Miss. — When the Senate returns from its spring recess next week, it will run into a battle that could determine if federal funds will be available to move the CSX Railroad tracks north from the Coast.
According to an article Tuesday in The Washington Post, U.S. Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran have included $700 million in an emergency war spending bill to relocate the railroad, which was recently repaired after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of at least $250 million.
The $700 million is part of a $106.5 billion emergency spending bill that is currently in the Senate Appropriations Committee chaired by Cochran.
Lott said he and state officials plan to make their case for the money next week.
The $700 million proposal has already come under fire by Sen. Tom Coburn, R.-Okla., who plans to challenge the plan. He told the Post that senators should turn a tragedy like Katrina “into a giveaway for economic developers,” and Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
“We do believe there are all kinds of reasons to make that move to move the railroad track, which affects Ocean Springs, Pascagoula, Gautier, and of course Biloxi, right across the Cast to Hancock County,” Lott said. “I think from an economic development aspect, a safety aspect and from a future risk of hurricane damage standpoint, it makes good sense.”
According to the Post article, the budget request comes at a time when both houses of Congress have pledged to reduce such home state projects known as “earmarks,” be-cause the money is designated for a specific project in the home state or district.
A prime example of home state spending listed in the Post is the infamous and controversial “Bridge to Nowhere” liking Ketchikan, Alaska, to its airport on Gavina Island.
According to the Post article, some budget watchdogs have called the CSX provision the “railroad to nowhere.”
Barbour, a former lobbyist, said the money is not pork barrel politics. Safety and hurricane evacuation, he said, are the main reasons for moving the rail lines.
“People have to understand the No. 1 reason we would take the CSX is reduction in mitigation of risk from another bad hurricane,” he said.
“To get people out of harm’s way and to tremendously improve our evacuation,” he said. “You’ve got 400,000 people living on the Coast. In all of Biloxi and all of the eastern half of Gulfport are below Biloxi Bay and the Bayou Bernard Seaway.”
Evacuations, he said, have to run north-south and there are three places where drivers can go north from Biloxi and Gulfport to get across the water.
“We can’t get people fast enough to the north-south evacuation routes because Pass Road is a little four-lane street that doesn’t even have turn lanes,” he said. “It is congested like mo-lasses on a regular day. And the beach highway was not designed to be a thoroughfare. It is the most at-risk place on the Gulf Coast. Not the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, but the whole Gulf Coast of the United States.”
To improve the state’s ability and capacity to evacuate the Coast, Barbour said, the CSX tracks have to be relocated.
“That will save the taxpayers of America tens and hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.