Great Lakes Boating

12 GLB | A p r i l 2 0 17 greatlakesboating.com T he new administration is set on a mission with the promise of a massive rehab of our outdated national infrastructures that includes roads, bridges, railways, airports and a few others that need to be brought to standards that meet our present-day technology. Similar to what is being contemplated to address this country's internal infrastructures, the infrastructures for the recreational boating and sportfishing harbors and marinas also need to be addressed. Hundreds of marinas, breakwaters and mooring docks laced around the nation are near the end of their life cycle and are in need of reha- bilitation. Harbor seawalls and seaway dredging to keep navigational channels open and accessible is also needed. A national boating study must be acquired to get an understanding of the current status of this fragile industry and its boaters. At its zenith in 2008, recreational boating had amassed 12 million boat owners contributing an estimated $122 billion to the annual national eco- nomic impact. It has remained solvent and sus- tainable since then, bankrolled by governments in many coastal states to build and upkeep marinas for mooring and then dredge as needed along navigable waterways. No central authority is avail- able to represent and advocate for their upkeep and management even though 88 million of the nation's citizens engage in recreational boating and sportfishing. These figures are only estimates and were reached over time without a boating czar in charge. Such impressive numbers could not have come without governments' intervention to fund boating infrastructures. Private businesses on their own cannot create profitable and affordable recreational boating infrastructures. Boating would become too expensive of a pastime and lifestyle to undertake by many, especially the millennials prepared to take over boating from their aging Baby Boomer parents. Funding sources, state and local governments with their home rule powers, are needed to fund and keep boating sustainable. With the exception of Wallop-Breaux/Dingell- Johnson grants for transient harbors of refuge generated from the boating gasoline tax, there is no funding for boating infrastructure expansion, rehab and upkeep. Government sources have now dried up. Recreational boating is also on a steady course of decline in both boat manufacturing and ownership in recent years. Many of the jumbo marinas that were built in the '80s and '90s on the Great Lakes are now more than 25 years into their life cycle and are desperately in need of repair. Many saltwater marinas on our nation's coastlines face the same problems. Very few of these marinas are in private hands and most have no means to finance any rehabilitation. Many large-scale marinas that were government bankrolled, especially on the Great Lakes, remain in government ownership and now lack funds for maintenance and rehabilitation. Governments owning these marinas are seeking means to unload them into private hands for own- ership and operation because they are unable to maintain them any longer. Many jumbo marinas on the Great Lakes are operating at less than half occupancy and can hardly sustain profitable or even break-even operation. For many of boating and its infrastructures to remain operable and sustainable, necessity demands that they be included as part of the nation's infrastructure of roads, mass transit, bridges, dams, air and sea ports. While most jumbo marinas found on the Great Lakes were built by local governments to provide mooring and other needed facilities for recreational boaters and anglers, some are designated as harbors of ref- uge—places that offer mariners safety and protec- tion from inclement weather or other disasters and thus may legitimize their incorporation under the federal transportation umbrella deserving rehabili- tation assistance. If America were to start the recreational boat- ing initiative today, it would be a stretch to classify these harbor marinas as harbors of refuge, but with 12 million registered boaters and 88 million people engaged in boating and sportfishing, why wouldn't this designation make sense due to safety considerations under the harbors of ref- uge classification and thus be made eligible for rehabilitation help with the rest of the earmarked transportation infrastructures being considered by the Trump Administration? On a national scale, there are only a handful of organizations: National Marine Manufacturing Association (NMMA), American Sportfishing Association, Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF) and Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council (SFBPC) with a strong incen- tive to have boating grow and remain available and sustainable for the many citizens of this nation. NMMA, in particular, has been very suc- cessful acquiring boat shows all over the country remaining profitable and sustainable. Some fed- eral money, i.e. Wallop Breaux/Dingell Johnson, from boat gasoline tax is available and must change availability from that of serving the need to add transient slips to that of rehabilitation of marinas in decay, but this fund is small and hardly able to sustain such major rehab task. Is there any federal infrastructure rehab assistance or any organizations available to come to the aid of this boating industry to acquire these marinas in gov- ernment hands for next to nothing and help rehab and operate them at some profit? Left to its own destiny and accord, without any federal help, the future of recreational boating and the hundreds of marinas laced across the nation needing rehabilitation assistance, does not look very promising. Without the admission of the recreational boating infrastructures into the federal transportation infrastructure category earmarked to undergo major rehab, many infrastructures will fail to remain operable. The cost of boating will escalate, give way to only larger crafts serving the wealthy, and eventually become unaffordable and out of reach to many. Boating and its products and services must remain affordable and attainable by many consid- ering that our next generation of boaters is going to be comprised of millennials, who have very little discretionary money, minorities and those of lesser means who seek to embrace the recre- ational boating lifestyle. Without a federal lending hand, recreational boating will become beyond the means of the 88 million that enjoy this lifestyle here in America. n E D I T O R I A L B Y F . N E D D I K M A N , P H . D . ; C H A I R M A N , G R E A T L A K E S B O A T I N G F O U N D A T I O N THE STATE OF RECREATIONAL BOATING AND SPORT- FISHING IN AMERICA

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