Some Upper Mississippi River projects were treated kindly in President Bush's budget handed over to Congress last week, while other projects got no money.
"The Upper Mississippi could have done better, but it could have done worse," said Paul Rohde, the president of MARC 2000, a coalition of barge and farm groups that has been pushing for construction of new locks along the river.
To the dismay of such groups, no new money was allotted for the design or construction of river locks, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' budget shrunk 7 percent under the president's proposal.
Opponents of the Corps' expanded locks system plan said the budget shows that the Bush administration hopes the project goes away.