The committee, working under the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council, delivered its final report June 10 in Corpus Christi, TX, recipient of two grants to improve facilities and services for transients visiting the city’s municipal marina. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administers the program and David P. Smith, assistant secretary of Interior accepted the report for the Service.

The BIG Program, which BoatU.S. shepherded through Congress in 1998, has pumped more than $32 million in federal boat gas tax monies into building and renovating facilities, like marina slips, channel improvements and mooring fields, to serve people who chose to travel by boat, and in turn bolstering local waterfront economies.

The review panel described the BIG Program as “a successful addition to the user-pay, user-benefit concept embodied in the Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act” though which boaters’ gas tax money flows back to the states. However, the panel noted the need to streamline the application process and refine grant evaluation procedures to put competing projects on equal footing.

In addition, it recommended better information and education about the program at both state and federal levels to ensure that waterfront communities as well as private marinas have equal opportunity to apply. The panel found that a number of popular boating communities were not aware of the BIG program’s existence.

The panel also urged refining the reporting requirements and permitting procedures for projects, once funded, to avoid costly construction delays. It also found that demand for federal funds for qualified projects had exceeded available monies by well over two-to-one in each year, despite ample state and local matching funds.

“This clearly demonstrates the need for Congress to reauthorize the BIG Program at higher levels,” said Michael Sciulla, BoatU.S. government affairs director. The review shows the program is accomplishing what Congress set out to do in creating the Boating Infrastructure Grant Program. But in many parts of the country, facilities suited to today’s larger cruising vessels are still lacking.”