The Linnea pulled off her dock on the north side of the Chicago River.

Sailing underneath burgundy bridges, the vessel glided east toward the lake. On that October afternoon, Trump Tower receded in the distance.

Ten minutes later, the Linnea — a commercial tour boat operated by Wendella Tours & Cruises — arrived at the Chicago Harbor Lock, the mechanism through which boats in Chicago must travel to sail between the river and Lake Michigan.

The harbor lock is one of the nation’s busiest for both commercial and recreational use; more than 900,000 passengers and 80,000 vessels traveled through it last year. But looming federal funding cuts have become a source of worry for boaters who rely on the lock.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates the harbor lock. It functions like a water elevator, allowing vessels to travel the different elevation levels between Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, the latter of which is typically kept several feet lower than the lake, a result of the feat of engineering that saw the flow of the Chicago River reversed in 1900.

The Army Corps requested $3.85 million for the operation and maintenance of the Chicago Harbor Lock and Dam next year, Corps spokesperson Emily Helton said. But in his proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, President Donald Trump allocated under $300,000 for the harbor, leaving a shortfall of more than $3.5 million, Helton said.

In order to try to close the gap, Helton said, the Army Corps will use just over $1 million in leftover operating funds from this year. It will also reallocate some money it had previously planned to use for electrical rehabilitation work at the harbor.

“While not ideal, (the Army Corps) will have sufficient resources to cover the FY26 shortfall,” Helton wrote in an email to the Tribune.

But, she said, the reduction in funding “creates risks in future years.”

“Subsequent budgetary limits are based on an escalated five-year average of prior funding levels,” Helton said.

Mike McElroy, director of marine operations for Wendella, put it more bluntly.

“If they didn’t get it this year, odds are they’re not going to get it next year,” he said.

The harbor lock is 600 feet long, 80 feet wide and 22 feet deep. It is used by recreational boaters, commercial barges, government vessels and tour boats such as the Linnea. The lock made headlines in September when U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents docked their vessels near it after conducting a Chicago River cruise while armed with rifles.

The Army Corps staffs the lock 24/7. This year, it had an operating budget of $3.83 million, according to the Corps.

McElroy, who in addition to his work at Wendella is president of the Chicago Harbor Safety Committee, said he’s concerned about the impact funding cuts could have down the line, even though there’s money to cover operations next year.

“The lock operates on-demand,” he said. “But if they do have enough funding cuts where they can’t cover it, they may have to restrict operations to certain times a day.”

McElroy is also concerned about the impact that delaying maintenance could have on the lock’s physical condition. “We’re concerned that they were going to push off maintenance that normally would be done proactively, and be more of a reactive stance,” he said.

Jerry Miarecki represents recreational boaters on the Harbor Safety Committee. He said any potential issues with the harbor lock would affect the ability of boaters to enjoy the Chicago River downtown.

“If the locks aren’t working, recreational boaters can’t get to and from the lake,” said Miarecki, a boater since 1970.

Funding for the harbor goes through the congressional appropriations process, and is part of the energy and water appropriations bill.

That bill passed the U.S. House in September by a vote of 214-213, with congressional Republicans heralding it as legislation that would “(unleash) American energy dominance.”

There is still a chance the harbor will receive additional funding during the appropriations process. However, in a Senate version of the energy and water bill pitched by Republicans recently, operations funding for the harbor remains below $300,000.

In a statement before the Senate bill was released, a spokesperson for Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he “supports full funding for the Chicago Harbor.”

The White House and its Office of Management and Budget did not respond on the record to the Tribune’s request for comment.

But the president’s 2026 budget proposal did give a reason for proposed cuts to the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, arguing that the program had “grown far beyond its original mission.” The budget proposal said that of $2.8 billion appropriated for the program in 2024, $1.4 billion had remained unobligated in the first quarter of 2025.

“There is no need to request more funding than necessary, which is why the Budget reduces funding for (harbor maintenance),” the proposal reads.

The Trump administration has repeatedly used federal funding as a political cudgel against blue cities and states, including in Chicago. Here, for instance, the administration froze nearly $2 billion in funding for the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line Extension over an investigation into racial preferences in contracting.

And during the government shutdown, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought said the administration would be pausing more than $11 billion in funding for various Army Corps projects. When he announced the funding pause on X, Vought said it would include projects in four blue cities, including New York and San Francisco. Democrats blasted the announcement as political retaliation.

But it’s not clear the proposed Chicago Harbor operations funding cut is politically targeted, insiders said.

Faraz Khan, legislative director for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a union representing 5,500 Army Corps workers around the country — including those who staff the Chicago Harbor Lock — said it wasn’t clear to the union whether the proposed cuts to the harbor funding were politically motivated.

“But it’s impossible for us not to see the pattern” in the Trump administration’s approach to federal funding, he said.

Regardless, Khan said, the union is “not surprised that the White House put forward a budget that’s fully underfunding critical infrastructure.”

The Army Corps itself said it had “no specific information” regarding the reason for the proposed cuts.

“While we are not aware of any political motivations, the funding decisions are part of the broader appropriations process, which includes numerous factors such as national priorities and budget constraints,” the Corps said.

Having traveled through the harbor lock — a process that involved docking along the lock’s side and waiting as hundreds of thousands of gallons of water flooded into the lock, raising its surface level toward that of the lake — the Linnea sailed onto Lake Michigan, where the breeze picked up.

From their seats atop her deck, boat tour-goers looked out at the jewels of downtown Chicago: Buckingham Fountain, the Adler Planetarium, Willis Tower.

When it was time to return to the river, the Linnea waited her turn to enter the lock. An Army Corps lockmaster directed its lakeside gates to open, and the Linnea docked once more inside the lock. The gates closed behind her.

Then the lock’s second set of gates opened, just by a sliver at first. Water poured from the lock into the mouth of the river, bringing the Linnea back down to level.

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.