Low Water Disrupts Mississippi Traffic
Extraordinarily low water levels in the middle reaches of the Mississippi River have complicated barge service and forced companies that supply, deliver and use aggregate and other barge-delivered construction materials to scramble and get creative, sources at those companies said last week.
Still, they said that, in nearly all cases, construction contractors have been able to secure required materials when they are needed and that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is doing all it can to maintain acceptable water levels and minimize barge-flow disruptions.
A severe drought has left water levels near historic lows on parts of the Mississippi, especially the 200-mile “choke point” between St. Louis, where the Missouri River flows in, and Cairo, Ill., at the Ohio River confluence, said Mike Petersen, spokesman for the Corps’ St. Louis District.
Since the last major drought in 1988-89, the Corps has been removing underwater rocks that threaten barges and other vessels during low-water periods; also, it has been installing “river training structures,” such as dikes, chevrons and "bendway" weirs, to maintain reliable, navigable channels, Petersen said.
He said the current drought “was on our radar very early”—months before the drought peaked this past summer—enabling the Corps to carefully manage upstream stockpiles of water for gradual, as-needed release this past fall and early winter.
“There’s normally a 12-foot draft” in the middle Mississippi, but the Corps lowered that to nine feet last summer, forcing big cuts in the amount of material each barge could carry, said Ann McCullouch, spokeswoman for American Waterways Operators, the trade association for the U.S. tugboat, towboat and barge industry.
Around Thanksgiving, the Corps trimmed flows from the Missouri River. McCullouch said, “We sounded alarm bells” that further reductions in draft levels in the middle Mississippi could bring barge traffic there to a halt, harming both the regional and national economy.
The Corps then undertook emergency rock-removal work in a six-mile stretch of the Mississippi near Thebes, Ill., a few miles upstream from Cairo. That work was expected to be finished in mid-January, said the Corps’ Peterson. The Corps now is confident it can maintain a nine-foot draft through the end of January, he adds.
“That’s when nature meets us halfway,” said Petersen, explaining that water flows down the upper Mississippi and the Missouri typically rise through late January and February, increasing water levels in the critically important stretch between St. Louis and Cairo.
“We really were looking at a potential shutdown” of barge traffic on the middle Mississippi, if the Corps had not expedited the Thebes-area rock-removal work, said Debra Colbert, senior vice president at the Waterways Council, a group whose members either barge bulk materials or supply or buy bulk materials delivered by water.
Barging along the Mississippi, Colbert said, is “challenged” when the draft level drops to eight feet and “virtually shut down” when it drops to seven feet.
Low water levels in the middle Mississippi “slowed us down, just like they've affected everyone” who barges aggregate and other materials on the river, said Steve Glenn, manager at the Cape Girardeau, Mo., office of Columbia, Ill.-based Luhr Brothers, which owns a network of rock yards, barges and towboats.
Glenn noted that, for example, the Corps’ rock-removal work at Thebes left that section of the river open to barges only eight hours a day. However, companies like his have been finding ways to deal with the situation, he added.
One of the biggest construction projects in the middle Mississippi region—the $346-million Interstate 70 bridge over the river at St. Louis and $321 million in nearby approach and interchange work—has not been affected in a major way by the low water levels, said Greg Horn, New Mississippi River Bridge director at the Missouri Dept. of Transportation.
Horn said, “We were flooded out in 2010,” delaying for three months early work on the bridge project. He said most of the aggregate used in the span has been quarried locally and delivered by truck; for the most part, steel for the project has been trucked in from Arkansas. “We couldn’t float some things in, like we had hoped,” Horn noted, but that only required a different delivery approach, not a delay in work.
Water levels in the lower Mississippi—south of Cairo—are somewhat higher, and the situation less touch-and-go. “We saw [the drought] coming … and built up our stockpiles” of aggregate and other construction materials, said Jimmy Gunter, aggregates manager at Terral RiverServices, a bulk material handling company based in Lake Providence, La.
In part because of that advance planning, “I don’t know of any company that ran out of rock or couldn’t get it” because of lower water levels on the lower Mississippi, though some harbors along the river for a time became unnavigable and needed dredging, Gunter said.
River-watchers hope the worst is over. However, the Corps' Petersen said there is “no guarantee” that water levels will rise as they usually do in late January. “You can't really predict the weather. ... We’re not out of the woods yet, by any means,” he said.
