http://www.albertleatribune.com/2013/01/06/army-corps-tamps-down-barge-worries-on-mississippi-river/
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/mississippi-river-approaching-historic-lows-shipping-risk-204126001.html
By Karl Plume | Reuters – 12 hours ago
Army Corps tamps down barge worries on Mississippi River
Published 6:30am Sunday, January 6, 2013
ST. LOUIS — Efforts taken to keep a crucial stretch of the drought-starved Mississippi River open to barge traffic should be sufficient to avert a shipping shutdown that the industry fears is imminent, Army Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard officials said Friday.
The corps said crews in recent weeks have made “fantastic” progress clearing treacherous bedrock from a channel about 150 miles south of St. Louis near Thebes, Ill. — the portion of the river that has grown especially worrisome to barge operators moving an array of cargo to northern states and south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Shipping groups warned this week that the waterway there could drop to a point — 3 feet on the river gauge — in which barge weight restrictions would have to be further tightened, effectively halting shipping.
Drafts, or the portion of each barge that is submerged, already are limited to 9 feet in the middle Mississippi. If the river gauge gets to 3 feet at Thebes, the Coast Guard may be forced to limit drafts even further. Officials with the trade group say that if drafts are restricted to 8 feet or lower, many operators will stop shipping.
National Weather Service hydrologists, as of Friday, forecast that the river at Thebes could drop to the 3-feet mark by next Thursday and continue falling to 1 foot by the end of this month.
“The uncertainty of this deteriorating situation for the nation’s shippers is having as much of an impact as the lack of water itself,” said Michael Toohey, president and chief executive of the Waterways Council Inc., which along with the American Waterways Operators group considers the situation dire.
Coast Guard Lt. Colin Fogarty said Friday it’s possible that new draft restrictions may be considered by the middle of the month, but he believes the Army Corps’ progress near Thebes and its overall stewardship of the river should make that unlikely.
As the barge industry submits, “we are absolutely facing very historic drought conditions,” Fogarty said. “But this is a long-term campaign, and we’ve won many of the battles. We all want to have the deepest, safest channel, and right now we’re accomplishing that.”
The corps echoed that sentiment.
“We believe we will deepen the channel ahead of the worst-case river stage scenario, and I remain confident that navigation will continue,” Maj. Gen. John Peabody, commander of the Army Corps’ Mississippi Valley division, said in a statement this week.
“Rumors of a river closure have been greatly exaggerated,” Mike Petersen, an Army Corps spokesman in St. Louis, said. “We’re all working for the same thing — keeping the river open.”
Addressing the river — specifically at Thebes — has been a headache for the corps for months as the nation’s worst drought in decades stubbornly persists.
The depth of the Mississippi is regulated by dams north of St. Louis, and the depth increases south of Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio River converges. But the roughly 180-mile stretch from St. Louis to Cairo is approaching record lows. Experts say that if barges stop moving, billions of dollars of shipments of essentials such as corn, grain, coal and petroleum could be affected.
The trade groups renewed their call for presidential action requiring the Army Corps to increase the flow of water from an upper Missouri River dam in South Dakota. The corps cut the flow by two-thirds in November because of drought conditions in that region, reducing the amount of Missouri River water flowing into the Mississippi.
To compensate, the corps rushed in contractors last month to clear an estimated 890 cubic yards of limestone from the river bottom near Thebes — work that Petersen said has been “working fantastically” and should be completed by the end of January, perhaps sooner.
During that work, barge traffic at that stretch has been limited to an eight-hour window each day, causing bottlenecks of up to 20 vessels and 400 barges. The Coast Guard said more than 490 vessels still have made their way through, as of Thursday carrying 22,500 tons of cargo that’s enough to fill the equivalent of 425,000 tractor-trailers.
The corps also strategically has released water from at least two Midwest lakes — Iowa’s Red Rock Lake and southern Illinois’ Carlyle Lake, the latter recently accounting for two 6-inch rises in the Mississippi.
Such releases won’t impact the lakes environmentally or recreationally, Petersen said, noting that the corps routinely releases water from Carlyle into the Kaskaskia River that ultimately flows into the Mississippi.
“We judiciously use it,” he said. “It’s just one of our tools.”
While crediting the Army Corps for having done everything it can, American Waterways Operators’ Lynn Muench said Friday that such efforts don’t “get us out of the woods” — something she said could happen if President Barack Obama’s administration intervenes to release more water from the Missouri River. Now given the uncertainty, she said, some shippers already have lessened their barge loads in anticipation that more draft restrictions loom.
“It’s still a mess,” she said.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/mississippi-river-approaching-historic-lows-shipping-risk-204126001.html
Mississippi River nears historic lows, shipping at risk
By Karl Plume | Reuters – 12 hours ago
(Reuters) - The drought-drained Mississippi River will rise slightly later this week between St. Louis and Cairo, Illinois, but later continue its decline toward historic lows, according to a National Weather Service forecast.
Low water, due to the worst U.S. drought since 1956, has already impeded the flow of billions of dollars worth of grain, coal, fertilizer and other commodities between the central United States and shipping terminals at the Gulf of Mexico.
A further drop in river levels could halt commercial shipping traffic entirely by this weekend, the American Waterways Operators and the Waterways Council Inc said in a statement on Wednesday.
Last week, the council said the river along the Cairo-St. Louis stretch would be too low for navigation by January 7 but on Wednesday it said shipping may come to a halt between January 5 and 15.
A shutdown could affect more than 8,000 jobs, cost $54 million in wages and benefits, and halt the movement of 7.2 million tons of commodities valued at $2.8 billion, the two industry groups said.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which is spearheading a project to remove river-bottom rock that could impede shipping if the river becomes too shallow, remains optimistic that the nine-foot-deep channel, which most commercial vessels need, can be maintained.
Forecasts for warmer weather, which would limit river-choking ice from forming, and the potential for rain next week bolstered that outlook.
The Corps is removing the most threatening rock pinnacles near the Illinois towns of Grand Tower and Thebes first, hoping to deepen the shipping channel by about two feet by mid-January, just before the river was forecast to hit critically low levels.
"The Corps rock removal contractors are making excellent progress in removing the rock obstructions from the primary area of concern," said Major General John Peabody, the Corps' Mississippi Valley Division Commander.
"We believe we will deepen the channel ahead of the worst-case river stage scenario, and I remain confident that navigation will continue," he said.
The Corps has also been dredging various soft-bottom sections of the river nearly round-the-clock for months to maintain a deep enough shipping channel. The vast majority of commercial vessels need a depth of at least nine feet so shippers are closely monitoring river gauges and forecasts.
The Mississippi River gauge at Thebes fell from a reading of 4.45 feet late last week to four feet late on Wednesday. It was forecast to rise to 4.2 feet on Friday morning before slipping to 3.2 feet by next Wednesday, the lowest level at Thebes since 1988 and the second lowest on record.
Gauge readings do not reflect the actual depth of the river at a certain location because the gauges are fixed and the river's bottom is steadily changing with the current. But they do aid navigation as a shorter term reference point.
The Army Corps has said once the Thebes gauge reads 2 feet, boats with a nine-foot draft, or distance between the water's surface and the lowest point of the vessel, would be at risk of hitting rock pinnacles there.
"We lose 9 feet of depth for the navigation at about 2 feet on the Thebes gauge," said Army Corps spokesman Mike Petersen. "That's when those rocks become an issue."
No comments:
Post a Comment