Tennessee River barge traffic in jeopardy

An accident nearly two weeks ago involving a barge that collided with the main lock at the Wilson Dam on the Tennessee River near Florence Alabama is wreaking havoc with barge traffic on the waterway:

A damaged lock at Wilson Dam is snarling commercial boat traffic on the Tennessee River, with barges backed up for miles on both sides of the dam.

The main lock at Wilson Dam has been closed since Aug. 3, when a barge became entangled in the lift gate.

An auxiliary lock was opened after the accident, but it operates much more slowly than the main lock. The main lock can lift or lower a cluster of nine barges in about 45 minutes. The auxiliary lock requires about 75 minutes to move a single barge.

Harley Hall, vice president of operations for Paducah, Ky.-based Tennessee Valley Towing, said it takes about five days from the time a tow of barges arrives in the area until the barges and towboat are allowed through the lock.

Hall told a news organization that his company is paying $4,200 a day for salaries of the crew and maintenance costs as its towboat waits in line to pass through the auxiliary lock. Last week, five of the company's seven towboats were caught in the traffic jam.

Hall said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the lock, is doing all it can to keep traffic moving on the Tennessee River, but it's hurting companies like his.

While the Corps of Engineers can't be blamed for an accident, there is similar trouble brewing at one of their other lock operations, and the problems at Florence are a minor inconvenience compared to the potentially huge disaster for barge traffic on the Tennessee River.

After poor decisions on the type of materials used to build the locks followed by decades of neglect and inaction, the lock at the Chickamauga Dam on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga has deteriorated to the point that it is not expected to last much longer. Closing the lock would cut off all barge traffic on the Tennessee River north of Chattanooga to Knoxville and beyond.

This includes more than 300 miles of navigable waterways and affects industries providing hundreds of jobs, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory which is said to require barge access for "classified" equipment that cannot be transported any other way.

More than 200 million tons of barge freight moved through the lock in 2003. This is down approx. 30% because of concerns about the future of the lock. Fixing or replacing the lock is expected to cost more than $300 million, which is eight times what the entire dam cost to build in the late 1930s.

That's a lot of money, and maybe hard to justify given value of the freight and the jobs affected. But there are other considerations. People in the business say each barge keeps 60 semi-trucks off the road. If I'm not mistaken, there are also federal laws against impeding navigation on navigable waterways. Then there's the fact that this has been a known problem for a long time, and every year it isn't fixed it just gets more expensive.

Unfortunately, Congress has been slow to approve funds for a fix, and time is running out if it hasn't already. You can read more about it here.