The Mississippi River looks like the Dan Ryan Expressway at rush hour these days.
Tuesday night, a towboat pulling 18 huge barges ran aground about 25 miles south of Memphis, Tenn. The stalled boat backed up 35 other tows—23 headed south and 12 headed north—for several hours until the path could be cleared.
Many of the goods that Americans rely on for their daily lives travel up and down the Mississippi. The summer drought has left the river at its lowest level in decades. Weather forecasts indicate that the level will fall lower still. By the end of the month, even barges only partly filled with cargo to reduce their drafts may be unable to clear the shallowest spots.
Like O'Hare International Airport, the interstate highways and the nexus of rail lines around Chicago, the river is a vital lifeline for commerce in the heartland. Doing nothing to address an impending disruption in barge traffic is not an option.
But there is no easy solution. Alternatives exist to moving commodities such as corn, soybeans, steel, lumber, fertilizer and petroleum products. Trucks and trains haul bulky stuff all the time. But the cost of replacing barges to move such freight is high, and the capacity limited. Barges typically carry 60 percent of the nation's grain exports. If the river shuts down, the nation's economy will suffer.
In the short run, the obvious solution is to smooth out parts of the river most likely to impede barge traffic. Proposals under consideration include diverting more water from other sources to raise the river level, as well as undertaking more extensive dredging and blasting of the river bottom to extend its depth.
The Army Corps of Engineers is the key player in this effort. A busy stretch of river in need of immediate attention runs between St. Louis and Cairo, Ill., where the depth is low and the bottom rocky.
The corps has been working overtime to dredge the channel in such tight spots to keep navigation open despite low water conditions. In January, contractors are expected to begin removing underwater pinnacles of rock that impede barge traffic.
The corps also is under pressure to rethink its policy of restricting water flow from the Missouri River reservoir into the Mississippi, and to assess the extent of its legal authority to release more water.
None of these solutions comes without consequences. Dredging and blasting cost money. And although the corps has filed an environmental impact statement covering its plan, dynamiting rock formations clearly has the potential to disrupt wildlife.
Draining other waterways to float boats on the Mississippi could lead to litigation. Political leaders of Montana and the Dakotas understandably take a skeptical view of any plan to tap the resources their constituents depend on for navigation, recreation and irrigation.
The corps recently reduced the flow of water from a dam near Yankton, S.D., to protect the upper Missouri River Valley—a move that provoked an angry reaction from politicians and businesses in Illinois and elsewhere downstream. Many competing interests must be taken into account, and fast.
The corps needs to expand the flow from the Missouri River, which enters the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. Since so much commercial activity depends on it, keeping the Mississippi open to shipping should be a higher priority than safeguarding the sparsely populated and less-economically valuable Missouri River area.
The last few years have brought droughts, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes. Extreme weather events appear to be on the rise. It pays to figure out ahead of time the best ways to mitigate the impact of slow-motion disasters like declining river levels. Better to be prepared than to scramble with only a few weeks to go before the barges grind to a halt.
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