LITTLE ROCK — Repairs to Montgomery Point Lock and Dam are on schedule for completion Dec. 21, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.
The work has shut down river traffic between the Mc-Clellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System and the Mississippi River since Saturday.
The $1.5 million fix, for hinges on two gates at the McClellan-Kerr system’s easternmost lock, has created the longest traffic stoppage since the lock and dam was completed in 2004.
With the Montgomery Point closure, average daily commercial traffic lockages on the Arkansas portion of the river system have dropped almost 60 percent this month compared with last December, according to data from the Corps’ Little Rock District office. The system extends into eastern Oklahoma, but traffic counts weren’t immediately available there.
Lockage is the term for one lowering or raising of water allowing passage through a lock. Last December, commercial lockages on the Arkansas portion of the system averaged about 48 per day, the data show. From Saturday through Wednesday, the average was just under 20 per day.
Bruce Oakley Inc. of North Little Rock was moving a shipment from Arkansas to Muskogee, Okla., on Thursday. “That won’t be affected because it stays on the [Arkansas River],” said David Choate, the company’s vice president for grain and barge operations.
“It’s never a good time to close the river down,” Choate said. “The way the Corps explained it to us, we can close it for three weeks and get this thing repaired, or the gate will fall off and we’ll be shut down for six to eight months. That’s a pretty easy decision.”
Storms delayed some work Wednesday on the two gates, John Balgavy, the Corps’ chief of operations for the Little Rock District, said in a report. But that shouldn’t push back the lock and dam’s reopening, he said.
The biggest towing company on the McClellan-Kerr river system isn’t seeing a lot of problems because the Arkansas River is cut off from the Mississippi. “We have boats moving within the [Arkansas River] system,” said John Janoush, vice president of Jantran Inc. of Rosedale, Miss.
He said some barge operators who want to enter the Arkansas River are holding their barges at New Orleans and other points south. Those on the Arkansas River who want to reach the Mississippi will begin to collect at a location several miles west of Montgomery Point. Janoush said he expects heavy traffic when the lock reopens.
“It will be a bottleneck of traffic for a couple of days,” he predicted. “There are three locks close together. The water’s shallow so it will be hard to meet each other. It will probably take three days or so to clear out.”
Jantran has about 300 employees and operates 12 towboats on the McClellan-Kerr system.
Another reason commercial traffic may be busier than usual on the Arkansas River when Montgomery Point reopens has to do with low water levels on the upper Mississippi River because of extreme drought.
Some Arkansas River shippers are getting calls from customers who normally send their goods onto the Mississippi River at or near St. Louis. The upper Mississippi is so shallow now that barges can’t be loaded to a draft of more than 7 or 8 feet — a lighter load than normal, shippers say. With the river forecast to drop lower still, they’re worried that the Mississippi River in their areas may become impassable.
Johnston’s Port 33 at Muskogee has picked up two customers who have decided to send soybean meal by rail to Muskogee, then put it on barges and send it down the McClellan-Kerr system and onto the Mississippi River, said Steve Taylor, company president. “We’ll be getting more than one barge a day, seven days a week,” Taylor said.
The timing should work out well with the scheduled Dec. 21 reopening of Montgomery Point, he said.
Marty Shell of Five Rivers Distribution at Van Buren, near Fort Smith, said he’s also getting calls from customers who are “trying to safeguard themselves” from the possibility that the upper Mississippi River will close.
“They want to be able to divert their commodities that would have gone in at St. Louis to the Arkansas River to get them going down to the Gulf of Mexico.”
“This is something historical that we have never seen,” Shell said.
Business, Pages 27 on 12/07/2012