Corps’ plan closed low-use locks

2012 barge traffic at 3 of 5 locations has increased, report notes

David Yarbrough is deputy director and operations manager at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. This story misspelled his last name.

— When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers initiated its first daily four-hour shutdown of locks on the Arkansas River this fall, the agency chose five locks and dams that by 2010 counts were considered “low use,” based on national standards.

Now a report for 2012, compiled by the Corps this week, shows three of those locks, in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, have exceeded the low-use standard during the first 11 months of the federal fiscal year. The other two, in Oklahoma, are likely to exceed it when numbers for September are added.

Lock-traffic numbers are important because they figure into whether the Corps will extend shutdown periods at the five locks past this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2013, and whether the agency will enact similar closings at other higher-traffic locks along the Arkansas River.

The Corps considered low use to mean fewer than 1,000 commercial lockages per year. A lockage is one raising or lowering of the lock. If a barge tow is split to go through, each raising or lowering counts as a lockage.

Corps officials say the shutdowns are needed to maintain aging equipment as the federal agency’s budget declines.

The lock closings have prompted debate among shipping interests and economic development officials. Shippers along the 445-mile Mc-Clellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System say the four-hour daily closures cost their industry.

During 2011, barges on the McClellan-Kerr system transported 10.7 million tons of goods valued at $3.11 billion, according to the Corps of Engineers.

“Towboats run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We can’t sit around and wait for locks that are closed. That’s very costly,” said Paul Hastings, who owns Little Rock Harbor Service, which offersbarge switching and fleeting services.

David Yarborough, president of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Port Operators Association and a deputy director at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, said: “I think the biggest concern is a continual decline in federal dollars to take care of this resource, the Arkansas River Navigation System.

“It was built by the federal government with the understanding the states would develop public and private ports,” Yarborough said. “Now the federal government is not doing its part. This is not us against the Corps. We believe the Corps is not being adequately funded totake care of our waterway.”

John Balgavy, chief of operations for the Corps of Engineers’ Little Rock District, said his agency looked at ways to save money at locks and dams nationally that had fewer than 1,000 commercial lockages in 2010.

Balgavy said he doesn’t know what impact higher commercial lockage counts in 2012 will have, with the locks that exceed 1,000 uses. The Corps will decide in April whether to continue the current shutdown periods past Sept. 30.

“We haven’t been given any guidance except to use 1,000 for a low-use lock,” Balgavy said in an interview. It is possible, he said, that a facility’s lockage count could go above 1,000 “and we could decide to still have our maintenance period in effect. Or we could decide to stop it. Of course, we’re going to take a lot of input from users of the system as that decisionis made.”

Balgavy also is gathering data for Corps officials who will decide whether to start regular shutdowns at other, busier locks and dams on the Arkansas River.

Among the factors to be considered, Balgavy said, are the frequency and time of the locks’ use.

“We’ll look at whether there’s a time of the day that makes better sense to shut down,” he said. “Is there another way to approach it, such as scheduled lockages that we announce a couple of days in advance?”

The James W. Trimble Lock at Barling, which shuts down daily to river traffic from 8 a.m. to noon, has five operators and one maintenance person to cover 24-hour shifts every day of the week.

“There’s a lot to maintain. We put operators to work on maintenance” during shutdowns, said lockmaster Gordon Hamblin, who oversees the locks and dams at Barling and Ozark. “We have had delays” of barges, he said “but we haven’t had that many. It’s worked out fairly well for a start.”

The McClellan-Kerr system runs from Tulsa’s Port of Catoosa across Arkansas and into the Mississippi River, with a short final stretch on a canal and the White River. Eighteen locks raise and lower vessels acrosspools of varying depths. Until Oct. 1, they have performed around the clock, every day since the system opened in 1971, except for breakdowns, maintenance or emergencies. A single lockage can take as long as three to four hours, operators say.

Across the McClellan-Kerr system, commercial lock numbers from Oct. 1, 2011, through Aug. 31 - the first 11 months of fiscal 2012 - are up overall, according to Corps tallies.

Lock gates opened and closed for commercial vessels 21,715 times. That total was the highest since September 2007, before the nation’s recession began.

The Arkansas River has been a focus recently of shippers, political leaders and economic development officials in western and Northwest Arkansas who are campaigning to deepen the river’s channel. The river now promises 9-foot clearance. Supporters would like to see choke points cleared to offer a consistent 12-foot depth. They say the change would allow barges to carry up to 47 percent more goods at relatively little extra cost.

In addition to the daily lock closures for commercial traffic, the Corps is proposing restrictions to the hours recreational boaters could use the Murray and David D. Terry locks and dams near Little Rock. Recreational users would go through only during set time periods each day - one in the morning, one in the afternoon or evening.

The Corps is holding public workshops on all the proposals. Each meeting includes two sessions, 2-4 p.m. and 5-7 p.m.They are:

Tuesday: Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative, 1811 W. Commercial St. in Ozark.

Thursday: Gov. Mike Huckabee Delta Rivers Nature Center, 1400 Black Dog Road in Pine Bluff.

More information may be obtained by calling the Corps of Engineers at (501) 324-5551.

Business, Pages 29 on 11/10/2012

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