LITTLE ROCK — Deepening the Arkansas River navigation system channel from the current 9 feet to 12 feet between Fort Smith and the Mississippi River would likely cost more than $68 million a University of Arkansas at Little Rock economist said Thursday at a meeting in Fayetteville.
That cost projection is at least three times more than some port operators and shippers who support the plan had hoped.
The project would require dredging at three chokepoints as well as construction of jetties and other structures to maintain the river in its channel, according to research by the UALR Institute for Economic Advancement.
Despite the costs and work needed, deepening the channel to 12 feet should be a priority for western and Northwest Arkansas, the findings said, because the lower cost of shipping in the deeper channel would provide an economic boost.
“The 12-foot channel is going to be important in the future for the communities to be competitive,” Dennis Robinson, an economist for UALR’s Institute for Economic Advancement, told the group. “My conclusion is it’s a good project. I hope it can be done.”
Robinson and others presented their findings to about 60 elected, civic and government leaders from the Fay- etteville and Fort Smith areas at the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce.
The meeting was hosted by the Fort Smith-Fayetteville Alliance, a partnership formed earlier this year between the state’s second-and third-largest =cities to advance economic development.
Robinson stressed that the projected costs for the deeper channel are in 2004 dollars, based on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study from that time.
He said the costs likely would be higher today. Adjusted for inflation, the $68 million price tag would be more than $80 million.
The good news, he told the group, is that “the 12-foot channel has been authorized [by the U.S. Congress] and has gone through several studies. The only thing that’s lacking is money.”
He also told the group that hopes to form a public-private partnership to build the project wouldn’t be easy to work out. “The Corps is not authorized to accept local project contributions” on channel work like this, Robinson said.
But he said other cities and states have found ways to work with the Corps on big river projects.
Leo Anhalt of Fort Smith, a general contractor and a member of the Fort Smith Regional Council, which encourages economic development, said his group and others are also working to get the 12-foot channel.
“We all need to work together rather than separately,” he said.
The Fort Smith-Fayetteville Alliance voted Thursday to make its first project the 12-foot channel for the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System.
The deeper channel would allow shippers to load barges more heavily.
Experts estimate each barge would carry about 47 percent more payload than it could at a 9-foot depth, at little extra cost.
Shippers had quoted estimates in meetings earlier this year of about $20 million to clear out chokepoints and guarantee a consistent 12-foot channel.
Robinson said he guessed that number was based only on dredging costs.
Robinson also said the $68 million estimate doesn’t include future maintenance costs, which the Corps of Engineers estimated in 2004 at $822,000 per year.
Business, Pages 27 on 11/16/2012