Mississippi River Reaches Low Levels, Barges Stuck Due To Drought | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Charlotte Pence Bond.

    While western states are experiencing drought, the sometimes less-noticed Mississippi River is getting hit hard by low water levels and it's already impacting shipping movements.

    The water levels in the Mississippi River are at their lowest they have been in decades, according to The Weather Channel, leading to issues with shipments and the availability of drinking water.

    Some of the water that is getting to the start of the river in Louisiana is reportedly letting salt water get into the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico, which could impact the drinking water, The Washington Post reported. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has had to take swift measures, saying it would construct a sediment construction to keep additional salt water from going up the river.

    "In Plaquemines Parish, there's many freshwater intakes for municipal, industrial uses and the salt water can cause corrosion to pipes and can cause a change in the taste of the water for municipal use, so we try to, that's why we're involved to mitigate that," David Ramirez, chief of the River Engineering Branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, told Fox 8 News last month.

    Low rainfall in the Ohio River Valley and the Upper Mississippi are apparently leading to the low levels and stopping commercial movement and river cruises at multiple locations below Illinois, according to The Wall Street Journal. The costs to send materials have also gone up more than twice their amount in a span of weeks.

    George Flaggs, the mayor of Vicksburg, Mississippi, hasn't seen the river this low in nearly 70 years.

    "It's definitely having an impact on the local economy, because the commercial use of this river has almost completely stopped," Flaggs recently told WAPT-TV.

    As the National Park Service reports, the Mississippi River is a major part of the economy in the upper Midwest of the United States. Barges and tows ship around 175 million tons of cargo every year on the upper part of the river.

    "America is going to shut down if we shut down," Mike Ellis, chief executive of American Commercial Barge Line LLC, said, per the Journal. The Corps' Mississippi Valley Division's spokeswoman, Lisa Parker, said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has even been scooping out parts of the river to make it lower for commercial ships to start passing through again.

    "When the water gets low enough, commerce starts to slow. Commerce is restricted and it turns into an extremely difficult environment to operate," Austin Golding, president of Golding Barge Line, told WAPT. "This will actually affect us in a very negative way. We have to have less cargo on our barges and less tonnage moving. It affects our revenues."

    "We need the barges fully loaded and our tows pushing as many barges as possible to be as economically viable as possible," Golding said.
Go Back

HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

most voters think EU officials not doing a good job on illegal immigration
Be careful what you wish for, you may get it
Come from behind by GOP candidate is a blueprint to 2024
Biden spending and energy policies to blame
Tuberculosis carried by illegal invaders has already infected Texas cattle
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
President Joe Biden’s brother told the Internal Revenue Service that Hunter Biden told him he was in business with a “protege of President Xi,” referring to the leader of China, according to notes by an IRS investigator that were divulged during a congressional interview of Jim Biden.

HbAD1

Gov. Roy Cooper seeks a temporary restraining order to block a law changing the composition of the State Board of Elections.
X owner Elon Musk mocked a news segment from ABC News this week that promoted President Joe Biden’s talking points about the Democrat-led Senate’s failed border bill, which critics and many experts have said would make the situation on the border worse.
That’s the question Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab sought to answer in a recent webinar on the topic.
The University of Florida has fired all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employees and shut down its DEI office.
Hot on the heels of its highly publicized television performance on New Year's Eve, the pop-punk band Green Day announced the release of an edgy new album titled Get the Vaccine, Climate Change Is Real, and Trump Is Bad.
Glenn Beck: 'When the United States government can come after individuals, that's when you know our republic is crumbling.'
Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) reportedly blasted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “stonewalling” details about the illegal immigrant accused of murdering Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia college student.
Financial asset manager BlackRock said in its annual report that environmental, social, and governance policies could hurt its bottom line after Republican state officials cut ties with the company over its ties to China and climate activism.

HbAD2

 
Back to Top