![]() Most of the barge traffic moving south this time of year is carrying agricultural products. The shippers who use river barges have few, if any, affordable alternatives. River barges are still a major method of moving cargo within the United States, especially for agricultural products.Ībout 5% of all freight in the United States moves on river barges when measured by the weight of the cargo and the distance traveled, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. “From what we hear from members, that has resulted in record levels of barge rates, and that’s being driven by the fact that there is limited traffic,” Seyfert said. And that has sent the rates that shippers are paying soaring. The combination of fewer barges per trip, and less cargo per barge, has cut the capacity of barges moving on the river by about 50% even before the recent river closures, said Mike Seyfert, CEO of the National Grain and Feed Association. And rather than a single vessel moving between 30 to 40 barges at one time as they normally do, they’ve been forced to move no more than 25 barges on each trip due to the more narrow channels. “The Coast Guard, and river industry partners are working towards the goal of opening the waterway to restricted one-way traffic when it has been determined safe to do so,” said the Coast Guard’s statement.Įven when barges start moving once again, they’ll be forced to carry as much as 20% less cargo than normal in order to not ride too deep in the water. While the Coast Guard statement said it hopes to resume traffic again as soon as late Friday, it couldn’t say for certain when that would happen.īarges idle while waiting for passage in the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, Miss., on Tuesday. The low water has also been responsible for eight barges running aground during the last week, according to a report from the US Coast Guard.Īs of Friday, the Coast Guard reports that there are 144 vessels and 2,253 barges queued up and waiting to get through two stretches of the river where traffic has been halted – one near Memphis, the other just north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. But the closures have caused a massive tie-up in the nation’s already struggling supply chains. The Army Corps of Engineers has been dredging portions of the river for the past week in an attempt to deepen channels and get barge traffic moving again. “During that time, the flow of the river slowed from about 2 feet per second down to about half a foot per second in the other direction,” Perrien said.The lowest water levels in the Mississippi River in a decade, caused by a severe Midwest drought, have closed the vital channel to barge traffic at a crucial time of the year for the transport of crops from the nation’s heartland. Perrien noted that the river level on Sunday rose about 7 feet due to storm surge pushing up the river at the USGS gauge, located in Belle Chasse, about 20 miles south of New Orleans in southeastern Louisiana. “I remember, off hand, that there was some flow reversal of the Mississippi River during Hurricane Katrina, but it is extremely uncommon,” Scott Perrien, a supervising hydrologist with the USGS Lower Mississippi Gulf Water Science Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told CNN. Hurricane Ida makes landfall in Louisiana Hurricane Ida is growing in size and power as it moves north across the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana, and New Orleans is bracing for disaster - clearing out hospital wards, shutting down oil refineries and forcing residents of low-lying neighborhoods to flee. Workers board up shop windows with plywood ahead of Hurricane Ida in the French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., on Saturday, Aug.
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