By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
An unprecedented influx of federal money could well clear up a backlog of projects needed to maintain navigation on the Missouri River.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced $248 million from Congress’ infrastructure package will be paired with $100 million from the supplemental budget to repair and upgrade structures from Rulo, Nebraska to St. Louis.
Program Manager for Navigation Reliability, Dane Morris, in the Corps’ Kansas City office points out the Missouri River is self-scouring with 7,000 control structures over 735 miles, designed to maintain a river channel nine feet deep and 300-feet wide.
“Doesn’t contain locks and dams like the Mississippi other major rivers in the United States, but it relies on properly maintaining this series of stone and timber dikes and revetments to our design parameters to achieve flow patterns that provide those channel dimensions necessary for commercial navigation and channel stability,” Morris tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post in a phone interview.
The Kansas City Office maintains the Missouri River from approximately Rulo, Nebraska all the way to St. Louis where it flows into the Mississippi River. The Corps’ Omaha district maintains the Missouri from the upstream reservoirs down to Rulo. Navigation on the Missouri begins at Sioux City, Iowa.
Morris says the Corps typically gets only about $10-to-20 million a year for navigation infrastructure repairs and upgrades. Morris says the 2019 Missouri River flood exposed the need for extensive infrastructure repairs to keep barge traffic moving. High water levels prevented the Corps from inspecting the structures or from assigning private contractors to complete repair work. That combination created an even larger backlog of repair work along the Missouri.
Morris says this latest allocation to repair Missouri River infrastructure should be enough to clear that backlog or, at least, fund the majority of delayed repairs.
“So, with this $248 million, that’s quite a bit larger than we typically have received, obviously, when we get about $10 million per year,” according to Morris.
Morris says the Corps plans to combine the latest allocation with $100 million received from the supplemental budget to complete repairs and keep the barges moving. Morris points out the Mississippi River had to restrict navigation last fall.
“But the Missouri River has largely remained open,” Morris says. “We haven’t had a navigation restriction in over a year. So, navigation traffic has continued to be able to freely move.”
Morris says the Corps has worked hard to keep barge traffic afloat even though drought has dropped the level of the Missouri River.
“I think a lot of that has to do with the repairs that we’ve made with these funds so far,” Morris says. “And I think the other part of it that has been a success is just the communication that we’ve had with industry.”
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