By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Work continues to repair damage done to the Missouri River by the 2019 flood.
The Army Corps of Engineers Kansas City District has received nearly $250 million more to aid in its repairs to the Missouri River navigation channel damaged in 2019.
Dane Morris heads the Corps’ work to restore the navigation channel all the way from northwest Missouri to St. Louis.
“So, we’ve awarded $253 million in contracts to construction contractors to repair those navigation structures,” Morris tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “Currently, we have eight active contracts ongoing and we’re 30% complete overall with all the repair work we have contracted out.”
While not as visible as damage to Missouri River levees, damage to the navigation channel has a big impact on barge traffic from Omaha to St. Louis.
The navigation season on the Missouri River started at the beginning of this month. Officials with the Corps of Engineers’ Kansas City office recently inspected some of the repair work underway near Atchison, Kansas. Contracts to repair the navigation channel there are funded through the infrastructure measure approved by Congress.
Among those inspecting the work was Colonel Travis Rayfield, commander of the Corps’ Kansas City District, who says repairs to the navigation channel from Omaha to St. Louis are designed to keep the barges running, though he points out the Missouri River kept open even when the Mississippi River could no longer support barge traffic due to a drastic drop in its level.
“When the Mississippi closed for navigation, the Missouri River stayed open and we still had less water than we expected,” Rayfield tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Rayfield says while the Missouri River normally retains a depth of nine feet with a width of 300 feet, he believes this year the Corps will be able to maintain an eight-foot depth and 200-foot width, enough to get by this year while repairs continue.
“So, we’re very optimistic for the future of the navigation industry on the Missouri River.”
One of the contractors working on the river channel is W.A. Ellis Construction Company, which gave Rayfield an update on construction progress.
Rayfield says the Corps does expect to maintain a channel suitable for barge traffic despite a drop in water flows from the upper Missouri River dams, though not as deep nor wide as normal.
“Obviously, Mother Nature has a vote,” Rayfield says. “With that limited water, what we do expect is that we won’t get quite to the nine-foot channel in depth and 300-foot wide for the whole stretch of the lower Missouri, but we do expect it to be at least 200 feet wide and at least eight foot deep.”
The Missouri River navigation season runs from April 1st through December 1st.