FreightWeekSTL Group Tours Mel Price Lock And Dam

Since 2018, FreightWeekSTL has been an annual, week-long conference and event series that highlights the St. Louis bi-state region as a premier global logistics and freight hub. This year it ran from June 8 to 12 with a mix of virtual events and in-person tours and meetings.

On June 9, a mix of about 40 industry people, elected officials and their staffs toured Melvin Price Lock and Dam 26 to learn about the importance of the locks and dams of the Upper Mississippi River to freight movements along the river and in St. Louis.

Andy Schimpf, operations chief at the St. Louis District’s Rivers Project Office (and holder of the prestigious de Fleury Medal of the Corps of Engineers), gave a practiced tour of the lock and dam. Melvin Price is a 1,160-foot-long dam structure equipped with a 1,200-foot lock chamber and a 600-foot lock auxiliary chamber. The main chamber uses a lift gate on its northern end and miter gates on its southern end. It’s the “youngest” of the Upper Mississippi’s locks and dams, the 1,200-foot chamber having become operational in 1989.

Referring to standing exhibits at the National Great Rivers Museum, Schimpf said the locks manage the pools that maintain the 9-foot channel along the entire Upper Mississippi River. “That 9-foot channel is almost a guarantee,” he said. “I’ve only seen it dip below a very few times.” The Mel Price lock and dam maintains a pool that extends back 16 miles to Grafton, Ill.

Schimpf explained that the Missouri River provides a lot of the Mississippi River’s flow during its navigation season, which ends in November. Unlike the Upper Mississippi River, which uses the locks and dams to regulate pools and the navigation channel, the Missouri uses reservoirs to maintain flow for irrigation and flood control purposes as well as navigation.

Lift Gates Versus Miter Gates

Schimpf explained that the purpose of the submersible lift gates was to flush through ice during winter months. Unlike a miter gate, which requires equal pressure on both sides to operate, a submersible lift gate can operate with unequal water levels and water pressure.

There was no tow going through to demonstrate the lock’s operation to the crowd. Schimpf joked he sometimes wished that a tour group could see towboat deckhands breaking and making tow in the middle of January, in icy conditions. An operation that might take 45 minutes in clear weather and calm conditions might take hours in the middle of winter.

St. Louis is a major re-fleeting area, Schimpf said, meaning that tows below Mel Price are larger than those arriving from up north, as barges are reconfigured to provide larger, more economical tows. Schimpf took the group to a room that served as the former control room of the lock, until a new one was built as part of the new chamber, and the control machinery was transferred to it.

In response to questions, Schimpf said the recreation traffic is kept separate as much as possible from commercial tows that lock through. Towboats themselves prefer this, since it greatly increases safety for everyone. Locks are seeing more traffic from commercial cruise vessels like Viking cruise boats.

Funding Locks And Dams

Schimpf said the cost share of locks and dams, which currently stands at 75 percent federal versus 25 percent from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, is funded by a 29-cent-per-gallon tax on diesel fuel used by commercial barge operators. He explained that the IWTF is responsible for funding “major rehabilitation,” while other work is funded by the Corps of Engineers’ operations and maintenance (O&M) budget. Cost share is supposed to kick in if a project counts as “recapitalization.” It’s not always easy, though, to determine what is “routine maintenance” and what counts as “major rehab.”

The 600-foot auxiliary chamber of Mel Price (replacing a previous 600-foot chamber) was the very first project funded by the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, which was established at around the same time in the 1986 Water Resources Development Act. The rest of the lock and the dam were fully federally funded because they replaced the former Lock 26 just to the north, which was crumbling.

Lock And Dam Modernization

During a lunch provided by America’s Central Port in a classroom area of the National Great Rivers Museum, Debra Calhoun, longtime senior vice president of Waterways Council Inc., described the group’s history and role in advocating for modernizing and maintenance of America’s lock and dam system.

She noted that 65% of exported grain moves on the river and inland waterway system, which extends for 12,000 miles across 28 states, supports about 540,000 jobs and moves 500 million tons of cargo annually, according to the latest estimates. Water transport is by far the safest, most economical and most environmentally friendly form of transport. A host of studies from the National Waterways Foundation and other groups support their importance. Calhoun cited a recent one from USDA on the importance of the waterways to grain exports.

Calhoun also stressed the career potential of the rivers for students who might not want to go to college, but can start as deckhands and advance to the engineroom, terminal positions or to the wheelhouse as a licensed captain making good six-figures salaries.

Calhoun gave the history of the IWTF, which ironically was set up in 2014 as part of a bill called the Tax Increase Prevention Act — even though it increased the towing industry’s taxes, at their request. This was an era of “no new tax” pledges by politicians.

Barges 101

Angela Grett, vice president of corporate affairs at Ingram Marine Group, gave a “barges 101” talk for those who needed the basics, including the types of barges and sizes of towboats. She noted that a 1,560-foot tow is longer than the Empire State building is tall. Most of the Upper Mississippi’s locks were built in the 1930s and are not as up-do-date as Mel Price. If all locks and dams had modern lock chambers, the system could double the amount of cargoes it moves, she said.

Terminal Operations

Frank Prentiss, commercial vice president of Ingram’s Infrastructure Group, spoke about the terminal side of the river business. He began by noting that few St. Louis residents not in the logistics business themselves realize how important the region is as a transportation hub.

“Terminals are key to a competitive supply chain,” he began. “We load 10,000 trucks every year,” and Ingram’s terminals offer warehousing, blending and repackaging of fertilizers and other bulk cargoes, as well as systems integration with customers to allow more efficient communication. “Everyone is trying to drive costs out of the supply chain,” Prentiss noted.

Most of the grain moving through St. Louis is imported, while most of the grain gets exported, he said. Other bulk cargoes handled include lumber, cement, gravel and sand. Prentiss said that to maintain competitiveness, terminals must constantly reinvest and upgrade. Ingram’s Tyler Street Terminal facility in St. Louis is undergoing a major rebuild as part of a $50 million regional expansion by Ingram Marine Group.

In response to a question about container on barge, Prentiss noted the significant challenges in using water transport to handle containers in a “drayage” fashion, since each container might have a different destination.

Dennis Wilmsmyer, CEO of America’s Central Port, noted from the audience the importance of St. Louis six Class 1 railroads, and Prentiss concurred. He spent 15 years developing transload sites around the country, and the synergy between rail and barge is a big part of what makes St. Louis so central, he said. “The waterways wouldn’t be as important without the rail connections.”