Telle Touts TVA Partnership At Lock Visit

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam R. Telle toured Wilson Lock, Tennessee River Mile 259.4, on July 20, highlighting the importance of the partnership between the Corps of Engineers and Tennessee Valley Authority.

The visit to the facility in Florence, Ala., was designed to help Telle better understand repairs performed to the main navigational chamber after miter gate components cracked, causing a closure from late September 2024 to early July 2025, said Brian Ingram, chief of the Nashville Engineer District’s Technical Support Branch. He also took time to see a floating approach wall created from interlocking spud barges as a temporary solution after the prior wall sank when the remnants of Hurricane Ida passed through the region in 2021.

Longstanding Partnership

The visit also allowed Telle to hold discussions with TVA related to how the agencies coordinate reservoir operations along the Tennessee River. The Nashville District operates and maintains the navigation mission at the river’s locks and dams while TVA owns the infrastructure and maintains responsibility for budgeting and recapitalization. Together, they have a longstanding partnership that involves balancing competing basin-wide demands for energy, water and flood control.

“Really, the bottom line is making sure that we have a shared understanding moving forward of our roles and responsibilities and how we can efficiently deliver reliability to this critical infrastructure on the Tennessee River,” Mangrum said.

Telle is requesting refreshment of a 1962 memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the Corps and TVA that would modernize the process for capital reinvestment, operations and maintenance.

“A lot of the infrastructure has challenges; much of it was built in the last century and is aging,” Telle said. “Part of the reason we’re driving the ‘Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork’ initiative is to remind the entire enterprise of the Corps of Engineers that we must work together, not only to take excellent care of this infrastructure but to make the strategic investments necessary to ensure it serves the next generation.”

During the visit, James Everett, TVA’s general manager for River Operations, spoke with Telle to discuss TVA’s integrated roles in asset management and river operations.

“TVA is dedicated to promoting navigation and flood control for the Tennessee River,” Everett said. “We recognize that these assets are aging, and we are working on a plan to replace major components.”

Everett explained that TVA funds its operations through electricity sales rather than federal appropriations. While large capital projects are typically debt-funded under a statutory debt ceiling established in the 1970s, Everett emphasized that the existing MOA between the Corps and TVA provides operational flexibility needed to respond to major outages, such as the emergency repairs at Wilson Lock a year ago. The agreement allowed TVA to quickly procure materials and equipment to expedite the repairs, he stressed.

“We want to maintain these assets and keep them fully operational, both for commercial navigation and overall project safety,” Everett said. “I hope the key takeaway is that this partnership is working.”

The Nashville District “highly values” the integrated approach demonstrated by working with TVA to repair the main lock chamber and aims to replicate it to accelerate project delivery system-wide, including critical gate replacements, the district said in a news release.

Monitoring And Reinspection

Mangrum said that since reopening last year, the main lock chamber has functioned well. Repairs included dewatering the chamber, lifting the 650-ton gate leaves, replacing the pintle assemblies, which serve as the “hinge” on which the gates swing, and installing additional gate bracing. The Corps worked closely with the TVA Power Services Shop, which machined the new pintles and some additional components from raw materials.

In recent months, TVA has undertaken a study designed to determine whether to rehabilitate or replace the miter gates. Meanwhile, Mangrum said, the Corps has increased its monitoring, including performing quarterly dive inspections looking for any cracks, leaks or other changes that may have occurred.

“All of our dive inspections and other inspections at this point have not found any issues with repairs,” Mangrum said.

A full closure of the chamber has been scheduled for April 12 through May 21 next year that will allow the regional repair fleet to conduct an additional dewatering and reinspection, he said.

Approach Wall

As soon as the main chamber reopened last year, the first tow through it was from TVA and included three interlocking spud barges. These barges are equipped with 120-foot-long spuds, with 10 sunken into the river bottom, straddling the sunken former approach wall, to create a temporary new wall 585 feet long and designed to last five to 10 years.

Also known as a guide wall, the approach wall is designed to allow tows to precisely line up to enter the lock, improving safety and greatly decreasing the possibility of a tow accidentally hitting the dam. The lockmaster may also have tows tie off to the guide wall while locking through multiple cuts.

Vessel Repair of Port Arthur, Texas, contracted with TVA to build the barges, which were installed by Alberici.

“It’s working as designed, without issue,” Mangrum said.

He added that best practices have been developed on how tows should approach the wall to avoid potential damage to the rake end of the barge wall, which protrudes into the air more than a typical nose pier.

Plans call for eventually replacing the temporary wall with a permanent solution.

Infrastructure Importance

To see the lock’s infrastructure firsthand, Telle was joined on the tour by Brig. Gen. Dan Herlihy, commanding general of the Corps’ Great Lakes and Ohio River Division; Lt. Col. Guillermo Guandique, Nashville District commander; Tim Fudge, Nashville District Operations Division chief; and local lock operators, maintainers and engineers. The group inspected the 600-foot by 110-foot main lock chamber, which is owned by TVA and operated by the Nashville District.

The Nashville District originally completed construction of the Wilson Dam and Lock in 1925, before transferring the project to TVA in 1933. To replace an outdated double-lift system, TVA completed the modern single-lift main lock in November 1959, followed by the reopening of a modified auxiliary lock in February 1961.

Wilson Lock is one of 10 TVA navigation lock projects in the Tennessee River System. It facilitates the passage of more than 2,800 government, commercial and recreational vessels annually, carrying 11.1 million tons of cargo. This includes vital shipments of , inluding coal, petroleum, manufactured goods, agricultural products, chemical and aerospace components bound for regional ports in Florence, Decatur and Guntersville, Ala., as well as Chattanooga, Tenn.

For Telle, seeing the heavy commercial traffic firsthand underscored the strategic value of the waterway.

“This region is incredibly important, and it would not have the same access to robust commerce if not for this critical infrastructure,” he said. “Seeing the navigation lock and barges in action is a powerful visual reminder of the investments our nation has made to open the Tennessee Valley to the global economy.”

Tenn-Tom

Telle will make another stop in the region when he speaks at the 44th Annual Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Conference & Golf Tournament, August 12–14 at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Ala., the Corps of Engineers announced July 17.

Sworn in as the 14th assistant secretary in August 2025, Telle has deep roots in this region and in waterway policy. A native of Northport, Ala., and a Mississippi State graduate, Telle spent 10 years in the office of Sen. Thad Cochran, where he led the senator’s work on water resources authorization and appropriations. He later served as chief of staff to Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and led the White House Office of Legislative Affairs’ Senate team.

Telle holds principal authority over policy direction and supervision for the entire U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works program, which includes commercial navigation, flood and storm damage reduction and Clean Water Act permitting.

For the conference agenda, visit https://conference.tenntom.org/agenda.

Lee Roberts, public affairs specialist with the Nashville Engineer District, contributed to this report.

Featured photo caption: Maintenance Engineer Josh Garcia (left) from the Nashville Engineer District provides information about the life cycle and material makeup of miter gates and components while interacting with Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle during a site visit July 20 at Wilson Lock on the Tennessee River in Florence, Ala. (Photo by Lee Roberts/Nashville Engineer District)