Groundbreaking, Jobs Celebrated at Charleroi Locks
Washington PA Observer-Reporter
20 February 2010
MONESSEN – The replacement of outdated locks and dams along the
Monongahela River was already five years behind schedule when the funds
were about to run out last year.
“A stoppage of all work would have happened in 2009 that would have had
significant consequences to inland navigation,” said Col. Mike Crall,
district engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Pittsburgh.
“Unfortunately, we did not meet the delivery date,” Crall said Friday
when $67 million in new construction work, made possible by the federal
Recovery Act, was celebrated at Locks and Dam No. 4 in Charleroi.
The work was authorized in 1992 by Congress because aging navigational
locks and dams in Charleroi, Elizabeth and Braddock were crumbling and
dangerous. Yet, the work went underfunded in nearly every subsequent
federal infrastructure bill. With costs continuing to increase, the
work now isn’t expected to be finished until 2024.
The corps, to better meet the needs of the navigation industry, has
replaced the dam in Braddock to accommodate higher depths when the
Elizabeth lock and dam are removed. To make that happen, the corps also
has to build new locks in Charleroi and complete an extensive dredging
operation.
The money from President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill will permit the
corps to complete construction of the lock walls at Charleroi by 2011.
Nearly 12 million cargo tons valued at $50 million travel through the
facility a year, said corps spokesman Jeff Hawk.
“It allowed us to fight an infrastructure crisis,” Crall said. “This is
about jobs.”
Navigation on Pittsburgh’s three rivers support 217,000 jobs in 12
counties in such industries as coal, power, steel and chemical, said
James R. McCarville, executive director of Port of Pittsburgh
Commission.
“It’s about the government doing something right,” McCarville said. “We
have to have a safe system to keep it going.”
The groundbreaking ceremony also was attended by Jo-Ellen Darcy, the
corps’ assistant secretary of civil works, who credited the federal
stimulus plan for saving the project and jobs.
“The evidence is clear the Recovery Act is working,” Darcy said.