River Road: Delays on the Ohio are a Necessary Pain
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
24 May 2010
Most of us are familiar with summer road construction that makes life
miserable for drivers. But in a city of three rivers, there are
highways and there are waterways -- and this month delays on the rivers
have underscored the fact that important improvements to transportation
infrastructure are not limited to land.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hosted a
stakeholders tour of the Emsworth Locks and Dams, which are the scene
of urgent repairs to keep the locks operating. The work means that tow
operators this month face costly delays of 15 or 16 hours to do what is
usually accomplished in two.
This is stimulus funding in action. In April, with the dams at Emsworth
having been rated as critically near failure, the corps awarded a $17.6
million recovery act contract to stabilize severe erosion and replace
deteriorated gates. In total, the corps has received $104 million in
stimulus funding for 23 locks and dams in this region, funding critical
to the economic well-being of this area.
Pittsburgh is one of the biggest inland ports in the nation, but it
would be hard to guess this from the aging and dilapidated state of the
locks and dams that keep the river traffic moving. Emsworth was
constructed in 1922 with a new dam added in 1938; Dashields in Crescent
was constructed in 1929 and Montgomery near Industry, Beaver County, in
1936.
The Emsworth dams create the Pittsburgh pool, without which people
could wade across the rivers in summer. The work at Emsworth is a part
of a $160 million rehabilitation project at the site. A long-range plan
scheduled to be completed in November of next year -- the Upper Ohio
Navigation Study -- will describe what further needs to be done
long-term to rebuild or replace locks.
As the problems being addressed at Emsworth are a reminder, adequate
federal funding for locks and dams is a must. Barge traffic can move
more cargo at a cheaper rate using less fuel with fewer emissions
(according to one study, a 15-barge tow has the same capacity as 1,050
trucks).
Before roads existed around Pittsburgh, the rivers were the roads. They
can't be taken for granted -- as the necessary delays on the Ohio this
month make clear.