Dredging near Oquawka should allow river to reopen Thursday

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By Doug Schorpp | Wednesday, August 27, 2008 12:09 PM CDT | () comments

Getting the USS LST 325 Ship Memorial upriver to Moline may be the least of Bill Gretten’s worries these days.

There’s also the matter of at least 27 tows that are parked along the Mississippi River upriver and downriver from Lock and Dam 18 near Oquawka, Ill., waiting for the river to reopen.

Gretten, a Mississippi River operations manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said this morning that the river closed Saturday afternoon after a barge got stuck near Oquawka, located 63 river miles downriver from Lock and Dam 15 in the Quad-Cities.

He hopes that a smaller Corps dredging crane can clear a small path by Thursday afternoon in that area so barges can begin to again navigate the river.

“A dredging crew has been down there all week,” Gretten said. “Hopefully, by the end of the day (Thursday) we will have the channel open. We are hoping a pilot’s channel can cut through there. It may be a one-lane channel.”

He said the main problem can be attributed to the major flooding that took place in June. For example, Lock and Dam 18 — which is located five miles downstream from Oquawka — experienced an all-time record crest. He said the major flooding that occurred in places like Cedar Rapids and Iowa City involved the Cedar and Iowa rivers, which merge near Wapello, Iowa, and dump into the Mississippi near Oquawka.

“That brought with it a tremendous amounts of sediment,” he said. “This last flood, in short order we went from record flood down to low water. At last count, as of this morning, we had 27 tows lined up upstream and downstream from Oquawka. And you likely have a lot of tows that intended to do business that are just parked somewhere else, and we are not aware of it.”

He said the Corps is authorized to maintain a nine-foot deep channel. However, on Saturday, a tow went through that area that was drafting lower than nine feet deep and it got stuck.

“Once one tow gets stuck, it will push the sand up ahead of it similar to how a snowplow works,” he said.

That created a channel that was less than nine feet deep. Therefore, the channel had to be closed in that area.

Meanwhile, the World War II watercraft was scheduled to cruise past Burlington on its way to Moline today, but the vessel was forced to dock Tuesday night in Burlington while waiting for the channel to be dredged, Capt. Robert Jornlin said.

He hopes the vessel can arrive Friday in Moline and be open for public tours Saturday along the Ben Butterworth Parkway, near the Celebration Belle riverboat. In the meantime, the craft is opening for tours in Burlington today and continuing Thursday.

Doug Schorpp can be contacted at (563) 383-2292 or dschorpp@qctimes.com.