For the second year in a row, drought conditions are thinning out the depth and width of the Mighty Mississippi River, raising the price to ship goods in the river.
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View Comments Barges can now pass under the Interstate 40 Hernando de Soto bridge after sitting idle on the Mississippi River for three and a half days. River traffic was halted Tuesday after a routine inspection of the bridge uncovered a significant fracture in a support beam critical to the structure. George Leavell, executive vice president of Memphis-based harbor and fleeting services company Wepfer Marine, said his company got word the UCoast Guard was green-lighting river traffic around 9 a.m. on Friday. Around 9:30 a.m., the Coast Guard confirmed the waterway restriction was lifted and traffic could resume under the bridge.
Memphis Commercial Appeal A day after the crack was discovered in a support beam, both the Tennessee-Arkansas Hernando de Soto M bridge and the waterway remained closed as officials worked to assess the damage and craft a repair plan. In a mid-day update, Tennessee Department of Transportation chief engineer Paul Degges said he didn t know when the bridge and waterway would be reopened but that repairs could take months rather than weeks. No one seems to know how long the river will be closed to traffic, but the longer the closure lasts, the more economically damaging the crack will be, said Mark Mestemacher, co-owner of St. Louis, Missouri-based Ceres Barge Lines and barge consulting firm Ceres Consulting. A closure that lasts a couple of days could create a backlog of boats at the bridge; a closure of more than a week could begin to be felt more widely, derailing the shipment of corn and beans from the port of New Orleans.