Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Months of drought have produced record low levels of the nation’s grandest river, and now governmental and industry leaders are seeking to help the myriad people negatively affected.
Friday, the White House hosted a virtual roundtable of leaders with expertise in the area of transportation logistics, a topic of no small importance as avoiding supply chain logjams is a chief concern as the Mississippi continues to be double-digit feet below its normal level in some locations.
“Both sides [private and governmental] discussed the impacts of low water on barge transportation and the implications for agricultural shippers, energy transportation, and other critical goods movement,” a White House release reads.
The situation has grown dire along America’s best-known river. According to a more exhaustive report from Yale Climate Connections, on Oct. 22 the Mississippi dropped to minus 10.8 feet in Memphis, the lowest point since 1933, when water levels near the city began being recorded. The previous record had been set in 1988.
About 50 miles to the north of Memphis, near Osceola, Arkansas, the river’s level measured minus 11.55 feet.
A natural reaction is for the casual observer to wonder how the Mississippi, which is still deep and massive even when at low levels, can cause supply-chain issues when it still contains ample water to allow for ships to move north and south.
The issue is less if ships can still navigate, but how many and at what capacity.
“[The low level] is causing … transportation disruption,” USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey said in a statement. “Barge movement is somewhat limited during these times of low water. Loads have to be lightened. The number of barges being towed by boats is limited because of the depth and width of the channel.”
While no state welcomes a drought and a drier-than-usual Mississippi impacts the nation as a whole, agriculture-centered Arkansas is feeling an acute pinch. Farmers have, for centuries now, used the Mississippi as a convenient way to move their harvest.
“We’re able to export a lot of things more efficiently, economically through the barging system and so we’re taking that away. It’s more costly in the end,” Tyler Oxnard, an Arkansas Farm Bureau economist, said during an interview with KATV, an Arkansas ABC affiliate.
Without ready access to barges, those farmers face either paying for storage, attempting to ship by rail – a proposition made more hazardous by the looming and ever-present threat of a national rail strike – or risk wasting a year’s worth of labor.
“It’s pretty heartbreaking to know that farmers put so much effort into making a crop and it’s difficult for us to get rid of it,” KATV quoted one farmer as saying in the same article.
There are some efforts that have been made on the federal side to provide improved river transport.
The Army Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard have set about dredging the river in some areas to provide a deeper channel, and there are various programs meant to assist farmers.
“Additionally, agricultural shippers have support available through USDA, including the ability to work with grain elevators and warehouses to license emergency and temporary storage space for commodities deemed storable by the Agricultural Marketing Service,” the White House release reads.
More than half the nation, 59%, is experiencing drought conditions at present and, according to the University of Nebraska’s Drought Monitor, more than 80% of the country faces at least drier-than-usual weather.
According to experts quoted by Axios earlier this week, should rain remain scarce, especially after winter gives way to spring, water supplies in some areas of the nation could become threatened.