More bad news for the economy: Barges of crops and cargo struggle to float in low water on Mississippi River

A fish skipped across the Mississippi River flowing past New Orleans and sent ripples toward a beach that was wider than normal on Tuesday morning. Under the docks near the French Quarter, pilings that would normally be submerged were exposed to the air.

The historic low water levels in Louisiana and elsewhere mean harvested crops and other cargo are being shipped much more slowly, straining crews and costs.

New Orleans is where the Mississippi River ends. The cause of the low water levels can be found where the river begins. The fall is always a dry period, but a long drought in the Midwest and throughout the Mississippi River Basin has caused a crisis on the river, which carries 60% of America’s corn and soybean exports.

Barges must carry smaller loads to navigate the shallow river — if emergency dredging has not stopped traffic altogether. Grain elevators, unable to offload their crops to barges, have backed up during harvest season. And all this comes at a time when the war in Ukraine has increased the demand for crops and coal that are shipped south on America's iconic river.

“There’s just tremendous demand for U.S. exports,” said Jennifer Carpenter, president, and CEO of The American Waterways Operators. “It’s the worst possible time to be contending with this.”

The dry river is bleeding money.

The high cost of low water

Capt. Nick Craycraft has spent 12 years guiding towboats up and down the Mississippi River. Recently, he has spent a lot of time sitting still.

When reached Tuesday, Craycraft had just gotten off a 48-hour hold between northern Mississippi and Arkansas while the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the channel.

“Where typical spots are 40 to 50 feet of water, we are seeing 10,” he said. “People’s backyard pools are deeper.”

Some parts of the river are too narrow for two-way traffic, so he has to pull over his boat, the Porter J. Furlong.

Last week, 2,000 barges were stopped on the river waiting for dredging to finish so traffic could resume. The estimate 10 years ago was that closing the Mississippi River for a day cost $300 million, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report. There have been 25 closures at 12 different locations since Oct. 11.

A single barge can typically carry as much cargo as 70 semitrucks. Most barges at the moment, however, are loaded 35% below capacity so they will float higher in the water. Some ports have gone inactive because they don’t have the longer pipes and scaffolding needed to load cargo into boats that now must dock in the middle of the channel.

Craycraft has been taking on half or less his crew's usual quantity of fuel and water to keep the towboat light. Even so, sometimes the depth sounder spits up mud. That means the barges he pulls are less than a foot from the riverbed. The towboat is even lower — less than a handspan away from the bottom.

Navigating through shallow waters has been stressful. The Porter J. Furlong pushes “red-flag,” hazardous cargo, like diesel fuel.

“You don’t want to make headline news because you sunk a red-flag barge,” Craycraft said.

When Craycraft is not stressed, he’s bored. When the boat is stopped, he reads the spill of emailed river condition updates, writes an assessment of how to handle the next stretch, and plans safety drills. He used to run grounding drills every other month. Now it’s every week.  

That all takes about two hours.

“For the rest of the watch, you’re just watching your radars and you’re watching your AIS system and I’m just watching out the window,” he said.  

Through the window, he sees intake pipes that fed old water systems, coal or rock barges sunk so long ago that rust has eaten their names, and coyotes and raccoons coming down to devour belly-up fish.  

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Under the surface

With less fresh water coming down the river, salty water from the Gulf of Mexico has traveled farther inland. Speckled trout have moved deeper into estuaries. And water is saltier near New Orleans and neighboring parishes that rely on the river for drinking water.

The water treatment equipment in those parishes is not built to deal with high salinity, said Matthew Roe, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans district.

Last month the corps had to build an underwater levee to impede salt water from contaminating drinking water in Plaquemines Parish and farther upriver.

This is the fourth time since 1988 they've had to construct an underwater levee to divert saltwater intrusion, Roe said.

Further up the river in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Kory Konsoer, a geography professor at Louisiana State University, took his field methods class to see a nearly 100-year-old shipwrecked ferry boat exposed last month when the water level dropped.

The last time the Mississippi River was this low was in 2012, making this the first time Konsoer had been able to take a class to survey its banks. Although the water was still muddy and turbid, the level was low enough to expose much of the channel bed and banks.

“It’s impressive to see those things when you consider how low the river is walking down the banks of downtown Baton Rouge. You are able to stand down in the channel at a point where water should be covering you,” he said.

When will it end?

This week, water levels in the Mississippi River were beginning to rise thanks to rain brought by the remnants of Hurricane Roslyn. The water level of the river, however, remains lower than normal.

“These modest increases in the river level have not made a significant difference in what is going on,” said Deb Calhoun, the senior vice president of the Waterways Council.

A rainy winter in addition to snow melt could give the river enough water to recover by spring. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, however, predicts a continued drought through the winter due to the return of the La Niña weather pattern.

Floods and periods of low water have always been factors on the Mississippi River. In recent years, substantial floods have often been followed by droughts. In 2011, the river experienced some of the worst flooding in its history. The next year, the river fell to historically low levels.

“All the climate models for the Mississippi River Basin over the last 20 years have predicted a flashier system. Wet years will be wetter, and dry years will be drier,” said David Muth, an environmental consultant.

Muth cautioned it cannot be said with certainty that recent floods and droughts were caused by climate change. But the pattern of extremes becoming the norm fits the scientific model for a warming planet.

“If you heat up a system, it’s like boiling water. There is more energy in the system,” he said.

Businesses that depend on the Mississippi River will likely have to contend with more years of low water in the future.

This year’s low water levels show the U.S. needs a national drought policy, said Colin Wellenkamp, director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, a coalition of mayors of towns and cities along the river.

“Don’t let this catastrophe go away unleveraged because states need to be able to declare a state of emergency for drought,” Wellenkamp said.

The Army Corps of Engineers lacks even the authority to release water from tributaries into the Mississippi without congressional approval, he said.

“Congress is not even in session now,” he said. “We’re just sitting here.”

Contributing: Jim Salter, Associated Press.