'Things have drastically changed': Mississippi River level rebounds, efforts switch to prevention

The Mississippi River reached its shallowest level in 10 years in October.

“People’s backyard pools are deeper,” towboat captain Nick Craycraft said at the time.

The river drains 41% of the U.S. and parts of Canada, said Justin Giles, head of hydraulics for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Vicksburg, Mississippi, office. Widespread drought meant some parts of the river fell to their lowest water levels ever recorded.

The low water had a high impact. Barges stalled and some ports were shut down, slowing commerce at the height of harvest season. Salty ocean water crept up the river, threatening municipal drinking water systems in Louisiana. The Corps had to construct an underwater berm to hold back the saline.

But that was five months ago.

“Things have drastically changed,” Giles said.

What’s the situation now?

The situation now is normal or close to it. Vicksburg is 4 feet above average. In fact, the Corps' New Orleans office is keeping a lookout for high water, spokesman Matt Roe said.

Because the Mississippi drains such a large area, a little improvement in precipitation goes a long way.

“One inch of rain across that whole basin equates to a huge volume,” Giles said.

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Barge traffic is moving as it normally would, with no real backups, American Waterways Operators spokesman Ben Lerner said.

Craycraft has noticed the difference.

"More and more, the banks are starting to slowly disappear as the water rises above into the willow trees," he said.

Farther up the river, they’re still catching up, said Colin Wellenkamp, director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. But “it’s all heading in the right direction.”

What was the scope of the damage?

The drought of 2022 caused over 40 days’ worth of commercial traffic closures on the river, Wellenkamp said. That cost a bundle.

There was a $64 billion loss of economic activity, he said — slowdowns in production, for instance. That is being gradually made up, with traffic flowing again.

The loss of commerce reverberated down the supply chain. Mississippi River barges carry commodities such as soybeans, corn, chemicals and steel. The basin produces 92% of the nation’s agricultural exports, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and much of it travels down the river.

But you can’t get back the $20 billion spent on closing marinas, commodities that rotted in silos, damage to infrastructure, using costlier trucks when barges couldn’t move, extra dredging and the like, Wellenkamp said.

To show just a piece of it, St. Louis-region dredge crews dug up almost three times as much gunk as usual — enough to fill more than 2,700 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to the Corps' website.

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What are the chances the river will get this low again this fall?

Experts aren’t too worried about an immediate repeat.

“Statistically speaking, I would say it’s very unlikely,” Giles said.

But they are concerned about future seasons.

“It’s safe to say this won’t be the last curveball Mother Nature throws at us,” Lerner said.

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Are organizations doing anything to prevent future low-water events?

Yes.

Wellenkamp’s group is trying to beef up a number of federal resilience, disaster mitigation and adaptation programs and advocating for passage of the National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act in Congress.

These federal programs would protect river ecosystems and prevent erosion, expand the kinds of disasters that warrant emergency aid and even make it easier to get data on water levels.

“They’re good projects," Wellenkamp said. "They’re just not at the scale they need to be to move this work along.”

For instance, the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative currently gets about $10 million per year. Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative wants to increase it to $50 million, “enough financial bandwidth to actually start doing things at a system level.”

Will these efforts gain traction? Wellenkamp expressed cautious optimism.

Politicians, farmers and commodity groups all see the need for “using conservation practices to reduce risk,” Wellenkamp said. It doesn’t matter how many ports are built on the Mississippi River if climate disasters interrupt activity.

“We have to bring the ecology along for the ride,” he said.

Danielle Dreilinger is an American South storytelling reporter and the author of the book “The Secret History of Home Economics.” You can reach her at ddreilinger@gannett.com or 919/236-3141.