Transcripts

"State of Repair" -Blocked Locks

SUSIE GHARIB: Call them the nation's water highways. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River and a dozen other major tributaries run across the nation's industrial midsection. But moving cargoes of grain, coal and other commodities to the booming global export market is harder these days. As we continue our series, "State of Repair," Jeff Yastine shows us how crumbling infrastructure is hurting business.

JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: They are a fixture of life on the nation's busiest waterways. River captains and their towboats spending their days pushing long lines of barges, filled with bulk commodities -- coal and corn, grains, chemicals, concrete. For 70 years, those barges have been pushed through structures like this one, the Emsworth (ph) lock on the Ohio River near Pittsburgh. The lock's 600- foot long chambers are filled and emptied each time boats and barges pass through. They play a key role in river commerce, letting boat traffic safely traverse the rapids that would otherwise block navigation here. But the locks, built more than 70 years ago, are showing their age. The chambers are obsolete, only half the size of modern locks. Concrete is cracking off in some areas. The miter gates which open and close for boat traffic are rusting and some of the internal piston valves, which control the flow of water in the lock, are worn and cracked.

Conditions like that worry businessmen like Paul Buddeke. He runs the River Road terminal near Louisville, Kentucky. It's a major distribution center on the Ohio for commodities like coal, road salt and fertilizer. The aging locks on the Ohio, Mississippi, and elsewhere are prone to mechanical failures and closures that can last days, even weeks. Buddeke says that can be a major problem for shipping businesses like his.

PAUL BUDDEKE, PRESIDENT, RIVER ROAD TERMINAL: The cost of transportation is becoming such an issue with our customers that being able to move large volumes of material through a system like that and having the barge system be able to bring the product to them at a faster pace for a crucial supply. It's essential that it upgrade and keep upgrading throughout the history of the use of the river for transportation use.

YASTINE: One of those upgrades can be seen here at the McAlpine (ph) locks near Louisville. The new chambers are capped on each end by huge metal gates that hold back the Ohio River. They will let barge loads nearly a quarter of a mile long go through. Building new locks on the Ohio River is not an easy task. This project started in 2000, when the first shovelfuls of dirt were being turned and it won't be finished until 2009, at a cost of about $430 million. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says one of the problems in a multi-year construction project like this is getting consistent funding from Congress. Each year's appropriation depends on the shifting priorities of lawmakers. Corps engineers like George Flickner say contractors have to adjust accordingly.

GEORGE FLICKNER, PROJECT MGR., USACE-LOUISVILLE DISTRICT: It's tough. What you end up with is a less than efficient construction process with the contractor really not being able to progress and finish as soon as they could have, because you're controlled by dollars. It is a challenge, but what we do is we try to defer items that are not on our critical path schedule and therefore we keep the most important phase of the project moving.

YASTINE: But for users of these river highways, the improvements aren't happening fast enough. Barry Palmer is president of the American Waterways Council.

BARRY PALMER, PRESIDENT & CEO, WATERWAYS COUNCIL INC.: To a fourth or fifth generation farmer in Minnesota or Iowa, it's absolutely essential to have a modern well- maintained system of locks and dams. If you're up in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and you want to get your grain to the world market, you've got to be through 27 locks and dams from St. Paul-Minneapolis down to Baton Rouge or to New Orleans.

YASTINE: The Ohio, the Mississippi and their tributaries hold the bulk of the nation's river locks. Those nearly 200 locks average more than 50 years old. So the work to replace them will be going on for the next 50 years. Jeff Yastine, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Louisville, Kentucky.