Rollin' on the River
River's aging system, future
on TDOT agenda
By REBECCA FERRAR,
ferrarr@knews.com
reprinted from the
Knoxville News Sentinel,
August 22, 2004
Long
before TVA built its series of dams and locks, trappers, American Indians and
pioneers used the Tennessee River for transporting goods.
"The
river system was navigable before we built the dams," said Tim Jones, general
manager of Burkhart Enterprises Inc., which oversees transportation of products
from the Forks of the River Industrial Park by barge, rail and trucks. "The
riverboats went all the way to Sevierville before the dam system."
But that
early river system left travelers at the whim of swift currents and rocky
shoals, flooding and droughts.
When TVA
was founded in 1933, one of the charges from Congress was to manage the river
with a navigation channel. The series of locks and dams was completed by 1945,
setting the stage for thriving river traffic and reducing the hazards inherent
in the river system.
Today, a
challenge to the navigability of the Tennessee River above Chattanooga - up to
Knoxville and beyond - is under way in Congress, which must decide whether to
spend more than $300 million to rebuild the Chickamauga Lock.
And the
Tennessee Department of Transportation has undertaken a study of the state's
transportation resources that could set the stage for how rivers are managed and
promoted for decades to come.
Managing
the waterways
"The first thing TVA has the responsibility for is improving the navigability of
the Tennessee River," said Ted Nelson, TVA manager of navigation. "We have 650
miles from Paducah, Ky., to Knoxville."
On those
650 miles, TVA has nine main locks on the Tennessee River that make it possible
for commercial and recreational boats to go from reservoir to reservoir, putting
the water to work in the Tennessee Valley. About 150 private-use terminals
operate along the river.
In
addition to the 650 miles, TVA oversees another 150 miles of navigable waterways
on the Clinch and Little Tennessee rivers in East Tennessee and the Hiawassee
River in North Carolina.
TVA owns the locks and dams,
but the locks are operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Paul Booth, a Chattanooga
contractor with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, is helping develop a
transportation study to "provide TDOT with a guide for where they ought to be 25
years from now, what they need to plan for in 25 years to handle freight and
passenger traffic."
His part
of the study, which will encompass all forms of transportation, is looking at
the waterways in Tennessee. Booth notes that Tennessee has as many miles of
waterway as it does interstate highway, and he believes the waterways could be
better utilized.
For example, he says
Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville have not capitalized on their locations on
the river, while Memphis has developed a thriving port transporting grain and
petroleum products.
"It's
underdeveloped and underutilized," Booth said of the river system.
Booth's report is due in
2005 and may recommend that the state become more involved in navigation,
including adding a commission at the cabinet level to oversee the function and
even market navigation to businesses.
"We have
between 45 million and 50 million tons of commercial traffic moving on the
Tennessee River on an annual basis," Nelson said. That's down from a peak 52
million tons in 1999, which Nelson attributes to the downturn in the economy.
TVA
figures the Tennessee Valley region saves $450 million a year by transporting
goods by barge. The savings is calculated by comparing the costs of rail and
trucking transportation to barge transportation.
Nelson
and others familiar with barge traffic say it's instrumental to the East
Tennessee economy.
"The
capability of having barge access to our economy is very important," said Doug
Lawyer, director of economic development for the Knoxville Area Chamber
Partnership. "We continue to see companies looking in our region that need
access to barge facilities or barge terminals. We see raw materials come in by
barge.
"I've
heard Knoxville is the farthest inland port in the United States. You can get
here to the Gulf (of Mexico) and back."
Andrew
Riester, vice president of the Waterways Council, a nonprofit organization in
Arlington, Va., that promotes the nation's waterways infrastructure, says barge
traffic is efficient and less harmful to the environment than other modes of
transportation because it uses less fuel.
"Because of its natural fuel
efficiency, about 16 percent of the cargo moved in the country is moved by
water, but it costs only 2 percent of transportation spending," Riester said.
"Barges will typically move low value, high volume commodities. Coal, grain,
cement - those are the building blocks of the economy. Without asphalt moving at
affordable prices, it's going to cost more to build roads."
At
Burkhart Enterprises, which operates a terminal at the confluence of the Holston
and French Broad rivers where the Tennessee River begins, the company unloads
about 350 barges a year for transport by truck and rail.
"The
river system is part of the infrastructure of our country," Jones said. "For
this area it's very important. If it came by any other mode, the total cost of
it would be more and that cost would be passed on to me and you and everybody
else who pays for these services."
Channels
of commerce
TVA's reservoir operations help to maintain a steady water level that guarantees
year-round passage for vessels requiring a 9-foot draft, that is, the minimum
depth of water required for barges and commercial traffic.
A typical
barge is 195 feet long and 35 feet wide and can carry 1,500 tons. That's equal
to 15 rail cars and 60 trucks.
The lock
works like an elevator, raising or lowering barges from one water level to
another. On the average, it takes about 45 minutes for a barge to go through a
lock.
The most
common commodity being moved on the Tennessee River is coal. It is shipped into
the river system from the Big Horn River basin in South Dakota, Wyoming and
Colorado and from coal mines in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Much of the
coal goes to TVA's coal-fired plants; the rest goes to private industry.
Coal and
some coke make up 40 percent of the product shipped by barge on the Tennessee
River.
The
second biggest commodity is stone, sand and gravel, at 25 percent. It's one of
the few products exported out of the Tennessee Valley because of the limestone
quarries in East Tennessee and the huge amounts of sand dredged from the river
bottom.
The third
largest commodity is grain, at 10 percent, a category that includes corn,
soybean and oats.
The
remainder of products transported on the Tennessee River includes chemicals,
petroleum products, iron and steel products.
Although
the locks were constructed for commercial traffic, with some 170 terminals along
the Tennessee River, another primary benefit is recreation.
"We move
about 20,000 recreational craft through there a year," Nelson said.
Since 1988, boat
manufacturing operations and dealerships have increased by about 16 percent in
counties adjacent to the river, according to a TVA report. The number of marinas
in those counties has doubled during this period, and more than 4,000 people are
employed in boating-related industries, pumping about $25 million into the
Tennessee Valley economy each year.
The type
of goods transported into Knoxville varies from the primary products moved along
the Tennessee River as a whole.
The
primary No. 1 product for Knoxville is asphalt at about 50 percent of the
traffic or 250,000 tons a year. It is followed by salt at 20 percent of the
traffic or 100,000 tons. The remainder of the Knoxville traffic is coke and
steel.
"Knoxville can't live without its road projects, so we feed those road
projects," Nelson said, explaining the transportation of asphalt.
Locks at
TVA's Nickajack and Pickwick reservoirs in Tennessee, Guntersville, Wheeler and
Wilson reservoirs in Alabama, and Kentucky reservoir are the largest and may
move more than one barge at a time. The locks at Chickamauga, Watts Bar and Fort
Loudoun are smaller and may move only one barge at a time.
TVA has
restricted access to its locks since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Previously members of the public could go freely to areas surrounding the locks
to view the operation. Now those areas are closed to the public unless a group
arranges a visit for educational purposes.
TVA is
the nation's largest public utility, serving 8.3 million customers in Tennessee
and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina and
Virginia.