The Army Corps of Engineers is keeping a close watch on Mississippi River water levels as they begin to drop. River levels have been bouncing up and down along with the droughts and floods that have plagued the Midwest over the past two years.
It’s been an up and down year for the river. Flooding earlier this year has led to sediment buildup in some areas. The Army Corps now has one dredge working the middle Mississippi River, and another working on the Illinois River. That’s according to Army Corps spokesperson Mike Peterson.
“Right now, a lot of forecasts are pointing towards a dry winter, so we may be seeing some pretty significantly low river levels. Maybe not as low as we saw last year, but right now we expect the river to keep falling slowly based on the forecasts,” Peterson said.
During last year’s low water, the Army Corps removed rock pinnacles at Grand Tower and Thebes, Illinois. That gives barges two additional feet of depth at what was previously the shallowest and rockiest stretch of the middle Mississippi River.
“The rock removal work we did at Thebes and Grand Tower basically sets the stage for better preparedness this year. It gave us an additional two feet of depth in the river through a stretch pretty harrowing when the river got low because of those rocks. Now going into it, the river can get a lot lower and we’ll be able to keep commerce moving,” Peterson said.
The Mississippi River is now belong ten feet at the Cape Girardeau gauge, but the river was above 44 feet there this summer. Last year, during the drought, the river bottomed out below five feet in Cape Girardeau. Peterson said this fall and winter’s situation is a lot better than what the Army Corps faced last year.
