And the MS River she's a goin dry

[Duck Butter]

Very interesting that the MS River delta is sediment-starved, yet just a couple hundred miles upstream the sediment is filling in the river Seems almost elementary that instead of placing that sediment on the bank where it will just fill right back in, why not just place it on a barge and ship it where its needed downstream. Seems like north and south La could work together on this

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/2...nclick_check=1

Standing on the deck of the vessel Jadwin, a constant vibration buzzes through shoe soles as the dustpan dredge peels away layers of sand and sediment from the Mississippi River bottom and shoots it through a 1,000-foot long steel pipe, where it's deposited outside the channel.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' five-story dredge can transfer 55,000 to 60,000 cubic yards of sand per day from the channel closer to the shore with its giant vacuum, and this year the Jadwin and its crew has been busier than ever.
A combination of sediment deposited during the Great Flood of 2011 and the record low river levels this year has clogged America's river super highway and forced temporary closures of ports like those in Lake Providence and Madison Parish.
An 11-mile stretch of the main channel below Greenville, Miss., was intermittently closed to barge traffic in August.
"It's hard to imagine if you look around now that the river was out of its banks last year," said Chuck Ashley, assistant master of the Jadwin.
The Jadwin and its crew were prying sand from the river near Lake Providence this week as another dredge, the Butcher, continued clearing the Lake Providence Port's channel and harbor with its cutter head blade.
Johnny Martin of Terral River Service, which has port and tug operations up and down the Mississippi, said this year has been among the worst he's seen for river commerce.
"It's been whuppin' us," Martin said earlier this summer.
This week Martin was relieved that the Lake Providence Port was partially operational, but he said the situation was exacerbated because there hasn't been consistent annual dredging.
The corps secured additional money for dredging this year, but only through disaster funding made available following the Great Flood of 2011.
There is no funding allocated for a complete dredging program in the 2013 budget.
"That's our concern," said Kavanaugh Breazeale, public information officer for the corps' Vicksburg, Miss., District.
The corps' funding comes from Congress, but U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-Quitman, said the Louisiana delegation has so far been unable to convince its colleagues of the importance of dredging.
"We're trying to make our colleagues understand the economic impact of not dredging is just as devastating to the nation as a whole as it is to Louisiana," said Alexander, who said he met with U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., about the issue this week. "It's a shame."
Martin said commerce will be compromised if Congress doesn't allocate funding for consistent dredging of the river's channel and its ports.
"If we face another low water year like this in 2013, I can tell you that everybody's going to be in deep trouble," he said.