AFTER THE FLOOD
Crews work to get Arkansas River traffic back to normal
This summer, massive rainfall in Oklahoma and Arkansas caused the Arkansas River to overflow its banks in many places along its 308 miles in Arkansas. The river even broke through levees south of Dardanelle, but one of the biggest effects of the flooding cannot be seen from the surface.
The Arkansas River is a major waterway for cargo being shipped to and from the Gulf of Mexico. The river’s source is in Colorado, and it cuts its way through Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, where it flows into the Mississippi River. The task of keeping the river navigable for barge traffic falls on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Little Rock District.
One trouble spot that has popped up since the flood is at mile marker 222 on the river, located in the Dardanelle pool, said Aaron McGee, operation project manager. McGee said severe shoaling, which is when a sand bar forms in a body of water, has created a shallow area in the river’s main channel. The Corps typically maintains the channel at 9 feet deep, and the sandbar at mile marker 222 is currently only about 6 feet deep. That makes it tough for tugboats to navigate through the channel.
“This is, by far, the worst problem we’ve found,” he said.
McGee said that normally, payloads are stacked three barges wide and two to three barges in length, but current restrictions allow for them to be stacked only two barges wide and three barges in length, which is commonly referred to as “a six-pack.”
To get the channel back to its normal condition, the Corps has had two cranes operating for about 10 weeks to dig the sediment out of the river. Using clam-shell buckets, the sand is pulled out of the river and deposited onto barges to be taken to a disposal site. McGee said the clam-shell buckets resemble some of the claw games one might see at the fair. He said the process of using the clam-shell buckets can be tedious and time-consuming because the sand wants to flatten out, so once a bucketful is pulled out of the river, the sand shifts right back in.
McGee said the Corps is also working out a contract for that section of the river to be dredged, which will free up the crane crews to work on other areas of the river. Dredging is a process through which the sand is vacuumed off the bottom and run through a pump and pipes to a disposal area. He said once the contract is finalized, he hopes the dredging crews will start work in mid-October and that the project can be completed in December.
As for the Dardanelle Lock & Dam, McGee said minimal cleanup and repair had to be done after the flood, except for recreation areas and public-use areas below the dam. He said the Dardanelle Lock & Dam is the highest dam on the river, so the Corps was able to maintain normal headwater.
“You’d better stay on the mountain if [the Dardanelle Lock & Dam] ever goes under,” he said.
McGee compared the Dardanelle Dam to its counterparts the Arthur V. Ormond Lock & Dam near Morrilton and the Toad Suck Lock & Dam near Conway, which were both inundated during the flood. He said those dams are still undergoing repairs and have restricted hours, while the Dardanelle Lock & Dam is operating 24 hours a day.