Up around the bend

If you come down to the river …

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

—Heraclitus

It’s not difficult to look at the normally smooth-running Arkansas River running under the six bridges that connect Little Rock to North Little Rock and think all is well underneath. And in fact, all is well under the surface. Mostly.

What’s not ideal is that despite the fact that 90 percent of the 455-mile McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigational System is capable of handling barges with a 12-foot draft, 10 percent can only handle nine feet. For the uninitiated, the draft is the part of the barge that is under the water’s surface.

A fact of our natural world is that rivers bring sediment with them from upstream, constantly changing the landscape underneath, leading to trickier navigation.

We see it on rivers where Arkansans like to canoe and kayak, like the Buffalo, Mulberry, Little Piney or Cossatot, which feature slow-moving pools separated by sections of rapids. The depth of larger rivers like the Arkansas make the underwater invisible to us, but it happens nonetheless.

With $5 billion of goods shipped annually on the river system, the need for mitigation of this natural phenomenon is an inescapable reality. There’s a plan afoot to not only maintain the Arkansas River, but to deepen it so that 100 percent will be navigable for more fully loaded barges.

The project is not new. It’s been in the works for two decades, and if funding is provided for construction, which is likely, it still won’t be complete for another decade. Good things take time.

However, not everyone will agree this is a good thing. According to the paper, some think the “material dredged will fill in the meandering curves and backwaters and spoil Arkansas’ treasured bass-casting spots.”

Others think the funds would be better spent “shoring up levees to protect people from flooding, rather than commercial navigation.”

These are fair points, but the potential to not only make a positive impact on the environment, and the economy, should win out.

Environmentally speaking, the dredged material can and has been used to improve habitat. In the past, the Corps of (really good) Engineers has built island habitats for terns. And because so much more cargo can be moved on the same barge, air quality improves, since fewer emissions are produced on a ton-per-mile basis than trucks and trains.

Economically, every additional foot of depth allows barges to carry an additional 200 tons, and having more fully loaded barges means less cost per unit moved. But it requires a consistent 12-foot channel.

Edmund Howe, chief of hydrology and hydraulics for the Corps’ Little Rock district tells us, “Folks that are moving their agriculture, they can move more of it cheaper . . . it puts more money in their pockets.”

Economically, this seems like a good idea, but Little Rock Port executive director Bryan Day is concerned that the public perception of spending billions of dollars on a river may be the biggest obstacle. It shouldn’t be.

As Director Day is quick to point out, the “nation’s rail and highway system are at capacity, while the water navigational system is not.” He also notes that “expansion of highways and rail are more difficult and more expensive.”

We would add that part of the expense of rail and road expansion is the time and cost related to exercising eminent domain. These issues would only come into play on the river if the plan included re-routing it through private land. It doesn’t.

We may still be a decade away from finishing what will be a three-decade project, but it will be worth the wait.