Rain-swollen river stalls barge shipments
Chattanooga’s river artery remains closed to barge shipments this week as federal agencies drain the rain-swollen Tennessee Valley following up to 12 inches of rain in parts of the region.
With 772,000 gallons a second flowing through the Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has shut down barge operations through Chattanooga. The flow of the Tennessee River is simply too dangerous, especially through the canyon between Signal and Elder mountains just west of downtown Chattanooga.
“We haven’t been able to move our barges in Chattanooga for the past week and we anticipate that will probably continue through this week but hopefully no longer,” said Peter Serodino, president of the barge and river yards operations named for his family. “With all the rain, river operations have slowed throughout the region and Chattanooga is unique with the river gorge that we can’t operate at all here.”
For companies that use barge shipments for commodities or product delivery, the shutdown has forced them to consider rail, highway and other alternative means of transportation.
“It’s definitely affected us, but we’re still able to manage,”
said Tom Tirabassi, vice president of supply chain management for Olin Corp. in Charleston, Tenn.
The two-week shutdown of the river to barge traffic in Chattanooga is the longest in nearly four years.
The seven-state Tennessee Valley region was hit with heavy rains around the Christmas holidays, with some places recording up to 12 inches of precipitation last month.
TVA spokesman Travis Brickey said Monday that eight of the nine mainstream dams on the Tennessee River are spilling water through their floodgates this week. At the Nickajack Dam in Marion County, TVA is spilling 105,000 cubic feet per second, or 787,000 gallons per second.
But TVA has been holding back water downstream on the Kentucky Reservoir since New Year’s Day to help limit flooding on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, which have flooded due to heavy rains during the Christmas holidays across the South and Midwest.
The Kentucky Lake has risen to “moderate flood stage,” Brickey said, and is expected to crest by Friday when TVA again opens the Kentucky Dam to move more water through its 652-mile navigable Tennessee River system.
TVA does not expect any more rain until Wednesday. But the flood and sluice gates at Fontana and Norris dams will remain open through the week to help draw down TVA’s upstream reservoirs.
TVA normally keeps Lake Fontana in Western North Carolina about 60 feet lower in the winter than it does during summer months to help provide flood storage for winter rains like what hit the region during Christmas week. At 480 feet, Fontana Dam is the tallest dam in the eastern half of the United States and Fontana reservoir rose 40 feet after the heavy Christmas rains.
Brickey said rainfall during winter months is twice as likely to run off into local streams and low-lying areas in the winter than in the summer when vegetation and warmer temperatures retain and absorb more of the precipitation.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.