August 21, 2005
By Arthur Hirsch
Sun National Staff
Baltimore Sun

Photo: A barge works its way south on the Mississippi toward Cape Girardeau, Mo. Low water levels have restricted river traffic. (Sun photo by Christopher T. Assaf)
Aug 18, 2005

MOUND CITY, Ill. - Barges lined up near here, like so many cargo planes awaiting takeoff, face a tough stretch of "runway" in the Ohio River, low in water and clotted with sand bars.

Barge waiting time can be counted not in hours, but in days and thousands of dollars as towboats' huge engines run against the current going nowhere, as customers await coal, scrap iron, steel, chemicals, stone and oil and scramble to make do. The price of drought can be counted many ways in sections of the Midwest suffering the worst dry spell since the late 1980s.

Recent rain in parts of Missouri and Illinois greened some grass and improved soybean prospects, but it came too late to help the corn gone from green to brown to near black, the burnt pastures, the dwindled hay stocks, the casino boat that had to shut down for a few days this month.

Water flow in some rivers has hit near 60-year lows, weeks before usual low-water months.

Rain fell in sheets the other afternoon along this stretch of the Ohio River, but not in amounts sufficient to stop jumps in shipping prices as tow companies try to recover losses. Commodity and consumer prices have not yet reflected any of this, but industry representatives are concerned about the effect if the drought continues.

According to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site, forecasters see "some additional improvement" to come but with "considerable uncertainty" about the degree and timing.

It's enough to make a towing company port captain from Paducah, Ky., think the unthinkable.

"An Ivan, give us an Ivan right now," says Tommy Williams, referring to the hurricane that ripped through the Gulf of Mexico last year. "If we could get a good storm to dump some water in the Ohio Valley, some water in the Mississippi Valley ... "

He adds that, of course, he prefers his storms heavy on water and without loss of life or property.

That would be an ideal seldom seen in the universe of either farming or barge shipping. For these industries, the drought adds insult to the injury of sharply rising fuel and fertilizer prices. Yields were abundant for the past two years - the 2004 U.S. corn harvest set a record at more than 11 billion bushels - but some folks are wondering whether the drought will further thin the ranks of small farmers.

"You'll see some more farm sales," says Maurice Glosemeyer of Marthasville, Mo., who splits his time between farming and working for a crop insurance company. "It's going to be the little guy going out."

In his travels assessing crop damage around Missouri, Glosemeyer says he has seen some corn crops "zeroed," while most growers expect yields off by a third or half.

The story is about the same and in some areas worse in Illinois, second to Iowa in U.S. corn production with about 16 percent of the total. The Illinois Department of Agriculture predicts the lowest corn yields since 1995.

"This is the year we've been saving" for over the past three years, says Ron Moore, who raises corn, soybeans and cattle on 1,300 acres in Roseville, west-central Illinois. He figures corn yields will be a third off the average of 160 bushels per acre. The news on soybeans is a bit better, mostly because, unlike corn, the soybean growing cycle allows the plant to benefit from rain later in the season.

Rain has been particularly scarce in a swath from central Missouri north to the western Great Lakes and a slice of eastern Iowa. NOAA and the National Drought Mitigation Center classify conditions there as "extreme drought:" 60 percent of average rainfall for six months.

Vern Knapp, a hydrologist with the Illinois State Water Survey, says water flow in streams and rivers in the north-central part of his state are close to the lowest since recordkeeping began in the 1940s. Knapp says the Kishwaukee River in northern Illinois recently flowed 60 cubic feet per second during a time of year when a reasonable expectation would be 300 feet per second.

The Kishwaukee drains to the Rock River, which drains to the Mississippi, which joins the Ohio at southernmost Illinois, near Mound City. Water fell so low there earlier this month that the Coast Guard stopped barge traffic for a weekend, but not before a few barges ran aground.

This bottleneck lies along the Mississippi River system, part of a nationwide 25,000-mile network that carries nearly a fifth of the country's coal and more than half of its export corn, roughly 15 percent of U.S. commerce, according to the American Waterways Operators.

Days ago this Ohio River stretch was open again, but with restrictions. Down a narrow channel, with water levels close to the minimum, barges were moving under Coast Guard watch with an assist from the barge towing industry, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continued dredging the channel.

Tommy Williams and fellow port captain Shelden DeTrafford first ran traffic control by radio from the cab of Williams' pickup parked on the levee, but soon the Coast Guard hauled in a trailer they use as an emergency command center. DeTrafford is impressed.

"You guys got it set up good," he told the Coast Guardsmen. "Air-conditioning, toilet. ... "

The portable commode stands outside, a few paces away on the levee, with a sweeping view of the Ohio River and the Kentucky shore on the other side. Within about five miles in either direction more than two dozen towboats wait, each with a "tow" of up to 15 barges.

Juggling two radios and a cell phone, Williams keeps tabs on towboat positions and fields calls from tow company officials - Where's my boat? When are we moving? - while using a felt-tip marker to update a white tote board showing names of waiting boats.

They stay through the night and into the morning, moving 27 tows in about 11 hours, Williams says later.

So far, factories and power plants say low water has been more an inconvenience than a crisis, but they wonder how much longer they can go before the drought interferes with their work.

"If it continues the next 30 days, we're going to start feeling a pinch and not be able to make delivery schedules," says Ernest Trujillo, the Mandeville, La.-based transportation manager for Martin Marietta Materials, the country's second-largest supplier of crushed stone, sand and gravel.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is keeping close watch on barge traffic, as it ships coal through the system to 11 power plants in seven states. Spokeswoman Michelle Sherrard says that, so far, no plant operations have been affected.

In some cases, companies have had to reroute trains to loading platforms away from low-water sections. More typically, companies are adjusting either by loading barges lighter so they draw less water, or using fewer barges in each tow to ease passage through narrow channels.

Light loading means less stuff gets through, while tow companies make less money on existing contracts. They get paid by the ton and regardless of how many tons they carry, the tows cost about the same to run - more than $7,000 a day.

To compensate, tow companies are boosting rates for non-contract work, about 40 to 60 percent, says Larry Barbish, vice president of Canal Barge Co. Inc. in New Orleans.

"Those who need it are stepping up to pay the price," says Sandor Toth, publisher of a bi-weekly industry newsletter, River Transport News. Given already huge increases in the costs of steel, shipping and fuel - largely driven by soaring demand in Asia - Toth doubts consumers will feel the effects of what is so far, in the grand scheme of things, "a relatively minor event."

Clearly some farmers will feel it, either by paying more to ship their grain or in getting less for their crop because someone else has to pay spiked shipping rates.

Don Yanskey, who farms 1,400 acres of corn and soybeans outside Jefferson City, Mo., recalls that a Missouri River shutdown last year cost him 20 cents off the bushel price of soybeans.

A big man in a John Deere cap, T-shirt and jeans, Yanskey, 46, has been working on this land since he learned to drive a truck at his father's side when he was 5. He's conducting a quick tour of his field, finding the soybeans looking short but lush, the corn pale green in some places, brown and nearly black in others. With only a few weeks to go before harvest, he pulls a couple ears to check weight and kernel size.

"This is like popcorn seed," he says, handing over an ear that could hardly be lighter if it were made of Styrofoam.

"This one didn't do nothing, I mean this don't weigh nothing," says Yanskey.

It might not be the worst crop he's seen, but considering that the costs of fuel and fertilizer have risen 60 and 70 percent in the past few years, it is surely the most expensive. Farmers say these costs are ultimately a much bigger hardship for them than any one dry season.

"I've got friends, if they haven't seen you in a while their favorite line is, 'Are you still farming yet?'" Yanskey says. His response: "No, I haven't gone broke yet."

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