Margaret S. Petersen
Q ..
So you had to have your channel ready to go by the time the dams were constructed?
The plan was that the bank stabilization program would be constructed first, so that the
A:
channel would largely be realigned and would have had time to develop the depths we
needed by the time the locks and dams were completed.
White River Reach
For the channel. For the locks and dams.
They have had a serious problem on the lower part of the project in the White River reach.
A:
Have you talked to people in Little Rock?
Q: No.
The Arkansas navigation project goes down the Arkansas River to Lock and Dam 2. Just
A:
above Dam 2 there's a navigation canal that goes over to the White River. The White flows
into the Mississippi about ten miles downstream of the canal. The White had long been a
very stable river with very low sediment transport.
The Mississippi in the vicinity of the White River, and I don't know why, has been degrading
in the last twenty years. As it has degraded, the bed of the lower White River in the
navigation reach has also been going down. The tail-water in the White below Lock 1 is so
low now that tows have trouble navigating to the Mississippi. This is about a ten-mile reach.
I understand that a lock and dam has been authorized for construction near the mouth of the
White to provide adequate depth in that reach of the project. This is something we did not
envision in designing the project forty years ago.
What's the cause of that? Lack of flow through the.
It has to do with whatever is happening in the Mississippi. This is a long-term thing. It may
be related to the influence of the
storage dams on the Upper Missouri River that have
trapped a lot of the sediment load that formerly was transported into the Lower Mississippi.
I don't know what LMVD [Lower Mississippi Valley Division] is doing in way of studies
or what Little Rock has done, so it would be speculation on why the Mississippi is lowering.
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