Thebes, Il is on the Upper Mississippi River. The rock bottoms start at Cairo, il and is almost continuous up to mile 32.0 UMR.

You're right about rock. That requires blasting and then clamshell removal. Most likely not going to happen in the immediate future.

BTW: there is a wicked little cross current at Thebes RR Bridge that pushes towards the left descending bank. Many tows have problems there both upbound and downbound to stay off the bridge pilings.

Just read this article. Sounds like regional authorities and the Corps of Engineers are going ahead with some remedies--increasing the flow of the Missouri River and also removing rock "pinnacles" from the river bottom. Even so, it may take some time.

Actually, the pinnacles bit was something new for me. From the article, I guess they don't have to actually blast a large channel through the rocky river bottom, which would be a major undertaking. They just need to clear these rocky formations that jut up into the river and reduce the usable depth of water along that part of the Mississippi.

Sounds like they are going to "round off" some of the points first. Locating pinnacles along the river bed is very difficult until some tow slices a barge hull open.

Just an update on this issue. I was reading this National Geographic article. If nothing else, the article highlights how vital Mississippi river traffic is to the economy--the global economy, not just the US economy.

Looks like river navigation is OK for now, but they're not out of the woods yet. The Army Corps of Engineers are still smoothing the river bottom near Thebes while they release reservoir water to keep up the water level. It's basically a race against time, but it sounds like it'll be OK.

From the article:

Wildman, how does the situation look from someone actually working on the river? Optimistic?

I haven't been on the river for two years now. We just started a contrct, or rather, resuming the run that we had 2 years ago but that only covers 4.7 miles of the river.

The Lower Mississippi River is good for awhile because the rains that have fallen over the last couple of weeks in the Lower Mississippi River Drainage Basin and Ohio River Drainage Basin.
I don't know what the largest allowable tow size at this time is.

The problem is the Upper MIssissippi River which is affected by the ongoing Mid West Drought in both the Upper Mississippi River and Missouri River Drainage Basins. Basically speaking, It's the Upper Mississippi River that is threatened by the water shortage. The largest tows that can navigate the Upper River, normally, is 25 barges.

The current maximum draft allowed on the Upper and Lower Rivers, to the best of my memory is 9 ft.that's up to 4 ft less than normal water levels allowed. That's a lot of tonnage that is NOT getting moved now.

The Max Allowable Draft on the Ohio River is 8.5Ft. That's even more tonnage per barge that is NOT being moved downstream.

Down here in Lousy-anna, we have enough water that the Calcasieu (Lake Charles, La) and Leland Bowman (Intracoastal City, La) Locks are not allowed to work normally so as not to block the flow of flood level waters from the interior to the Gulf of Mexico.

We are looking at a "bumper crop" of Crawfish this year which will also drive the price down somewhat.