A just-releases study by University of Pennsylvania researchers shows that outflows from the Mississippi River kept much of the Deepwater Horizon spill from the Gulf Coast. Earlier computer models predicting the spill could travel as far as the East coast hadn’t included Mississippi River hydrodynamics in its modeling.
Low Mississippi Decreasing Tow Sizes
At Vicksburg, Miss., low water—the Mississippi River is 50 feet lower than it was in May 2011—has caused a decrease in tow sizes.
Snake River Lock and Dam Turns 50
The Ice Harbor Lock and Dam on the Snake River celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Heartland Boating goes Digital
Our sister publication, Heartland Boating, launches its digital edition.
Woodruff: Waterways in crisis
Matt Woodruff, head of Waterways Council Inc., on funding challenges to the waterways system.
Barges help save rare bird
A Corps of Engineers biologist uses old pontoon barges to create a floating habitat for the interior least tern.
Columbia River’s “Procrustean Bridge”
A proposed bridge on the Columbia River—on which $140 million has been spent before construction has begun—is too low for many river users.
What Fracking Means
Commentary magazine on what a former CIA director (and chemistry professor) calls “the biggest event I’ve seen in 50 years.”
“… cheap natural gas is bringing back ‘the basic kind of jobs we’ve been hemorrhaging for decades,’ says Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research. ‘People who work with their hands and make stuff and fix things, those jobs have been going down the tubes [for decades] and everyone has been crying for more manufacturing jobs and this is it’.”
Tow line “shoelaces”
LL Bean’s rolling “bootmobile” uses “tugboat rope” (towing lines?) as “shoelaces.”
Barge Math on Upper Mississippi
Reader questions provoke a newspaper writer to do his own math on barge traffic on the Upper Miss.
