Drought sends Mississippi into 'uncharted territory'

John Yang of NBC News: The drought of 2012 has humbled the mighty Mississippi River. A year after near-historic flooding, the river’s water levels are at near-historic lows from Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio River empties into it, to New Orleans, just north of its endpoint at the Gulf of Mexico.

In July, water levels in Cairo, Memphis, Tenn., and Vicksburg, Miss., dipped below those of the historic drought of 1988. That’s affecting everything from commerce on the maritime superhighway to recreation to the drinking water in Louisiana.

The biggest impact may be on shipping. “It’s getting near critical,” said Austin Golding, a third-generation co-owner of Vicksburg, Miss.-based Golding Barge Lines. “Without more rain, we’re heading into uncharted territory.”

About $180 billion worth of goods move up and down the river on barges, 500 million tons of the basic ingredients for much of the U.S. economy, according to the American Waterways Operators, a trade group. It carries 60 percent of the nation’s grain, 22 percent of the oil and gas and 20 percent of the coal, according to American Waterways Operators. It would take 60 trailer trucks to carry the cargo in just one barge, 144 18-wheeler tankers to carry the oil and gas in one petroleum barge.

The low water levels mean that barge companies have to lighten their load by about 25 percent so the barges ride higher in the water, reducing what’s known as the barges’ “draught.”  That means each tow boat is moving less cargo than usual even though “it takes up the same amount of fuel to burn and the same amount of manpower,” said Ed Henleben, senior operations manager for Ingram Barge Co. in St. Louis....

Coal barges on the Mississippi, shot by Paul Sableman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license