BusinessTN

Lock operator Mike Owens minds the pumps as the tow boat R.H. Baker laboriously moves a string of barges loaded with coal and sand, one at a time, into the tiny Chickamauga lock to the upriver side where the Baker will move north with its cargo.

It takes the crew of the Serodino Inc.-owned vessel roughly one hour to move each of its nine barges upstream through the lock.

Not only is the 64-year-old lock at Chickamauga too small to handle more than one jumbo barge at a time, the lock suffers from water-induced expansion of the concrete it was built with, necessitating constant adjustment and repair, and creating the very real possibility of permanent closure by 2010. Closing Chickamauga lock would be disastrous for manufacturing facilities upriver, which are dependent on less expensive waterborne shipping to compete.

Ann Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Tennessee River Valley Association, has had more than one instance of a site selection process eliminating East Tennessee above Chattanooga from consideration because of the lock.

“There is no way to document all of the situations,” Jones says, “because of the nature of the site selection process, but we know the lock and its problems certainly have been a consideration.”

Help is finally on the way. After eight years of nursing a funding package for a new lock through Congress and the administration, 3rd District Rep. Zach Wamp, 2nd District Rep. John Duncan, and Senators Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander have secured a commitment for a new, much larger lock to be built at Chickamauga.

Early related construction for the new 110-by-600 foot lock, which can hold eight barges per lock cycle instead of one, already has begun with the moving of adjacent power and phone lines. Major construction is to start next year. Construction on the new lock itself will begin in 2008 and is scheduled to be completed by 2010. Total cost for the seven-year project will be $321 million from congressional appropriations and the Inland Waterway Trust Fund.

With the new lock in place, moving a nine-barge string through Chickamauga will take about one hour.

This dramatic time savings will allow lower shipping charges on the goods going through the lock. With the current small lock in place, shipping charges to destinations north of Chattanooga are twice as high as charges for goods moved below the lock.

Yet, despite the extra freight charges, 1.9 million tons of raw materials and finished product moved through Chickamauga Lock in 2001. Each barge in R.H. Baker’'s string represents 60 tractor-trailer loads of material, which means river-borne shipping significantly impacts highway congestion and its attendant pollution issues.

The Waterways Council of Arlington, Va., calculates more than 30 million tons of goods moved to, from and within Tennessee in 2001, representing $3.5 billion in value.

Manufacturing facilities north of Chattanooga, such as Olin Chlor Alkali Products at Charleston, and the A.E. Staley division of Tate and Lyle at Loudon, figure the much lower cost of waterborne shipping into their pricing, so shipping costs give these and other companies along the river a competitive advantage vital to their bottom lines and the livelihoods of their workers.

The payroll for Olin’s Charleston facility, for instance, is about $16 million, and company figures indicate employees purchase some $63 million in goods and services locally each year.

While obviously making companies like Olin and Staley nervous about shipping costs, problems with the lock and the possibility of its closing permanently, have jeopardized opportunities to locate new industry on the Tennessee River north of Chattanooga.

“One of the problems with developing the river above the lock,” explains Serodino vice president Peter Serodino, “was anyone doing site selection on the river above the lock found out about the problem with the lock. Their reaction was ‘No, we can’t look at East Tennessee above Chattanooga for water transportation because of the situation with the lock, so we need to look at other geographical locations.’”

It will take a few years, but that sentiment will fade. “The new lock is so important for the commercial life of the river,” says Tennessee River Valley Association’s Jones. “It is always important to improve infrastructure in any transportation system.”