When people think of the Mississippi River, they might have visions of Mark Twain and old steamboats. But few Americans understand the vast amounts of shipping traffic that still makes its way up and down the river, part of the world?s largest navigable inland waterway.
As I write in The Times, a Midwestern drought has caused the dwindling of the mighty river in recent months. The phenomenon cannot necessarily be ascribed to climate change ? no individual weather event can be.
Still, shifting weather patterns, with heavier rainstorms in one area and much less in others, are part of the emerging picture of the effects of the overall global warming trend. Only a year ago, the river was seeing record flooding.
If drought does emerge as a more prominent facet of life on the Mississippi and navigation is impeded, the effect on national and even global commerce will undoubtedly be felt. The towboats pushing their tightly grouped clusters of barges up and down the river move billions of dollars a month worth of grain for export and fertilizer for Midwestern farmers, coal and fuel for power plants and many other items.
If the river got so low that navigation had to stop, grain exports and the other commodities could get a lot more expensive very quickly.
Barges, it turns out, are a remarkably efficient way to move goods along the Mississippi and its tributaries. The load aboard one fully loaded 15-barge tow, if transferred to a train, would require more than 200 rail cars. Try to move the goods by truck, and you?ll need a fleet of more than 1,000. And when the river is running well, tow boats might push 24 barges or even more. So by comparison with road or rail transport, the Mississippi is relatively green.
The looming crisis on the river has thrown a spotlight on the importance of water traffic to the national economy. Rick Calhoun, the president of Cargo Carriers, a part of Cargill, said that even President Obama, who has been talking up infrastructure investment in recent months, has referred chiefly to roads, railways and air ??even cyber infrastructure,? Mr. Calhoun complained. ?We don?t talk about the waterways.?
But as I note in my article, President Obama has begun taking a personal interest in the Mississippi issue. So Mr. Calhoun is hoping that another mode of transportation will finally get the love. ?We will consider it a coup if the president puts waterways in the State of the Union address,? he said.
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