Many Ingram Barges Parked Until Waters Recede

Flooding has ground river traffic to a halt in many spots. Nashville-based Ingram Barge has tied up many of its boats until waters recede.

The historically high water presents a safety challenge for the tugs and barges, with unpredictable currents and lower clearance heights under bridges.

Ingram’s Jerry Knapper says the churning water from the tows can also put added stress on the levees protecting farmland and populated areas.

“We just don’t want – that is the industry, the Corps [of Engineers] – nobody wants a wake on the back of a boat that could possibly threaten a levee.”

Locks are closed in parts of the Tennessee, Ohio and Cumberland Rivers. The lower Mississippi remains open for the moment, but the industry, Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers have instituted weight and speed restrictions.

It could be a week and a half before barge traffic returns to normal along the Ohio River Valley. Until then, shipments of coal, sand, gravel and other bulk materials are stuck in many Ingram barges.

One manufacturing plant in Kentucky is close to running out of a chemical shipped by Ingram, but Knapper says high waters and lock closures haven’t caused mass shortages at this point.

“These are very localized, situational difficulties so far. That’s not to say that tomorrow morning we couldn’t receive a couple of calls of some additional problems we didn’t know about.”

In Middle Tennessee, TVA’s coal fired power plant in Gallatin has been unable to get new shipments since locks closed on Kentucky Lake earlier this month. A spokesman for the utility says, however, there’s enough coal stored on site to last several more weeks.