Parts of Tenn-Tom Waterway remain closed

ABERDEEN, Miss. (WCBI) – The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway has been officially shut down for around a month.

Sandbars on the canal have made it impossible for barges to get through.

“It is literally costing businesses and industry millions of dollars to work around this,” said administrator Mitch Mays.

It’s been over a month since heavy rains led to floods in much of the state.

While the waters may have receded, they’ve left behind another problem, sandbars.

Work is underway to get traffic moving on the Tenn-Tom waterway again, but it is taking time.

“Emergency channels have been opened on just about all the waterway, however, below the Aberdeen lock there is a bar across the channel, and it’s impassible, so we’re not completely open, and there is a dredge coming to the site to clear an emergency channel, but it’s not there yet,” said Monroe County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Chelsea Baulch.

The longer parts of the waterway stay closed, the greater the impact on industry.

Many companies rely on barges to bring in raw material and ship out finished product.

“It’s really critical ’cause it’s causing our industries to have to expedite resources, pay more for different modes of logistics. Whether it’s trucking or rail a lot of our industries, specifically two, utilize multiple modes of those transportation, with barge being primary, and so the sooner that that is taken care of the better it is for the industrial base of Monroe County,” said Mays.

An emergency channel in Aberdeen should be open by the beginning of May. But that channel is just a stopgap. It’s going to take more time, and money to get things back up to speed.

“The emergency channel is just so they can get barges and boats through its kind of like going from a two-lane road to a one lane road in certain places to get the waterway back to its authorized width and depth is going to take months and supplemental funding from the United States Congress to do that,” said Mays.

The dredge being brought in to remove the sandbar should be in Aberdeen by Friday.

Mitch Mays said they are working with legislators to find additional funding.