Elwood, Ill. – Just two weeks before harvest begins, Illinois farmers who rely on the Mississippi River to carry soybeans and corn downriver for export cannot be sure their crops can get through. They worry that higher transportation prices will drive down earnings.
Friday, the price for corn at the river grain elevator the Walsh family uses was more than 20 percent lower than it was 10 days earlier.
“The river is saying, ‘We don’t want your corn,’ ” said Pat Dumoulin, who runs a 700-acre farm with her husband and two sons in Hampshire, Ill., about 50 miles north of Elwood.
The Mississippi is a river of commerce, an artery for about 500 million tons of cargo each year, including coal, timber, iron, steel and chemicals. About 60 percent of the nation’s grain exports move down the river. The ports in Louisiana make up the largest port complex in the nation and are major terminals for oil and other petroleum products.
The extent of Hurricane Katrina’s damage upriver will depend on how soon and how completely the Mississippi and shipping facilities return to service.
Saturday, the river was reopened to traffic, but only to ships that extend no more than 35 feet below the waterline. Typically, ships are allowed to reach 45 feet below the water’s surface. The hardest-hit areas, such as the Port of New Orleans, were turned into one-way channels. Ships have to run through one at a time at a dangerous turn at Al giers Point, in the heart of New Orleans.
Thirty percent to 40 percent of vessels are expected to be rerouted away from the Mississippi, said Michael Titone, president of the Mississippi River Maritime Association. For those finding their way to ports upriver that escaped Katrina’s wrath, river buoys are gone and the channels are not clear, making it difficult to navigate.
Late Saturday, Tim Osborn, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s manager of regional operations, received an urgent call at his home in Lafayette, La. The pilots of a tanker full of about 100,000 tons of crude oil, or about 600,000 barrels, were blocked from entering Shell Oil Co.’s refinery dock on the Mississippi River at Convent because of possible obstructions under the water.
The pilots and Coast Guard needed NOAA to navigate the waters and make sure the area was clear of obstructions. Meanwhile, the crude sat at anchor.
Osborn and others have spent the past few days on watercraft, mapping underwater perils for ships like the 850-foot-long tanker.
Hurricane-deposited silt could cause a tanker to run aground. A collision with a sunken barge could do even more damage.
“Hundreds and hundreds of barges disappeared,” said Edward Peterson, executive director of the Louisiana River Pilots Association. The barges carry an average of 1,600 tons of cargo, he said. “Nobody knows where they are.”
The river “is the most important pipeline for grain exports we have in this country,” said Dale Durchholz, senior market analyst for the Illinois Farm Bureau.
Added Dennis Vercler, farm bureau spokesman: “It takes a long time for water to run down the river, but price signals to farmers conducted up the river are made almost instantly.”
