Dam In Distress

By Benita Heath, The Ironton Tribune, June 7, 2008

 

GREENUP, Ky. — They’re really not as big as the Titanic. But there is something just as intimidating about looking at the miter gates at the Greenup Locks and Dam.

 

All that massive steel looks invincible, but it’s not, especially when it’s in use 24-7. That’s because the steel in the gates at Greenup is no different than steel is your car. It is subject to those stresses known as wear and tear.

Good post.  Our waterways are a critical, but too often ignored part of our infrastructure.  Another mode that has been overhadowed by highways in both funding and development for decades.

Lawmaker Pullin Seeks Funding For Locks and Dam Upgrade

By Frank Lewis, Portsmouth Daily Times, December 31, 2008

 

Rep. Tanya Pullin, D-South Shore, is working to have the upgrading of the Greenup Dam included in funding from the federal budget.

 

"With the next president and Congress focused on revitalizing the economy and strengthening the nation's transportation infrastructure, the time is ripe to fully fund planned upgrades to the Greenup Locks and Dam," Pullin said Monday.

Markland Locks Damaged; River Traffic Closed

Locks Damaged Sunday Morning; No Estimate For Reopening

 

CINCINNATI -- Traffic on the Ohio River west of Cincinnati was shut down because of damage to the Markland Locks.

 

The Lock is located near Vevay, Ind., and Warsaw, Ky. The Locks were damaged Sunday morning, according to the Lock master, and is impassable until it is repaired.

 

The article is unclear as to whether the damage was caused by shipping traffic or normal wear and tear.

According to sources linked by Google:

http://news.google.com/news?q=markland+lock+and+dam&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&ei=0RDAStbsHNOe8Absx6ilAQ&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=5

 

One of the miter gates (the gates that allow boats and barges to enter and leave the locks) came unhinged due to mechanical malfunction. It came completely off, and is thought to be somewhere on the bottom of the Ohio River.

 

The gates were known to be in poor condition due to wear, corrosion, and cracking, and money had been appropriated for their overhaul. The work was planned to start in 2011. Army Corps of Engineers inspectors had cited the danger of interruption to river traffic due to unreliability of the gates.

 

Edit: From the description, it must have been a gate at the downstream end of the main lock that came off. There are two locks so traffic isn't entirely stopped, but the auxiliary lock is smaller, and will present quite a bottleneck.

 

  Oh dear.

 

  This is a big deal.

Here's a few shots before the gate fell off.

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,9538.0.html

 

 

New Gate Locked In Place At Markland Dam

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story/New-Gate-Locked-In-Place-At-Markland-Dam/XpNydTVsikmGPFjCobRDcA.cspx

 

 

Do they have spare gates just sitting around? The Ohio River's locks are standardized so maybe they did have one sitting around for a scheduled replacement.

One of the miter gates (the gates that allow boats and barges to enter and leave the locks) came unhinged due to mechanical malfunction. It came completely off, and is thought to be somewhere on the bottom of the Ohio River.

 

The gates were known to be in poor condition due to wear, corrosion, and cracking, and money had been appropriated for their overhaul. The work was planned to start in 2011. Army Corps of Engineers inspectors had cited the danger of interruption to river traffic due to unreliability of the gates.

 

Edit: From the description, it must have been a gate at the downstream end of the main lock that came off. There are two locks so traffic isn't entirely stopped, but the auxiliary lock is smaller, and will present quite a bottleneck.

 

There is really a serious problem with a wealthy country that lets its infrastructure get in the sorry state that ours is in.  Best country in the world?  I don't think there really is a "best" country.  But as far as our our infrastructure goes, we are slowly becoming  a developing country, if we aren't already.  The most state-of-the-art air traffic control system is in China.  The best passenger rail systems are in Europe and Japan with a host of developing nations catching up faster than we are.  China is even a leader in privately-financed highways, yet here there is no political will in the US to shore up the bankrupt highway trust fund. 

 

 

There is really a serious problem with a wealthy country that lets its infrastructure get in the sorry state that ours is in.  Best country in the world?  I don't think there really is a "best" country.  But as far as our our infrastructure goes, we are slowly becoming  a developing country, if we aren't already.  The most state-of-the-art air traffic control system is in China.  The best passenger rail systems are in Europe and Japan with a host of developing nations catching up faster than we are.  China is even a leader in privately-financed highways, yet here there is no political will in the US to shore up the bankrupt highway trust fund.

 

< rant > < :yap: >

 

Sometimes I wonder how really "wealthy" the US is. Some time before the housing and investment brokers' bubbles started popping all over the place, I heard a business commentator on an NPR program use the term, "Virtual Money." I had been using that term in private conversations for several years, holding that much of the purported affluence in America rested on the expected future appreciation in the value of abstract financial instruments. Too much of our economic activity and the huge salaries and bonuses derived therefrom involved buying and selling various representations of money, and far too little from the fundamental source of real wealth in any economic system, the production of tangible, durable, necessary goods by application of labor to raw materials. In other words, "Making Stuff." I'm sure I've seen a similar view expressed by KJP in these forums.

 

Further, the most affluent citizens, who often get their wealth through those non-productive buying-and-selling-money activities, are able through lobbying, misleading media ads, and outright bribery to influence tax rates beneficial to themselves and harmful to the general public, and subvert public investment toward freeways and expressways and commercial aviation that benefit their own lifestyle choices, and away from mass transit, public works, good public schools, and affordable health care that benefit a much larger number of working-class and marginally-employed people.

 

The stratification of wealth in America continues to worsen, and ironically much of the wealth at the top is virtual and ephemeral.

 

The race to the highest annual rate of return for stockholders has led/allowed investment brokers to acquire well-run businesses that produced useful goods, with the sole intent of looting their retirement plans and other cash and cannibalizing their physical assets, either sending production out of the country to places with exploitive labor practices that sometimes cross into slavery, or killing off the product and brand name altogether.

 

A once-great industrial economy has become a parasite, feeding off burgeoning manufacturing growth in India and China. When they tire of supporting us (or own all our coal and iron ore raw material assets), well ... I don't like to think about it.

 

Lord! I'm way off topic again. Phew! I gotta stop and take a few deep breaths.

 

</ :yap: >< / rant >

 

    I am starting to wonder if all of this change is a natural phenominom that no one can control and no one truly understands.

 

    The United States stil makes a lot of "stuff", but not all of it is traditional manufactured goods made of processed steel. Take film, for example. Producing a feature movie takes up to 100 million dollars these days, though the cost of the film material itself is minimal. The United States is still the leading movie maker, and we export them all over the world.

 

    By contrast, most of the goods that require a lot of manual labor have moved to Southeast Asia. On the other hand, would you enjoy working in sweatshop conditions turning bolts all day? In the United States, we have machines to do that kind of work.

 

    In some countries, the economy has changed very little over centuries, and has been more or less at equilbrium for a long time. A man often took over his father's job.

 

    In the United States, things are changing so fast that sometimes a man can't even IMAGINE his father's job.

 

    Back on topic - the Markland Dam is one of a series that made the Ohio River navigatable to large tows. A crew of about a dozen can move as much freight as it took thousands just a century ago. The mass processing of bulk materials has changed everything.

 

    As for maintenance of infrastructure, I wonder if the United States just hasn't had time to learn how to do it. Fernbank Dam in Cincinnati was only 40 years old when it was superceeded by Markland Dam. We have never replaced a large dam because we have never had to.

 

    Markland Dam was built in 1963. It is now 46 years old. That's brand new as infrastructure goes. Some of the men who worked on it are probably still alive, and a few of them might even still be working.