Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com

Published - Monday, May 12, 2008

On the Job: Lock and dam operator

By Amber Dulek / Winona Daily News

TREMPEALEAU, Wis. — Jane Groth opens and closes gates.

The 41-year-old head operator from Onalaska, Wis., spends her workday guiding towboats, paddleboats and pleasure crafts through Lock and Dam No. 6 on the Mississippi River.

Her job takes grit, multi-tasking and a little bit of bathtub science.

Lock and Dam No. 6 in Trempealeau was built in 1935. The goal was to make the entire Mississippi River more navigable.

Jane Groth, a lock and dam operator for 10 years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, opens the miter gates to allow a pleasure craft through Wednesday at Lock and Dam 6 in Trempealeau, Wis. (photo by Katie Derus/Winona Daily News)

Navigation on average runs from St. Patrick’s Day to Thanksgiving. We close down for the most part in the winter.

Locking boats have a lot of the same steps, and we go through the same motions and the same movements. … Two people are needed to lock the towboats.

The boats go through our miter gates. There’s a pair up above and below the chamber.

There are valves on each end of the chamber we open that raises the water. … It’s all done by gravity. It only takes about six minutes or a foot per minute.

The valve machinery is like a big snow plow on a hinge and that opens up on either side and allows us to raise and lower the water. Inside the miter gates is our chamber. There are street lights on each end of the chamber.

It’s compared to a bathtub. You pull the plug and the water goes down, and it fills back up.

This is our central control station. We call these joysticks, and it just allows us to open the upper set of miter gates and both valves. Once we get them completely open we sound a horn, and that will signal to the boats it’s safe and clear to move through.

Towboats run 24/7, and we work around their schedules and they’re our priority. A towboat with 15 barges can take us up to two hours.

Government boats are first priority. Then it’s paddleboats, towboats and then pleasure crafts. … Towboats and paddleboats pay a fuel tax that pleasure boats don’t have to.

Pleasure crafts can call us on their cell phone outside the chamber, or they can pull a cord on the ends for lockage.

We use computers to track the towboats, but it’s rare you’re spending your whole day on the computer. We average 24 hours out. It’s a system set up and designed for the towboats. We can track their movements. We can see when they left a lock and how long it’ll take for their arrival. That does help us plan.

Our busiest time is the Fourth of July holiday. We’ll have more than 100 boats in here. The same with Oktoberfest and bass fishing tournaments.

Some days we have no towboats and others we’ll have three or four stacked up.

Although (no educational experience) is required, there is on-the-job training, and there are educational programs. I had military experience and worked in Panama.

There are three shifts here. The operators work 24/7. I’m typically on the day shift and fill in where needed.

You just have to be physically fit and be able to withstand the temperatures. We’re locking boats in November and if it’s raining, the towboats don’t stop.

It gets dirty around here. We do (chain) greasing. We’re digging in dirt and crawling around machinery. It’s not a desk job.

We do the landscaping. We do all our own carpentry and anything that needs to be repaired or fabricated. We’re pretty self-sufficient.

Being adaptable to learn some of the skills is important, because we do a broad range of things like painting, concrete, welding and small maintenance. You also have to be good with your hands. The more capable you are and multitask-orientated, the more you’ll move up.

Some things are repetitious, but each and every day is different. One day I’m planting flowers or running a concrete saw or taking folks on a tour.

You need to have an easy-going personality because we deal with the public and that’s our customer.

One of the challenges in dealing with the public and the boaters is some have to wait and they do get irate and swear. It’s just keeping a cool head and smoothing things over.

Over the years you get to see a lot of the same faces and get to know the crew by name. Same with the captains.

A deer had gotten locked through once … One guy locked through on a bicycle that he had set up on a wooden platform with pop bottles and a paddle. He said he was going to go as far as he could. We’ve seen a lot of homemade crafts go through.

This story is part of a weekly series called “On the Job,” where area residents talk about their careers. Contact reporter Amber Dulek at 507-453-3513 or amber.dulek@lee.net.