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

Published - Saturday, June 28, 2008

Bad year for barges: At least 100 still stranded in port

Grain is loaded onto barges Friday in the Winona Commercial Harbor. (Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News)

By Mark Sommerhauser / Winona Daily News

It’s been a bad year for barges at Winona’s port.

More than 100 barges are stranded in the city’s commercial harbor, waiting for the reopening of Mississippi River locks and dams that have been closed due to flooding in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

The delays are yet another blow for port businesses that ship grain down river, following a late thaw and the closure of the Interstate Bridge. Barge traffic in the commercial harbor reflects those delays — it’s down 36 percent from the same time last year.

“It’s been the slowest start in 20 years” at the port, said Larry Laber, manager of CHS, which ships farmers’ grain downriver and offloads fertilizers to ship to local retailers.

CHS has at least 50 barges stranded in Winona’s harbor, Laber said. The barges likely won’t be able to leave until after July 5, when the locks and dams are tentatively scheduled to reopen. The reopening could create a traffic jam on the upper portion of the Mississippi, plus a shortage of empty barges to load more grain into, he said.

The dam closures don’t just affect businesses that ship commodities downriver. Dan Nisbit, president of CD Corp., said his business is waiting on 20 incoming salt and coal barges stranded near Davenport, Iowa.

Laber said the situation creates even more headaches for CHS, which just lost 250,000 bushels of grain because a grower was unable to ship the freight across the Interstate Bridge.

The lock and dam closures alone aren’t devastating for port businesses, said Judy Bodway, director of Winona’s Port Authority. But combined with the bridge closure and the March delays due to the late thaw, the closures could add to a cumulative effect on port businesses, she said.

“This just makes things doubly hard for them,” Bodway said.

Contact Mark Sommerhauser at (507) 453-3514 or msommerhauser@winonadailynews.com