FLORENCE – Before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a series of locks and dams, you could walk across the Ohio River at Cincinnati.
“It might not be more than one or two feet deep at this time of year,” said John Cheek, maintenance program manager of the Great Lakes and Ohio River division of the corps. “You couldn’t navigate it very well, though, because it was full of snags and obstructions and debris.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for making sure everything from small pleasure craft to large commercial barges can navigate the Ohio River well. Cheek explained how the locks and dams operate at a meeting of the Florence Rotary Club on Monday, August 6.
The corps is responsible for maintenance of the 53 locks and dams at strategic locations along the 981-mile stretch of the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Ill. The federal agency began clearing snags and obstructions in the river as early as 1834, Cheek said.
“They still had the problem of low water” after the riverbed was cleared, he said. “At this time of year, boats still couldn’t navigate the Ohio River.”
The corps began building locks and dams in the 1870s as the transportation of coal escalated following the Civil War. The first lock was completed in 1875 at Pittsburgh and the last was finished in 1929 near Olmstead, Ill.
The original dams, many of which are still in place, consist of wooden “wickets” or gates that are raised from the river floor to hold back water and create a pool to aid navigation. The lock is a chamber in which water can be raised or lowered to enable a vessel to move from the level of water above the dam to the level below it or vice versa.
The original lock chambers were 600 feet long. As the power of tow vessels increased, however, the string of barges on some tows grew well beyond 600 feet. As a result, towboat operators were forced to lock through the barges in sections, sometimes backing up river traffic behind them. So the corps began a modernization program after World War II to expand the dams, Cheek said.
The Markland Locks and Dam near Warsaw is among the more modern dams, which are made of concrete and steel with large steel gates lowered into the river to hold back the water. The Markland Dam has a 1,200-foot chamber that will accommodate 15 barges, as well as a 600-foot auxiliary chamber.
More than 57 million tons of cargo passed through the locks at Markland in 2010, according to Waterways Council, Inc.
For information about weekly meetings, guest speakers and community service opportunities of the Florence Rotary Club, contact Brad Shipe, President, at bradshipe@hotmail.com or (859) 282-7040. Visit the group’s web site at www.florencerotary.org . Florence Rotary meets weekly on Mondays at noon at the Airport Hilton Hotel in Florence.
