A barge carrying a 750,000-pound steam turbine generator is pushed through the Chickamauga Lock by a towboat. The lock was shut down for emergency repairs Tuesday.Map
Chickamauga Lock
A gate failure in the aging Chickamauga Lock has shut down barge and recreational boat traffic on the Tennessee River for up to three weeks.
The unplanned closing of the 74-year-old lock halted river shipments between Chattanooga and Knoxville and forced one Chattanooga barge company to idle its 16-employee tugboat crew until the lock reopens.
"The bomb that we have been warned to expect for the past three or four years seemed to hit us Monday afternoon," said Pete Serodino, president of the river shipping business founded by his father. "We've had scheduled shutdowns before, but in my 30 years in the business I don't ever recall an unplanned shutdown for this long."
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the lock at the Chickamauga Dam in Hixson, said Tuesday a routine inspection found cracks in the anchors to the upper gate. The problem required immediate maintenance to avoid a more permanent lock failure, according to Jeff Ross, the navigation branch chief for the Corps in Nashville.
"The Corps will begin repairs as soon as possible after its evaluation is completed," Ross said. "I am well aware of the impacts this closure has on commercial and recreational vessels moving up and down the Tennessee River. We are moving as quickly as possible to address the situation."
The temporary shutdown renewed calls for a new fuel tax to restart work on a replacement lock and heightened the political battle over the stalled project just a week before the Nov. 4 congressional election.
"This is appalling on so many levels that it leaves one nearly speechless," Mary Headrick, the Democrat trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., in Tennessee's 3rd District, said in a statement.
Dr. Headrick blasted Fleischmann for not previously supporting a fuel tax increase she said was needed to fund a new Chickamauga Lock.
"Our current Representative does not understand the urgency of the Lock issue nor how to interact with others to achieve funding," Headrick said.
But Fleischmann, the sole Tennessee representative on the House Appropriations Committee, said he helped change the funding formula for inland waterway projects last year to provide maintenance funds for the existing lock and to open the way for future funding of a new and bigger replacement lock.
"The Chickamauga Lock has been a top priority for Congressman Fleischmann since day one, as evidenced by his leading the fight to change the lock's funding system, not using the Band-Aid of the past," Tyler Threadgill, a spokesman for Fleischmann, said Tuesday.
The Corps closed the lock around 5 p.m. Monday, just three hours before a congressional debate in which Fleischmann championed his work toward helping to fix the structure. During the debate, Fleischmann said he is now willing to support what he called a "user fee" by boosting the federal diesel tax on barge operators to replenish the Inland Waterways Trust Fund.
Chuck Fleischmann and Mary Headrick are seen in this composite photo.But Headrick chided Fleischmann for not pushing through such a tax earlier to help provide more funds for a new lock.
The Corps has spent nearly $200 million over the past decade on the replacement. But that work stalled three years ago when funds fell short in the trust fund, primarily because of a costly project on the Ohio River and a recession-induced drop in fuel tax revenues.
The Corps estimates it will cost nearly $500 million more to finish the new Chickamauga Lock.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the shutdown "underscores the urgent need to rebuild Chickamauga Lock" and for a higher fuel tax to fund the improvements.
The barge industry, eager to maintain inland waterways threatened by aging locks and dams, has endorsed a 6- to 8-cent-per-gallon increase in the diesel fuel tax.
"Congress has done the right thing by finally agreeing to put Chickamauga Lock fourth in the line of essential American waterways to be rebuilt, and authorizing new funding to do it," Alexander said in a statement Tuesday. "But the work will not be done fast enough to keep jobs flowing into East Tennessee until Congress accepts the offer of barge owners to pay more to accelerate the work."
The Chickamauga Lock, originally constructed in the 1930s, suffers from concrete growth in the rock aggregate of the lock chamber. The Corps has had to install extra anchors and support systems as part of what it calls "aggressive maintenance."
"What happened Monday is what we've been warning about for years and it's another sign of the urgency of getting the new lock built at Chickamauga," said Cline Jones, executive director of the Tennessee River Valley Association, a trade group of river users.
"This shutdown is going to be an inconvenience for a lot of industry upstream of Chattanooga and could be a real hardship if it isn't soon fixed. Hopefully, this will be a wake-up call to help convince Congress and the Corps to finish the new Chickamauga Lock."
Reporter Louie Brogdon contributed to this report
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.