Posted on August 16, 2016
By Janice McIntyre, El Dorado News-Times
If local and area residents would like to see the Ouachita River remain a viable channel for commercial traffic and recreational use and, “If you want to keep what you have,” congressional representatives should be contacted to request that adequate federal funding be provided to maintain and operate the river.
Bill Hobgood, executive director of the Ouachita River Valley Association, talked to members of the El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce board recently to stress the need for funds to operate and maintain the river.
Reminding members of the old adage “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” Hobgood stressed the importance of contacting U.S. Sen. John Boozman, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton and U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman – Arkansas’ representatives in Congress – and urging them to lobby for increased funds for maintenance, operation of the locks and yearly dredging to provide nine-feet deep and 100-feet wide channels and bank stabilization to allow for commercial and recreational use of the river.
“The Ouachita River is a vital part of South Arkansas and important for economic development,” Hobgood said.
Hobgood has served as executive director of ORVA since 2008 and resides in Vicksburg, Miss. Mike Dumas of El Dorado, who currently serves as the president of ORVA, is also serving as president and chief executive officer of the El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce.
Hobgood explained the need for the Navigation Project for the Ouachita River in Arkansas and Louisiana. He said members of ORVA travel twice a year to Washington, D.C. to lobby for adequate funds to maintain and operate the four locks and dams on the Ouachita River – two in Arkansas at H.K. Thatcher (completed in 1984) and Felsenthal (1976) and two in Louisiana, Columbia (1970) and Jonesville (completed in 1972). The ORVA has seven board members from Arkansas and seven from Louisiana and there are over 100 members in the association, Hobgood said. The four locks and dams were constructed to provide a constant navigation channel along the Ouachita River.
Revenue for the association comes from membership dues and fundraising efforts and ORVA supports the Ouachita-Black Navigation Project, the Ouachita levee, along with Lake Ouachita, DeGray Lake and Lake Greeson in Arkansas.
While the major focus of the Ouachita River Valley Association is on operation, maintenance and completion of the Ouachita-Black Rivers Navigation Project and associated infrastructure, ORVA also supports economic development projects throughout the Ouachita River basin.
The locks and dams were first designed to be operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Hobgood noted that the level of service at the lower two locks in Louisiana (Jonesville and Columbia) returned to 24/7/365 on Nov. 15, 2015 after being operated at two shifts per days since July 2012. The level of service at Felsenthal and H.K. Thatcher in Arkansas is from 5 a.m. until 3 p.m. – only on weekdays – with no weekend service. “Shippers leave if they can’t get through the locks and dams – those need to be operated on a 24/7/365 basis,” Hobgood said.
He told board members that in 2010, 17 commercial shippers were using the Ouachita to move goods – a number that fell to five shippers in 2015. Recreational vehicles using the locks and dams to travel the river decreased from 1,635 in 2011 to 457 in 2015.
Tonnage, the size or carrying capacity of a ship measured in tons, on the Ouachita-Black system was adversely impacted as the 2015 commerce was 945,078 tons, down 13 percent from 1,075,520 in 2014. Tonnage was also impacted by depressed oil prices and lower agricultural production.
Hobgood said the fiscal year 2016 budget of $8,076,000 is inadequate to maintain the locks and dams and dredge for a navigable waterway.
He said an additional $2 million is still needed for dredging this season as capability level of $2 million was not received in FY-16 allocation. “Additional dredging funds of $2 million is ORVA’s number one funding priority for FY 2016-17,” Hobgood told chamber board members.
In May 2015, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was scheduled to begin dredging at 22 critical sites – 20 in Arkansas and two in Louisiana – but due to heavy rains in this area at that time, dredging was delayed. During the delay, Corps workers discovered structure problems with the tainter gates at Felsenthal and H.K. Thatcher. To make the repairs, Corps officials took $1 million from money allocated for dredging to fix the gates and the number of sites scheduled to be dredged was reduced by about one-third, Dumas said in June 2015.
“We were hopeful that the Corps will be able to dredge the remaining sites in Arkansas that were not dredged last season which would restore the authorized channel depth/width and provide local industrial development agencies the opportunity to recruit water based industry to the area,” Hobgood said. He said $3.5 million in needed annually to dredge the Ouachita River in Louisiana and Arkansas.
At present, no commercial traffic is moving in the Arkansas portion of the project. The project needs to be funded at $11 million annually for efficient operation and maintenance and dredging. At one time, both Cross Oil and Tetra were using the river to ship goods through H.K. Thatcher and Felsenthal, but they are now shipping their products via pipelines and railways. He said if the river is placed in a “low use system” category, “it will be hard to get federal funds.” And while commercial traffic in Louisiana is continuing, it is also decreasing in the amount of tonnage.
Hobgood also explained that the Corps lacks authority to conduct bank stabilization works on the river system since bank stabilization was not an authorized project purpose. ORVA submitted a package in November 2014 to add bank stabilization as a project purpose, but it was not initially approved, so it was resubmitted and it is now included in the Administration’s 2016 Report to Congress on Future Water Resources.
Hobgood asked that residents “Get Vocal,” and press for maintenance of an authorized channel in Arkansas; press for bank stabilization/water supply as a Navigation Project Purpose in the 2016 Water Resources Development Act and request that local company officials participate in ORVA’s trips to Washington in order to lobby for funding for the Ouachita. He also said local residents should stress the importance of a navigation pool for water supply, participate in economic impact study of the Navigation Project and “meet with Col. (Michael) Derosier, commander, of the Vicksburg District of the Corps of Engineers.”
Source: El Dorado News-Times
