FWIW,… some news about the drought that is having dramatic effects in other regions of the USA
[quote] Traffic jams and stuck barges are clogging up a critical artery of the U.S. economy, as a prolonged drought pushes the Mississippi River’s water levels to near-record lows.
Around 500 million tons of supplies are ferried along the Mississippi River every year with trade value worth $130 billion, according to the Port of New Orleans, mainly agricultural products, like corn and soybeans, along with fuel products. The Mississippi River Basin produces more than 90% of U.S. agricultural exports, according to the National Park Service, and nearly 80% of the world’s grain exports.
But all that is coming to a standstill amid historic drought conditions that are making the river untraversable for most shipping barges. River levels are now at their lowest level in a decade after historically low rainfall in recent months, becoming the latest supply-chain snag to hit the U.S.
“America is going to shut down if we shut down,” Mike Ellis, CEO of American Commercial Barge Line in Indiana, told the Wall Street Journal this week.
River traffic jams
The low water levels have clogged up entire sections of the Mississippi River in recent weeks, wreaking havoc on the local economy.
At least 2,000 barges were backed up along the river last week, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the U.S. Coast Guard. Also last week, the Coast Guard warned that at least eight heavy barges had become “grounded” in particularly shallow parts of the river.
With fewer barges able to navigate the river and longer wait times, prices are starting to go up.
“It’s definitely having an impact on the local economy, because the commercial use of this river has almost completely stopped,” George Flaggs, mayor of Vicksburg, Miss., told local news channel WAPT earlier this week, adding that the river around Vicksburg is the lowest he’s seen it in nearly 70 years.
“This will actually affect us in a very negative way. We have to have less cargo on our barges and less tonnage moving. It affects our revenues,” Austin Golding, president of Golding Barge Line, told WAPT.
It’s the worst possible time for a drought in the Mississippi, as early fall is typically when grain is harvested in the Mississippi Basin and sent down the river. Soybeans are the most commonly shipped commodity on the river, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, but the low water levels are throwing the supply chain into chaos.
bottom line,… “drought” is happening all over and people (in general) are not aware of the the disaster (of biblical proportions) that actually is a self inflected wound (caused by humanity)
