Speaker 1: Because it's a dynamic river. It is one of the
Speaker 1: most difficult bodies of order to navigate in North America.
Speaker 1: And she changes, She has seasons, just like everything else.
Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio. It's the big take.
Speaker 1: I'm West Coasova. Today something's gone missing from the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: Water m m the mighty Mississippi River. It cuss United
Speaker 1: States practically in half two thousand, three d and forty
Speaker 1: miles from northern Minnesota all the way down to the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. Walt Whitman celebrated it in verse. Huckleberry
Speaker 1: Finn saw it freedom on its waters, and today it
Speaker 1: still has some of that romance from any people, including
Speaker 1: Captain Ee Michael Bob. He's the Mississippi River pilot you
Speaker 1: heard at the very top. But as Captain Bob can
Speaker 1: tell you, the romantic Mississippi is also one of America's
Speaker 1: most critical routes for commerce. Always has been more than
Speaker 1: a trillion pounds of goods traveled down the river each year,
Speaker 1: or it did until water levels and key parts of
Speaker 1: the river dropped by a lot this year. That stops
Speaker 1: some ships cold, and the river is now backed up
Speaker 1: with billions of dollars of corn and wheat, fertilizer, steel,
Speaker 1: waiting for water levels to rise again. So what happens
Speaker 1: when the most important river in the world's largest economy
Speaker 1: can't keep a boat afloat. One person who knows the
Speaker 1: answer to that question is my colleague, Michael Hurtzer. He's
Speaker 1: an agricultural reporter for Bloomberg and Chicago, and he and
Speaker 1: several colleagues have written a big story about the Mississippi River. Michael,
Speaker 1: in your store, you're right that water levels on the
Speaker 1: Mississippi are way down. Why is that? Ext dream Drought
Speaker 1: across the entire country and in parts of North America
Speaker 1: at large, have really dwindled the water levels in the
Speaker 1: Mississippi to the lowest in a decade or more. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of coming at the worst time of year
Speaker 1: for farmers who are dependent on the river to float
Speaker 1: their supplies down to the Gulf of Mexico. And waters
Speaker 1: are so thin and dry in places that barges and
Speaker 1: boats just simply cannot pass by without getting stuck. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a problem that there's not really a lot
Speaker 1: of easy solutions other than praying for rain. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of us think about the Mississippi River as
Speaker 1: being this great American river, but we don't always think
Speaker 1: about it as a major waterway for the transportation of
Speaker 1: goods of all kinds around the country. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, grain comes down the river
Speaker 1: and then stuff like metal and fertilizer and chemicals come
Speaker 1: up the river. It's a very symbiotic, efficient supply chain
Speaker 1: that has really helped make you know, US industry a
Speaker 1: global powerhouse. Oftentimes, we we don't hear about it because
Speaker 1: it runs extremely smoothly. It's really when there's problems, and
Speaker 1: there's usually either low waters or high waters, and that's
Speaker 1: when we start to hear about it. If there is
Speaker 1: a problem, Mike, he said, a lot goes down the river,
Speaker 1: but I kind of want to give a sense of
Speaker 1: just how much does travel down the Mississippi, and estimated
Speaker 1: of all US freights is dependent on the river upwards
Speaker 1: or downwards to to get to where it needs to go.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, quite literally the lifeblood for the
Speaker 1: center of the country. And what kind of goods are
Speaker 1: moving down the river corn, soybeans, fertilizer, metal coming up, chemicals,
Speaker 1: road salt, fracking, sand, materials to make concrete, lots of
Speaker 1: petroleum products. So it's sort of like the entirety of
Speaker 1: the US infrastructure is coming down to Mississippi every year.
Speaker 1: You said that this is happening at the worst time
Speaker 1: of the year for it to happen. Why is this
Speaker 1: time of year so especially bad. So, you know, farmers
Speaker 1: in the northern hemisphere are are harvesting crops that they
Speaker 1: planted in the spring. Even if you're sort of driving
Speaker 1: around the Midwest, you might start to see corn just
Speaker 1: piling up in a just a giant mountain of corn,
Speaker 1: and they need to move their supplies onto the world
Speaker 1: market or else. The risk is prices will start to
Speaker 1: really drop. If you can't fit enough in your grain
Speaker 1: bin on the farm, you have to either you can
Speaker 1: store it outside for a little while, but you really
Speaker 1: don't want to store it outside for for long or
Speaker 1: it could go bad. What are the alternatives? Can they
Speaker 1: just simply divert it to trains or trucks or some
Speaker 1: other means. Yeah, So, like you know, right now, it's
Speaker 1: like the peak demand for freight, So a lot of
Speaker 1: the trucks and trains and barges were already lined up
Speaker 1: or spoken for at this time of year. So yes,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of alterna atives, but the cost is going
Speaker 1: to be where it hits you. You know, your large
Speaker 1: shipping prices on the river are like, you know, more
Speaker 1: than double the previous record. There's alternatives, but it's going
Speaker 1: to really cost you an armor a leg. So is
Speaker 1: this just what the Mississippi is going to be like now?
Speaker 1: Or if we have wet winter, rainy spring, will it
Speaker 1: fill back up and all will be well? So we
Speaker 1: can hope that the rains will come. For instance, in
Speaker 1: the Ohio river side that that part of the country
Speaker 1: and the mid South rarely stays in drought for long,
Speaker 1: but changing climate the experts tell us that there's just
Speaker 1: more volatility in the climate and droughts are getting a
Speaker 1: little bit more severe and longer. There's all happening at
Speaker 1: the same time that grain prices are high because of
Speaker 1: scarcity caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. How do you
Speaker 1: think that that is going to affect grain prices in
Speaker 1: the US given the challenges that we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: It's so high prices are are a signal to farmers
Speaker 1: across the world to continue planting, to to be able
Speaker 1: to try to capture some of the those high prices,
Speaker 1: and we should see farmers in many parts of the
Speaker 1: country planting more, which will have the effect of helping
Speaker 1: to cure those high prices. We will see markets start
Speaker 1: to change where farmers in the US will have more
Speaker 1: competition and global markets because everyone's gonna want to plant
Speaker 1: grain to capture those high prices exactly. Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: Brazil is one of the main areas there where they're
Speaker 1: planting a lot more corn and a lot more soy beans,
Speaker 1: and they're also putting a lot more money into their infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So Brazil is sort of stealing the march of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Farmer a little bit by being more competitive into the
Speaker 1: world market. While we've got some problems here, what does
Speaker 1: the knock on effective having slow passage down this important river. Basically,
Speaker 1: we think of the U. S. Farmers like their window
Speaker 1: on their harvest season is closing, you know, very quickly.
Speaker 1: If you had some of these deals had been signed
Speaker 1: months ago, and now that they're having trouble kind of
Speaker 1: getting the shipments moving, maybe your second guessing or you're
Speaker 1: looking for another alternative so that the new deals will
Speaker 1: be just they won't happen, or they'll go to someone
Speaker 1: else because it's either too costly or it'll take too
Speaker 1: long to get Mike hurts are, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: talking to me today. Thank you so much. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear what it's like to actually work on the river.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm joined by Captain E. Michael bop. He
Speaker 1: is the president of the Crescent Riverport Pilot Association and
Speaker 1: he is on the line from Medite, Louisiana. Captain, thanks
Speaker 1: for taking the time. Thank you. And it's gonna sound
Speaker 1: like a ridiculous question to you, but to our listeners, um,
Speaker 1: what is a river pilot? What is the job of
Speaker 1: a river pilot? A river pilot is basically a person
Speaker 1: that has extensive knowledge of the river. And so we're
Speaker 1: the Crescent River Pilots are one of three groups that
Speaker 1: operate on the Mississippi River. We navigate or facilitate the
Speaker 1: navigation of foreign deep draft vassels because you know, a
Speaker 1: foreign ship comes in and they have never been to
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River, has no idea how it works, has
Speaker 1: no idea about language on the river or the different
Speaker 1: Because it's a dynamic river, it is one of the
Speaker 1: most difficult bodies of order to navigate in North America,
Speaker 1: and she changes. She has seasons just like everything else,
Speaker 1: and you have to know that. So the river pilots
Speaker 1: have the expertise to bring the ship with the captain
Speaker 1: and facilitate the navigation. And we go from the head
Speaker 1: of the pass which is below Vellas Jump and Pilottown
Speaker 1: all the way to New Orleans, which is a hundred
Speaker 1: and five miles the Crescent. Pilots in some years we'll
Speaker 1: do seventeen thousand movements, so we're moving a lot of ships.
Speaker 1: So you're guiding these enormous ships and helping them to
Speaker 1: navigate this river. Right, So how we get on the
Speaker 1: ship is underway. We get on a crew boat and
Speaker 1: we matched the speed of the ship. We climb a
Speaker 1: Jacob's ladder while it's moving. What is it Jacob's ladder.
Speaker 1: It's a rope ladder on the side of the ship.
Speaker 1: So we do that every day. We do that over
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand times a year. So you're climbing up from
Speaker 1: the pilot's vessel upper rope ladder onto these enormous ships
Speaker 1: so that you can then speak to the captain and
Speaker 1: crew and give them instructions, right, we go up and
Speaker 1: between the master of the ship, the captain and the pilot,
Speaker 1: we safely navigate the ship and we have a ninety
Speaker 1: nine point nine percent safety and that does not happen
Speaker 1: by accident. That that happens by long term you know experience,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you the hundred and twenty pilots
Speaker 1: that I work alongside of some of the best ship
Speaker 1: anglers in the world. So, and we have a state
Speaker 1: commission to do this, and our responsibility is to keep
Speaker 1: the vessels safe so we can keep a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour cargo movement and not stop the river from operating.
Speaker 1: So that's basically what we do. That's the best explanation
Speaker 1: of what a pilot actually does. That's what we do.
Speaker 1: How large are the largest ships that are coming up
Speaker 1: and down in Mississippi. Some of them are twelve hundred
Speaker 1: feet so they're over three football team so it is,
Speaker 1: and they're they're over a hundred and seventy tons one barge.
Speaker 1: The cargo that is in one barge takes the place
Speaker 1: of seventy tractor trailers. On the corner road. There's big
Speaker 1: eighteen wheelers that are always the wheel at seventy of them.
Speaker 1: So if you had you took one toe with fifteen barges,
Speaker 1: that is actually taking over one thousand trucks cross the road. Well,
Speaker 1: we are talking all about the Mississippi River today, and
Speaker 1: you know we've heard from people who are talking about
Speaker 1: its effect on commerce, the low water on the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And what I wanted to do is talk to you.
Speaker 1: What are you experiencing? What are you seeing when you
Speaker 1: are on the water, Well from the river pilots standpoint
Speaker 1: and the lower part of the Mississippi River where we
Speaker 1: handle all fall and deep draft vessels. And when you
Speaker 1: say a deep draft vessel, exactly what is that for
Speaker 1: people who aren't familiar kind of like me. So shipping
Speaker 1: a ship a vessel, you know, whether it's a cruise
Speaker 1: ship or it's the tank or a deep draft vessel,
Speaker 1: is the distance between the water and the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ship. The only place you could go in a
Speaker 1: deep draft vessel is from the sea buoy and the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Back Mexico at southwest past it starts to
Speaker 1: get more shallow. So as far as the effect on
Speaker 1: the deep draft vessel below Baton Rouge, we're not physically
Speaker 1: affected it's not physically affecting our depth. We're not bumping
Speaker 1: the bottom or anything like that. The effect is above
Speaker 1: Baton Rouge and in the northern part of the country
Speaker 1: where the barges are losing water level and the barges
Speaker 1: are not getting down here, it's because of that bottleneck
Speaker 1: up above. It's slowing everything down when those burges would
Speaker 1: usually come your way. Yeah, So what happens specifically in
Speaker 1: bulk like corn, soybeans, rice, it has grown in the
Speaker 1: upper River of the America, It is put in a silo,
Speaker 1: and then from a silo it goes into a barge,
Speaker 1: and then the barge comes down river. It's stages below
Speaker 1: Baton Rouge, and then it goes to a grain elevator,
Speaker 1: and once it gets the grain elevator, it goes into
Speaker 1: holes of ships and then it goes forward. And that
Speaker 1: is the logistics of how it all works, and that
Speaker 1: it's affecting us in inventory. We're not getting our inventory
Speaker 1: in grain and soybeans right now. You know, October should
Speaker 1: have been a boom month and it's somewhat flat in
Speaker 1: the grain market. So that that's how it's affecting us.
Speaker 1: A barge is normally about ten feet deep below ten
Speaker 1: feet of draft, and that that is how they load
Speaker 1: the cargo. They load the cargo in an empty container,
Speaker 1: which is a barge. It gets lower and lower the
Speaker 1: more cargo you put. Usually of a barge will be
Speaker 1: ten feet deep. Well, they're running renting the ground and
Speaker 1: it's bottle necking where the barge is behind them can't
Speaker 1: go anywhere because the ones out of them are a ground.
Speaker 1: So right now there's an excess of about barges that
Speaker 1: are bottleneck above Baton Rouge and they can't get down here.
Speaker 1: Now is that essentially just a long line of burdges
Speaker 1: that are in a traffic jam that we will not move,
Speaker 1: and they actually stuck there. They're probably in different parts
Speaker 1: of the river. And what happens when you load something
Speaker 1: to ten feet and you only have eight and a
Speaker 1: half feet of water, you're gonna hit the bottom and
Speaker 1: that they're not really a ground. They just can't go
Speaker 1: any further because our water adapt its following. We move
Speaker 1: fifty feet draft ships and we're not effected at all
Speaker 1: in that respect. Just the cargo is not getting dawnly
Speaker 1: and that's the problem. But you know Mississippi River, she's
Speaker 1: got seasoned, and it changes all the time. It's it's
Speaker 1: either booming high or flow. This is fairly and abnormal low.
Speaker 1: It's lower than normal. So that's what's affecting the barges.
Speaker 1: We move of the grain that has grown in United
Speaker 1: States out of the Mississippi River. So it's not just
Speaker 1: important to the country, it's an important to the world.
Speaker 1: Or we feed the world out of the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: now and we've been talking a lot about what's happening
Speaker 1: up north from you, but with that bottleneck, with less
Speaker 1: of those goods coming down river, what are you and
Speaker 1: the pilots in your association kind of doing these days?
Speaker 1: What does your day look like? Oh, we're we're a
Speaker 1: very diverse port. When you take from the sea buoy
Speaker 1: to Baton Rouge and you combine all the ports, it
Speaker 1: is the largest port in the world. We're very diverse
Speaker 1: in cargo. Thank god, we moved tankers full of oil
Speaker 1: l G LPG that's liquid natural gas, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we we move a diverse amount of cargoes. Now,
Speaker 1: grain is a bread and butter, so we're moving to
Speaker 1: the cargo. We moved cruise ships. Every week we move
Speaker 1: over one point two million passengers a year and cruise ships.
Speaker 1: So thank god we're diverse and we have a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff move other than grain. Talking about
Speaker 1: how you expected this October would be a big boom
Speaker 1: month didn't happen. Are you now expecting that if the
Speaker 1: water does rise, that you are just going to be
Speaker 1: inundated with all of these barges coming to deliver what
Speaker 1: they couldn't deliver for so long face the famine. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do. I anticipate that cargo is coming. I anticipate
Speaker 1: being very busy and long, long nights, and as soon
Speaker 1: as one grain ship gets filled, another one's going to
Speaker 1: go right in. And then there's a couple of other
Speaker 1: chips that are waiting for grain right now. And it
Speaker 1: won't be like a waterfall, but it'll be a steady flow,
Speaker 1: and and that cargo is not lost, That cargo will
Speaker 1: be going to places where it needs ago, and we
Speaker 1: will become very, very inundated with business. Yes, what do
Speaker 1: you see in the future. Do you think that these
Speaker 1: sorts of feast and famine cycles they see describe it
Speaker 1: are going to become more frequent or is this just
Speaker 1: a one off? You know, every year you have a
Speaker 1: low river and it usually happens at this time of year,
Speaker 1: and the river has been here for million years of years, right, So,
Speaker 1: and I've worked on a river for forty two years.
Speaker 1: I've seen lower river and uh, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that the world depends on what comes out of the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River. That's what I think, Captain Bout, Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you.
Speaker 1: When we return, is the water coming back or is
Speaker 1: this just a new normal for the Mississippi and other
Speaker 1: rivers like it. I'm here with Clint Wilson, the director
Speaker 1: of the Louisiana State University Center for River Studies. So, Clint,
Speaker 1: can I ask you this? So you actually have like
Speaker 1: a working model of the river and you're actually running
Speaker 1: water through this model, and by doing that you can
Speaker 1: actually see what the actual river is doing. Yes, we
Speaker 1: reproduced the flows, you know, at a smaller scale, but
Speaker 1: we reproduced the flows in our model river again based
Speaker 1: on you know, the flows in the real river. We
Speaker 1: have the bathymetry, we have the levees, we have the
Speaker 1: meander bends, we have everything in our model river that
Speaker 1: the real Mississippi River has, as well as these plastic
Speaker 1: particles that move in our river, the way sand moves
Speaker 1: down the Mississippi River, and so we're able to replicate
Speaker 1: the flows, We're able to replicate the river stages. We're
Speaker 1: able to study how sea level rise in the future
Speaker 1: is going to impact the way the river hydraulics work,
Speaker 1: the water levels too, flows, how the sediment, how that's
Speaker 1: going to impact the way sand moves. You know, what
Speaker 1: we're really looking at it and helping the state understand
Speaker 1: is how that sand moves down the river. So it's
Speaker 1: really important because the United States Army Corps of Engineer
Speaker 1: spends well over a hundred million dollars a year dredging
Speaker 1: sand out of the Mississippi River to keep it deep
Speaker 1: enough for the ocean going vessels to get in and
Speaker 1: out of the Mississippi River. So imagine you spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time not just looking at the model, but
Speaker 1: actually looking at the actual river. When you go out
Speaker 1: and you look at the river, what do you see today? Well, oftentimes,
Speaker 1: you know, large sand bars are exposed. You know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of feet of sand, you know, thousands of feet up
Speaker 1: and down the river just exposed to the air. Now
Speaker 1: that normally would be covered by the water at this
Speaker 1: time of year. You also just see in some places,
Speaker 1: you know, how steep the river gets, very dramatically depending
Speaker 1: on where you are in the river. So many people
Speaker 1: will go out and look at the river, you know,
Speaker 1: when it's in flood stage. You know, Oh, they're fascinated
Speaker 1: by the high water. They're fascinated by how fast the
Speaker 1: water is flowing, how much water is flowing and what
Speaker 1: that means, and the ships and the tankers are up
Speaker 1: so high. But you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are seeing the river now in a different state
Speaker 1: that they normally just don't think about and they don't appreciate,
Speaker 1: you know, how much work and effort from the army,
Speaker 1: corps of engineers and others goes into maintaining that river
Speaker 1: so that we can have ports, we can have communities,
Speaker 1: we can have facilities along the river, and those ships
Speaker 1: and barges can get up in them down the river reliably.
Speaker 1: Is what we're seeing now, just part of that normal
Speaker 1: kind of boom and bus cycling for the river. Are
Speaker 1: we seeing something different here? We're seeing something a little
Speaker 1: bit different in most of the river now here in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River that flows through Louisiana. We see these
Speaker 1: river flows and these river levels about every ten or
Speaker 1: twelve years. And that's because that's right, yes, And that's
Speaker 1: because you know, you think about all the different parts
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi River watershed that contribute to the flow
Speaker 1: that's coming down through Louisiana and out in the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. You know, whether it's the Ohio River, the
Speaker 1: Upper Mississippi River, the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, right,
Speaker 1: and so in a normal fall, you know, one or
Speaker 1: two of those watersheds, those rivers may be low, but
Speaker 1: you know, several weathers, a couple of weathers are at
Speaker 1: their normal fall flows, and so you know, overall the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River watershed really isn't low. What we're seeing this year, though,
Speaker 1: is all of the rivers that are contributing in the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River are low. We see, you know, these kind
Speaker 1: of critical or this I'm gonna say crisis conditions right
Speaker 1: in different parts of the watershed that we normally don't
Speaker 1: see all at the same time. Maybe that's the best
Speaker 1: way to say it. And is this because we're just
Speaker 1: going through a normal drought season, or is this a
Speaker 1: larger change having to do with climate. My guess is
Speaker 1: we're going to see that this is the type of
Speaker 1: event that's probably or the confluence of events. Right. When
Speaker 1: I say that, confluence events meaning it's going to be
Speaker 1: dry in the Ohio basin perhaps at the same time
Speaker 1: as it is in the Upper Mississippi as the Missouri. Right,
Speaker 1: those are the kind of things that probably will be happening,
Speaker 1: you know, more often, or there's a higher probability of
Speaker 1: those happening at the same time, and we need to
Speaker 1: be thinking about how we can manage the Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: you know, since that's the topic of today's show, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to be thinking about Okay, so
Speaker 1: what does that mean if we start to see these
Speaker 1: type of event and so these type of conditions happen
Speaker 1: more frequently, what is it we can do in the
Speaker 1: future to mitigate against that? What are some of the
Speaker 1: things that can be done to mitigate these effects? I
Speaker 1: think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that
Speaker 1: Mother Nature holds the spicket, right, So so the first
Speaker 1: thing is, you know, there's not a whole lot we
Speaker 1: can do in terms of the rainfall, the precipitation to
Speaker 1: snow et cetera. However, we could potentially and again I'm
Speaker 1: not suggesting this is the path forward, but the Tennessee
Speaker 1: Valley Authority manages a number of reservoirs along the Tennessee
Speaker 1: River and in that basin, well, those are primarily used
Speaker 1: for prey hydroelectric power generation as well as flood control.
Speaker 1: The Missouri Basin has the Missouri River has a number
Speaker 1: of dams and reservoirs for flood control. So one of
Speaker 1: the things we might be doing is not just thinking
Speaker 1: about how do they, how are they used, how effective
Speaker 1: are they in control and reducing the flood risk, but
Speaker 1: how might we be able to or how might we
Speaker 1: have to use those to maintain minimal flows in the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River, to keep the navigation up and down the
Speaker 1: river right, the commerce moving. Most of the engineering having
Speaker 1: to do the Mississippi River is trying to contain it.
Speaker 1: Whereas now you're talking about things to do the opposite. Well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, and that's why that's another piece to this.
Speaker 1: You know, you understanding that there's economic hardship with the
Speaker 1: grains sitting in you know, in facilities up in the
Speaker 1: Midwest not being able to get out, but I think
Speaker 1: this type of event does help make us think about, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. The Army Corps of Engineers has a plan
Speaker 1: in place if all the rivers contributing into the Mississippi
Speaker 1: are at their own flood state, is what if they
Speaker 1: were all in flood at the same time. And so
Speaker 1: I think this type of event makes us think about, Okay,
Speaker 1: the other extreme, right, and what can you do? And
Speaker 1: I think one of the other strategies would be, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe if we can't get more water into the river,
Speaker 1: there might need to be more funding or some more
Speaker 1: innovative ways to keep the navigation channel open. And that
Speaker 1: might just be, hey, we need to make sure they're
Speaker 1: consistent funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to go
Speaker 1: in and dredge the navigation channel deep enough and wide
Speaker 1: enough so that even when we get these extremely low
Speaker 1: water levels, that the barges can still travel up and
Speaker 1: down like they normally do. What's the environmental impact of
Speaker 1: having such low water levels on the river. So when
Speaker 1: we think about the habitat and the ecology or along
Speaker 1: river banks, along rivers, you know, any one particular year
Speaker 1: typically doesn't have a dramatic effect. And what about drinking water.
Speaker 1: So the bottom of the Mississippi River is in a
Speaker 1: minimum fifty feet below sea level. It's not in a
Speaker 1: lot of places deeper than that, and so the denser
Speaker 1: salt water from the Gulf of Mexico wants to move,
Speaker 1: you know, basically inland. But what happens is typically is
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River's flowing enough where it can keep that
Speaker 1: saltwater out. Well, when these low flow years, that saltwater
Speaker 1: starts to move up the bottom of the river. And
Speaker 1: when you start to get to places like Plaquemins Parish,
Speaker 1: which is the parish in the lower most Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: it's right at basically the mouth of the river. There's industry,
Speaker 1: There are communities there that rely upon the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: for their drinking water. The City of New Orleans relies
Speaker 1: upon the Mississippi River for their drinking water, and a
Speaker 1: lot of other industries along the lowermost river. None of
Speaker 1: those facilities or communities water treatment plants are set up
Speaker 1: to handle saline water. They just don't have that in
Speaker 1: their standard operating procedure, in their design, or within their equipment.
Speaker 1: And so what's having to happen is Blackman's parish has
Speaker 1: had to go out and procure desalinization equipment so that
Speaker 1: they can in essence, pre treat the Mississippi River water
Speaker 1: before they put it into their drinking water system. Do
Speaker 1: you first see a time when all the dredging and
Speaker 1: other engineering feats just won't be up to it, and
Speaker 1: the river will no longer be able to transport goods
Speaker 1: and be the same Mississippi River that we see now.
Speaker 1: We need to have the Mississippi River connected to the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. Now, what we might see twenty years
Speaker 1: from now in terms of what the lower most Missisippi
Speaker 1: River looks like may be different, but we're still going
Speaker 1: to have to have infrastructure. We're gonna have to dredge,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to do things to make sure that
Speaker 1: the navigation that commerce can move up and in and
Speaker 1: out of the river reliably. Clint Wilson, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you
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