Decades of Neglect Leave Southern Rivers Stranded

Is this any way to run a railroad, a highway or a skyway--or in this case, a river system?

I recently heard a report about some infrastructure renovation that’s needed on a threeriver project down in the deepest reaches of South Georgia and South Alabama and parts of the Florida Panhandle to restore navigability along the Chattahoochee, Flint and

Apalachicola river systems. The Chattahoo

chee and Flint rivers converge at Lake Seminole in Southwest Georgia to form the

Apalachicola River, which flows into

Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Needed through

out that waterway system is an estimated $6.2 billion in federal lock and spillway infrastructure that has long been derelict for use on the three rivers. The spillways are inoperable and all three locks failed years ago, rendering them closed to all government, commercial and recreational vessel traffic. “This limits the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers from fulfilling their fundamental functions on the rivers,” said Phil Clayton, executive director of the TriRivers Waterway Development Association, based in Eufaula, Alabama, where the Chattahoochee separates that state from Georgia. The project “has

the full potential to change living conditions for many of the 1.2 million residents of the tristate region,” he told an audience in Southwest Georgia.

Clayton pointed

out that for the last 30 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has deferred maintenance BELOVED LOCAL ATTORNEY PASSES AWAY: JOHN GORDON ROACH, JR. (1938 - 2025) John Gordon Roach, Jr. September 8, 1938 - October 22, 2025 DECADES OF NEGLECT LEAVE SOUTHERN RIVERS STRANDED by Mac Gordon, GAZETTE Contributing Editor GORDON

federal funding on this problem to other Corps projects “until the (river) system is now under complete failure.” Sounds to me like the finest form of unadulterated government neglect imaginable.

An online report in June placed repairs at $92.4 million of our money for locks and spillways and an additional $44 million to restore river channels and remediate former disposal sites.

Clayton said the project to restore navigation and recreational services in the system could yield 29,000 new jobs and upwards of $1.99 billion in total economic output across the tri-state region. The rehabilitation and construction could start within three years. Funding short

falls in the Corps’ civil works budget over the last 25 years resulted in approximately $136 million of needed repairs, Clayton said. Absence of spill

ways maintenance reduced the ability to manage water flow and flood control properly and safely on the system. Lack of maintenance work caused permanent closure of the last three locks in 2021.

Dredging the

Apalachicola is no longer available, limiting access to the Intracoastal Waterway that connects the three states to the Gulf of Mexico.

Consequently,

commercial navigation of barge traffic and large recreational throughtraffic on the three rivers ceased. Those types of river usage could return upon completion of the project.

The description

of the three rivers’ needs-caused mainly by governmental neglect, not all of it by the Corpsmade me wonder whether the same infrastructural needs are present on the mighty Mississippi.

This type of

equipment is prevalent on the Upper Mississippi, but not past Cairo, Illinois, at its confluence with the Ohio River. There, the nation’s most important waterway becomes twice as deep and wide as it exists north of St. Louis, negating the necessity of locks and dams through the river’s southern frontier.

The levee system

bordering the river southward provides security from overflowsbut not always, as evidenced by almost yearly flooding on farmland in the prodigious South Mississippi Delta.

Along the Upper

Mississippi, there is a $1 billion backlog of maintenance work planned on locks, dams and spillways that were built to last 50 years, but are now twice that age and sustained only on a “fixas-fail” basis.

And we wonder why our government has already been closed four times this century (2013-1819-25)?

---Mac Gordon is a native of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.