Mighty Mississippi: River remains vital to health of national economy

From his excursion-boat dock off a cobblestone landing built by black slaves in Memphis 200 years ago, Capt. William Lozier peers out at the imposing Hernando De Soto Bridge and reflects on the significance of the Mississippi River.

“The more traffic you see coming under that bridge,” he asserts, “the lower gas prices go. It shows how important this river is, and always has been, for shipping.”

Lozier, 32, a third-generation owner of Memphis Riverboats Inc., referred specifically to the 195-foot, double-hull tanker barges carrying petroleum from the Gulf Coast to refineries up the river.

But economic dependence on the Mississippi extends to far more than gas and oil. It also serves as the nation’s primary transportation channel for fertilizer, industrial chemicals, lumber, pulp and paper, sand and gravel, steel and coal.

For Midwest grain farmers, it is a lifeline to the world. Corn, soybeans and wheat are shipped slowly down the river to ports in south Louisiana, then exported to foreign lands.

Pushed by 10,000-horsepower towboats, flotillas of barges ply the watery highway at 4 to 8 miles per hour, delivering more than 400 million tons of bulk cargo annually, federal statistics show.

Known as America’s main artery of commerce, the mighty Mississippi meanders 2,350 miles – starting as a trickle of headwater in the north woods of Minnesota and growing to a mile-wide mouth at the Gulf of Mexico.

That makes it the longest river in North America, and the third largest watershed in the world, behind the Congo and the Amazon.

As the crow flies, the distance from Minnesota to Louisiana is less than 700 miles. But Mark Twain, in his 1883 book, Life on the Mississippi, described it as the “crookedest river in the world” because it zigzags through 10 states. Floods, dams, locks, levees and jetties have altered its natural course over the years.

The National Waterways Conference, the federal agency that tracks inland river traffic, estimates 400,000 people rely on the Mississippi’s transportation system for their livelihood.

Lanny Chalk, manager of the barge company Fullen Dock and Warehouse of Memphis, is one of them. He said the river has long played a major role in domestic and international trade, dating to the days of early American explorers.

“There are a lot of people out there who have no idea what the Mississippi River contributes to the world,” he said.

Hokan Miller, a dispatcher with the barge company Upper River Services of St. Paul, Minn., said countless tons of grain are shipped down the river for overseas destinations. He said it is mostly used to feed livestock in places where there isn’t enough water to grow feed needed to raise animals as a food source.

“It’s a story of the center of North America exporting to, and feeding, the rest of the world,” said Miller.

Still, the volume of grain shipments has declined in recent years as more ethanol manufacturing plants populate the Midwest, he said. These plants turn corn into alcohol fuel for motor vehicles, a process that has gained momentum with mounting concern over U.S. reliance on foreign oil.