By STEVE BINDER
Illinois Correspondent

OLMSTED, Ill. — One of the country’s largest capital projects is entering the home stretch, as workers continue the construction of a new dam to go with two new locks along the Ohio River in southern Illinois.

The Olmsted Locks and Dam project, begun in 1996, is on schedule to be completed toward the end of 2016, assuming scheduled appropriations by Congress are approved, said resident engineer William Gilmour.

“We finished the locks in 2005, we’ve been working on the dam now and we are on pace to finish by 2016,” he said.

The two new 1,200 foot-long lock chambers will replace smaller ones that were finished in 1929. Gilmour noted the Army Corps of Engineers began updating the 53 locks and dams along the Ohio River in the 1950s, with Olmsted being the biggest and most expensive.

“So many goods come through this area, along the Ohio, because everything north feeds through it,” Gilmour said. “From Cairo, Illinois, to Paducah, Kentucky, nearly all of our traffic comes through the area.”

Barge traffic moving between the Mississippi River system and the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers must pass through this part of the Ohio; more tonnage passes this point than at any other place in the inland navigation system. Last year, nearly 170 million tons of goods moved through Olmsted locks – grain, coal, steel and other products valued at $17 billion.

By 2030, the Corps projects that some 1.4 billion tons will move through Olmsted. With the larger locks, and a new submergible dam, ships will be able to move through the area much faster. A five-hour move through the locks now will be cut down to about one hour once the project is completed, Gilmour said.

The project carries a steep price tag of about $2.1 billion.
While half the project’s cost is expected to be covered with federal funding, the other half is covered by the navigation industry itself through a tax on diesel fuel. The tax goes into the Inland Waterways Trust Fund.

Construction this spring has been slowed because of high water, but most progress to finish the dam largely will occur during low-water seasons later this summer and fall. It was during last year’s low-water season that workers installed the first six of 18 concrete shells that will make up the tainter gate portion of the dam, which will stretch the length of about two football fields.
Each of the massive shells is being constructed near the site and then moved into place during low-water times. Six more shells are scheduled to be placed later this fall, Gilmour said.

The high-lift dam will be capable of holding back some 20 feet of water, the engineer said, easing the flow of tows during high- and low-water times.
“This is a very crowded area when it comes to traffic, no doubt about it, and it’s vital that traffic move through here as quickly and safely as possible. Our economy depends on it,” he said.

Moving goods along the river systems is a fraction of the cost of doing so by truck over roads, plus so much more can be shipped in single trips versus moving goods on roads or railroad lines.