UTICA, Ill. – As work continued on the Starved Rock Lock and Dam at Utica on Oct. 11, contractors were putting finishing touches on repair work further down the Illinois River at the Peoria and LaGrange locks. The reopening of the Peoria and LaGrange locks meant barges will soon be seen transporting harvest grain and other farm commodities on the Illinois River from Peoria to the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Upstream of Peoria at the Starved Rock, Marseilles and Dresden Island locks, work is expected to wrap up on schedule by the end of October.

This is according to Alan Marshall, public information director for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) Rock Island District, which is overseeing summer long maintenance and repair work being done at five lock and dam locations on the Illinois River.

“Right now the Illinois waterway is open from the Mississippi River to Starved Rock, which is still closed as of today,” Marshall said. “Starved Rock completion is scheduled for Oct. 29 barring any unforeseen circumstances. Marseilles is on schedule for Oct. 29 as well, and Dresden was open, but now is closed as scheduled through Oct. 24 with partial closure the 25th through the 28th with restrictions.”

After Oct. 28, commercial river vessels should once again be able to access the Illinois River from as far north as Lake Michigan in order to deliver agricultural products, petroleum and coal all the way to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. 

“There may be limited closures needed at places like Peoria just to shore up some of the work, and LaGrange is going to have intermittent delays as well. Right now the good news is that they are open for navigation and traffic is moving on that part of the river,” Marshall said.

Brief lock and dam closures on the Illinois River planned for 2023 are on hold for the moment while funding is determined, Marshall said. “We’ll probably be able to get to that in the next year or two.”

Construction challenges, other than state-required COVID-19 precautions, have been few and far between, with site managers and contractors cooperating to make sure safety measures are upheld and work is progressing on schedule. “To me it’s been very impressive to see these projects completed successfully and on time when the whole world has been challenged by the pandemic,” he said. “And mother nature was overall very friendly to us during this period.”

“The big ones to be completed are the Peoria and LaGrange locks and dams,” said Jim Tarmann, managing director for the Illinois Corn Growers Association, which lobbied for lock and dam refurbishment for more than two decades. 

Though Illinois River locks and dams may now prove more reliable than in past decades due to the repairs, barge capacity will remain an issue until work is done to modernize locks to accommodate today’s three-wide, five-deep barge alignments, according to Tarmann.

A 2019 USDA study showed that delays caused by antiquated locks and dams can cost up to $739 per hour for an average tow, amounting to over $44 million per year. An unplanned closure to the LaGrange Lock and Dam would affect commerce in 18 states, threaten the primary soybean export path and lead to a $2.2 billion loss in farm dependent incomes, according to the National Waterway Foundation.