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0:00There is perhaps no single geographic feature
that has advanced the American economy more
0:05than the Mississippi River. That’s because nowhere
else on earth has a river been crafted into this
0:11long of a navigable, commercial waterway—nowhere
else can one float a barge 1,800 miles or 2,900
0:18kilometers down a river without encountering
one stretch of low-water, one bout of rapids,
0:23one rock in the way, one single obstacle
to seamless, commercial navigation.
0:28And compounding this waterway’s supremacy is
its tributaries—the Tennessee river extends
0:33navigability as far as Knoxville; the Arkansas
as far as Tulsa; the Missouri to Sioux City;
0:38the Illinois to Chicago; and the Ohio
extends almost a thousand river miles
0:43from the Mississippi, connecting Pittsburgh to
all the rest of the Mississippi River region.
0:49The simple fact that goods from Pittsburgh, or
Minneapolis, or Omaha, or anywhere else on this
0:54map can be transported, exclusively by barge,
as far as New Orleans, then transferred onto
0:59ocean-going vessels bound for… anywhere cannot
be overstated. Trucks can move a ton of cargo
1:05about 145 miles with a gallon of fuel. Trains,
and the reduced friction borne out of steel on
1:10steel contact, extend that gallon to 477 miles.
But the vessels used on the Mississippi are able
1:17to transport that same ton as far as 647 miles
on a gallon of fuel. And the cost differential
1:24is even greater than the efficiency one due to
scale—a single barge equals the capacity of 35
1:30rail cars or 134 trucks, but a single tug can
push upwards of 30, sometimes even 40 barges,
1:37leading to tremendous economies of scale. By
one estimate, while trucks cost an average
1:42of $5.35 per ton, per mile, and trains $2.53,
tugs transport that same ton a mile at a cost
1:50of just 97 cents. The friction of difference
just works differently in the United States.
1:57Especially because beyond the Mississippi and
its tributaries, there’s still the entire Great
2:02Lakes system. The Soo Locks, in Sault Ste. Marie,
Michigan, allow for navigation from Lake Superior
2:08to the rest of the Great Lakes. By some measures,
these are America’s most important locks as nearly
2:13100% of the country’s Iron Core pellets pass
through them on their way to lake-side processing
2:18plants in Indiana and Ohio. But if not carrying
iron, a vessel from Duluth can float through
2:22Lake Huron, then Erie, take this Canadian canal
system that bypasses the impassable Niagara Falls,
2:28then make its way through the St Lawrence
Seaway System to access the Atlantic Ocean.
2:32Add on the Columbia River in the Pacific
Northwest, connecting inland ports as far
2:36as Idaho to the ocean; the Sacramento Deep
Water Ship Channel, connecting California’s
2:40capital to San Francisco Bay; the Hudson River,
extending navigability through New York state;
2:44and a few others, the US boasts over 12,000
miles or 19,000 kilometers of commercially
2:50navigable inland waterways—that’s a
longer transportation system than the
2:54entire rail network of the United Kingdom.
But perhaps the greatest indicator of just
3:00how important America’s inland waterways are
is how involved the Federal government is in
3:04running them. DC doesn’t really run transportation
systems—the rails are almost entirely privately
3:10owned, airports are primarily handled by local
governments, even Interstates—the Federal
3:15network of highways—are just funded by DC, but
actually owned and run by the states themselves.
3:20The Mississippi and these other navigable, inland
waterways are a rare example of the Federal
3:25government actually running a transportation
system on a day-to-day basis. Specifically,
3:30and perhaps bizarrely, it’s a branch of
the Army—the Army Corps of Engineers—that’s
3:34responsible for keeping cargo on the river
running. They build and run the locks,
3:38they dredge it and bolster its banks, and they’re
allocated over a billion dollars a year to do it.
3:44And it's these locks that have quite literally
kept the American agricultural industry alive.
3:49Brazil and the US, for example, are the world’s
first and second largest soybean exporters,
3:54respectively—tightly competing with each other
to sell massive volumes of the crop to massive,
3:58far-away buyers like China. But it’s remarkable
that the US, with a GDP per capita eight times
4:03that of Brazil, is able to meaningfully compete
in a global marketplace for a commodity,
4:08where the only thing that matters to a buyer is
cost. But in Brazil, the majority of soybean is
4:13brought from farms to ocean ports by trucks, with
most of the rest transported by train—both far
4:19costlier than barges. Only a tiny portion is
transported by water as Brazil just does not
4:25have the inland waterway infrastructure that
the US does. Most years, the cost of getting
4:29soybean from Brazil to China, for example,
is far higher than that of the US—sometimes
4:34as much as double. US producers can therefore
accept higher production costs since all they
4:39have to do is get their product to a river, and
from there it can float all the way to Shanghai.
4:44But before any soy, chemical, or petroleum product
is sent to intermingle with the world economy, it
4:49starts in a place like this harbor, where highway,
railway, and river intersect and Travero’s
4:55Logistics Park Debeque sits. Here, goods, whether
by belt and elevator or simple front loader are
5:01poured into a barge operator’s standardized,
195-foot by 35-foot barge, then lashed together
5:07with steel cables to another 14 barges and pushed
out into the river by diesel powered tow boat.
5:12Compared to most commercial vessels, crews on
these towboats are small—typically less than
5:17ten people, composed of a captain, a pilot,
a cook, and some engineers and deck hands.
5:22Almost universally, they work 6-hour on, 6-hour
off schedules, nonstop, for their entire time
5:28onboard—typically a 28-day stretch. In practice,
a given deckhand might work from 5:30 to 11:30 am,
5:35then attempt to get some sleep before starting
work again at 5:30 pm, before an abbreviated
5:40overnight rest starting at 11:30 pm. The only crew
member that doesn’t follow this schedule is the
5:45cook, who will generally prepare meals to be ready
for 45 or so minutes before and after the 5:30 am,
5:5111:30 am, and 5:30 pm transitions.
Crew facilities are also basic. Outside
5:57of bedrooms, these boats might have
a small gym, crew lounge, and galley,
6:01but that’s about it. After all, when working
12-hours a day, there’s really not much time
6:06left for anything but sleeping and eating.
And there’s plenty that gets done in those
6:1112 hours-on. Just 16 miles or 25 kilometers down
the river from Travero’s Logistics Park sits Lock
6:18and Dam no. 12. On the Upper Mississippi, there’s
never more than a couple dozen miles to go before
6:23arriving to a lock and dam. Tows notify the lock
master over radio when they’re about 30-minutes
6:28away, which gives the operator time to prepare the
lock—filling it with water if a boat’s approaching
6:32from upstream, or draining if the opposite.
Tow captains must approach each lock carefully,
6:38tightly lining up with the wall that marks its
approach. After all, there is often a current,
6:42called an out-draft, pulling from the
entrance of the lock towards the dam,
6:46since that’s where the water flows when the lock
is closed. Getting sucked into this current can
6:50and sometimes does prove disastrous—it’ll trap a
tow upstream of the dam and potentially destroy
6:56the structure—so captains will often
have their own notes written down based
6:59on their experience through the years, reminding
them of the particularities of each lock.
7:04But upon successful approach, a tug pushes its
barges into the lock chamber—or at least, half
7:09of them. That’s because the Upper Mississippi has
600-foot locks, but the standard tow-size through
7:15this stretch is 15-barges in a three by five
configuration, leading to an overall length of
7:20about a thousand feet. Therefore, deckhands have
to spend about a half an hour splitting their tow
7:25in two before the lock master can even close the
gates and start draining the chamber. That takes
7:30about another 20 minutes, then the first half of
the tow gets floated out and tied up as the second
7:35half, including the tug itself, waits another
20 minutes for the chamber to fill up with water
7:40again. Next, after another 20-minute draining
cycle, it takes about an hour for deckhands to put
7:45the tow back together, leading to a roughly three
to four hour process of getting through each and
7:49every lock—and that’s if they’re lucky. The locks
each operate on a first-come, first-served system,
7:55meaning if there’s another vessel going through,
a tow has to wait up to 3-4 hours before it can
8:00go through the 3-4 hour process. In the peak
fall grain export season, these delays can
8:06really compound and limit the throughput
of the river just when it’s needed most.
8:10And it’s along this process, passing lock after
lock, where it becomes impossible to ignore
8:15that the Mississippi, nor the Illinois for that
matter, nor the Columbia, nor the upper Danube,
8:20nor the lower Nile are strictly rivers any more.
It’s one thing for a river to be deemed navigable
8:25in its simplest definition: to be sailed by
ships or boats, but it's another to live up
8:30to the haughty standards of what navigable
is to, say the US Army Corps of Engineers,
8:34whose definition hinges not on the possibility of
making it up or down a river but the continued,
8:40consistent, reliability of travel along
the river for the purpose of commerce.
8:45Rivers, no matter the state, country, or
continent, are just fickle. Changing shape
8:50and course by the season and the year, they’re
difficult to govern physically and politically.
8:56Consider just the task of defining what
the Mississippi river really is. At base,
9:01you could start with this map. But that wouldn’t
consider some of its most important tributaries
9:06such as these. And still, this is oversimplified,
as supplying a river that on average moves nearly
9:12500,000 cubic feet of water through it every
single second, requires the tributaries of
9:17these tributaries, along with the unseen
groundwater from across the river’s entire
9:22basin draining eventually into this cumulative
flow. From this more holistic—albeit, far from
9:28exhaustive—view of the river, the Mississippi
river’s an assemblage of gravity-fed water from
9:3241% of the lower 48’s landmass spread across 32
American states and two Canadian provinces. As
9:39an amalgamation of precipitation spread across
thousands of miles, the river’s disposition is
9:44defined by its broader basin. Massive rain here,
for instance, could lead to flooding along the
9:49river below, as it did in 1927 when a swollen
Mississippi killed 500 and left hundreds of
9:55thousands displaced. Massive earthquakes here,
could fundamentally reshape the river’s path,
10:00as they did in 1811 and 1812. And a low snow
year here, and hot dry summer here could bring
10:06flows down to levels so low that it threatens
grain shipping in the fall, as they did in 2012.
10:12On the inverse, what a river does provide that an
interstate or rail line can’t is the efficiency
10:17boost of buoyancy, and what a river offers that a
canal can’t, is the natural plumbing—which, while
10:22not perfectly streamlined nor always dependable,
provides a far more advanced starting point.
10:28 To first turn a river into a navigable waterway
capable of powering international commerce,
10:33there needs to be a legal framework as to
who has purview over the river. In the US,
10:38beginning in the 1800s as the fledgling federal
government scrambled to create effective efficient
10:42means of transportation to spur on economic
activity, the responsibility of turning natural
10:47features into navigable ones fell on the US
Army Corps of Engineers. On the Mississippi,
10:52their work began with this, the designation of the
Mississippi River Commission and the exploratory
10:56mission to figure out how its flows could be
harnessed for the purposes of interstate trade.
11:01First, the goal was to provide, from the upper
river below, a consistent 4-foot or 1.3 meter
11:07deep channel. As time went on, the ask grew. Then
it was a 4.5 foot-deep channel, then a consistent
11:146-foot deep channel, then finally, with the rivers
and harbors act of 1930, a 9-foot or 3-meter deep
11:20channel. For the river’s upper reaches, this
meant significant reconfiguration.
11:25Split at St. Louis, the Mississippi River
has two rather distinct dispositions. From
11:30St. Paul to St. Louis, the river moves quicker,
it’s smaller in stature, and it’s comparatively
11:35steep—dropping 400 feet or 120 meters over 670
miles or 1100 kilometers. Or it was. Now, just
11:44about wherever you zoom in on this upper section
it looks pretty uniform, it’s wide, it’s smooth,
11:49and every couple dozen miles, it’s dammed. These
dams and accompanying locks, all 27, aren’t for
11:55storage or flood control, but for transportation,
representing a massive 1930s federal investment in
12:01turning a wild river into a consistent canal for
the benefit of midwestern agricultural exporters
12:06upon which the whole region still relies. Some
ninety years on, the corps of engineers still
12:11maintains and operates these locks, and in
the intermediate decades, they’ve expanded to
12:16account for 192 navigational locks nationwide.
The locks end at St. Louis, not long after the
12:22Mississippi has added the flow of the Illinois and
just before it adds the Ohio. And it’s here where
12:27the river’s character flips. From Cairo, Illinois
to Vicksburg, Mississippi the river has only
12:32600 miles to travel to the Gulf Coast. But with
only 300 feet or 100 meters of elevation to drop
12:38across that entire stretch, the river restlessly
meanders across its massive historical floodplain,
12:43creating a winding path to the ocean that
stretches out to about 1,000 miles or 1,600
12:48kilometers. Through the lower Mississippi average
flows are high enough to deem navigational locks
12:52and dams unnecessary, but with so much water
and so many bends along a flat landscape come
12:58other challenges for the corps of engineers.
If one is to drive along a county road along the
13:02lower Mississippi, there's a good chance they
can’t see it, that it’s on the other side of
13:07a grassy mound. If one is to look at the lower
Mississippi from above, there’s a good chance
13:11they’ll notice that these grassy mounds don’t
meander like the river, but make unnatural,
13:16calculated, perfectly straight lines across
the landscape. These are the over 2,000 miles
13:21of levee, built primarily by the Army Corps of
Engineers, that millions count on to keep the
13:26flooding Mississippi out of their towns and homes
when it does dump in the upper reaches in the
13:30basin, and that barge operators count on to keep
the Mississippi in a single, dependable channel.
13:35Of course, levees, while noticeable to the
trained eye, are easy to miss. The same can
13:40be said about the locks and dams, just relatively
low-lying structures spread along what seems to be
13:45a reasonably slow and easy-to-contain section
of river. Like the structures, the continued
13:50upkeep of the river is easy to overlook, too.
Dredging, afterall, isn’t terribly visible
13:55to the outside observer, it’s moving sand and
silt and sediment from a river bottom. And yet,
14:01continued dredging to keep the channel at 9 feet
deep from 2014 to 2023 in the upper Mississippi
14:06cost on average $45 million a year. The same goes
for revetment, the process of stabilizing river
14:13banks with concrete matting—it’s difficult
to notice unless you put it in, and yet,
14:17the Armor 1, a vessel tasked with laying down the
matting to hold the river in place for another
14:2150 years cost a reported $125 million.
All that’s to say, while rightly paraded
14:29as a geographic super power, navigable
waterways are hardly natural systems;
14:33they’re expensive-to-maintain hybrids with a heavy
human touch. And in the case of most around the
14:39US, the critical human additions that make these
safe and reliable for the frailest of barges and
14:44towboats are often overlooked and getting really
old. Take locks—with most being built mid-century,
14:51or in the case of those along the Mississippi
even earlier, nearly all have outlived their
14:55estimated 50-year expected lifespan. While still
operational, they’re increasingly unreliable.
15:01As a 2023 Department of Transportation report
noted, from 2010 to 2020, across 192 lock sites,
15:07while total lockages have declined, the percentage
of vessels delayed has climbed from the 30s into
15:12the 50s. More problematic: the average delay
tripled in duration from 2010 to 2019. And
15:19while shipping companies can mitigate problems
when it comes to planned delays, in 2020, about a
15:24third of all lock delays were unscheduled. In the
American Society of Civil Engineers’ most recent
15:29infrastructure report card, inland waterways
received a D+ while noting that the Army Corps of
15:34Engineers reports both a $6.8 billion backlog on
projects that have been approved but not financed,
15:40and $2.7 billion annually on funds not received
to do annual required maintenance. Making things
15:46even more difficult, and inland rivers even
less dependable is less consistent weather
15:50and increasingly common and increasingly extreme
weather events. The Mississippi has had low water
15:55years in 2012, in 2013, in 2022, ‘23, and ‘24 for
instance, while also massively flooding in 2019.
16:04Then there’s the fact that fundamentally, the
locks along most American rivers are just too
16:09small to serve today’s purposes.
Much
discussion is made over whether the Federal
16:13Government should upgrade the river to 1,200 foot
locks—the size that could allow Upper Mississippi
16:17tows to make their way through in just one
cycle, rather than two. This would increase
16:22throughput enormously—the three or more hour
process of passing a lock would go by in just
16:2730 or so minutes, saving days of time across
one Minneapolis to St Louis journey. Delays
16:32at the locks, waiting for other traffic to
clear, would become a thing of the past and
16:36shipping rates might go down, allowing an
ever-so-slightly expanded profit margin for
16:39farmers in Illinois and Iowa and beyond.
And in fact, we’ll even get to see what
16:44this looks like in practice. Construction has
started at lock 25, just north of St Louis,
16:49to build a brand-new 1,200-foot lock. Funding
was secured as part of the Biden Administration’s
16:55Infrastructure Act, and construction is expected
to be completed… sometime in the 2030s. Also,
17:01the total amount allocated for the project was
$732 million. That’s to say, upgrading the entire
17:08Upper Mississippi’s locks would possibly be a
project rivaling the annual budget of NASA.
17:14And it’s not like there’s a lot of revenue that
can pay for these upgrades. The Mississippi is
17:18completely free to use—including its locks.
They’ll open and close for any vessel,
17:23commercial or recreational, without charging a
cent… at least directly. The Federal Government
17:28does charge a 29 cent per gallon tax on fuel
used by commercial barges on designated inland
17:33waterways in most circumstances, which goes into a
trust fund that is primarily used for construction
17:37projects on the waterways, rather than operations.
So in 2020, for example, $131 million of the
17:43Army Corps of Engineering’s spending on inland
waterways came from this fund, but this was out
17:47of a total annual cost of $1.3 billion. So that’s
to say, the inland waterways effectively act as a
17:54massive subsidy from the American taxpayer to its
users—particularly, to the agriculture industry.
18:00One could, and some do argue that this is
unfair—for everyone to pay for a system
18:05that only benefits the few. This argument
is bolstered by the fact that what these
18:09waterways are particularly good at is getting
bulk quantities of grain and soybean and other
18:13agricultural products to New Orleans to be
transferred onto an ocean-going ship for
18:17international export. That’s to say, in extreme
cases, American taxpayers are paying to expand the
18:23profit margins of agribusinesses selling their
soybean to China. This is true—unlike roads,
18:29there is no significant, direct utility for this
transportation system for the general public.
18:33But right now, the Mississippi is in this state
where it’s extraordinarily expensive to run,
18:38but it’s also underfunded. America does rely on
it. While some of its utility is enjoyed by all
18:44the foreign countries that buy American crops, it
simultaneously secures the domestic food supply;
18:49it transports raw materials that sit at the start
of the supply chain for other industries; in fact,
18:54it’s estimated that each day the river
closes due to lock failure, for example,
18:57costs the American economy $300 million.
But despite that, it’s simultaneously
19:04underutilized. Far fewer barges traverse its
stretch today than in decades past as freight
19:10traffic has moved onto the rails and roads. The
rails and road systems are being stretched to
19:14their limits—freight railroads are suffering
from capacity shortages and fast-deteriorating
19:19infrastructure due to their unwillingness to
invest in capital improvements, while the trucking
19:23industry is suffering from a driver shortage
as young people are unwilling to work in the
19:27increasingly aged industry. There has been plenty
of discussion over developing a network of ports
19:31and vessels capable of transporting container
cargo up and down the river so it can act as a
19:35direct competitor to freight rail and trucks,
but so far little has translated into action.
19:41The issues of inefficiency and deterioration on
the Mississippi are so well-recognized that barge
19:46operators themselves successfully advocated to
be taxed more—they were the driving force behind
19:52the hike from 20 to 29 cents per gallon in 2014
because they so desperately wanted maintenance
19:57and upgrades. But it still wasn’t even close to
enough. Right now, the Mississippi and America’s
20:03other inland waterways are funded and functional
enough that they’re relied upon by whole
20:07industries and responsible for the economic ascent
of entire regions, but not funded enough that
20:12they actually function even close to their full
potential. That’s to say, they're great enough
20:16to have changed the entire course of American
history, but they’re still just not great.
20:24One thing I noticed while researching this
video is that quite a few academics have
20:28attempted to solve the issue of Mississippi
River lock delays using data science—after all,
20:33even the busiest locks are used well below their
theoretical capacity, but still experience delays
20:38due to a lack of traffic management. This is a
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