Be glad winter finally arrived--a temporary reprieve? Mississippi River

Cutting off the transport route would be a disaster that would resonate across the Midwest and beyond.

"There are so many issues at stake here," said George Foster, owner ofJB Marine Services. "There is so much that moves on the river, not just coal and grain products, but you've got cement, steel for construction, chemicals for manufacturing plants, petroleum plants, heating oil. All those things move on the waterways, so if it shuts down you've got a huge stop of commerce."

Local companies which depend on the river to ship their goods are already talking about layoffs, if the Mississippi closes to navigation. Those were just the first casualties, Foster said. "It is going to affect the people at the grocery store, at the gas pump, with home construction, and so forth."

And it's going to fall especially hard on farmers, who took a heavy hit during the drought and who rely on the Mississippi to ship their grain to export markets.

Farmers in the area typically lost up to three-quarters of their corn and soy bean crops to this year's drought. Old-timers say it was the worst year they can remember."

"The worst drought in half a century has brought water levels in the Mississippi close to historic lows and could shut down all shipping in a matter of weeks—unless Barack Obama takes extraordinary measures.

Without rain, water levels on the Mississippi are projected to reach historic lows this month, the national weather service said in its latest four-week forecast." 

"All the ingredients for us getting to an all-time record low are certainly in place," said Mark Fuchs, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in St. Louis. "I would be very surprised if we didn't set a record this winter."

The drought has already created a low-water choke point south of St. Louis, near the town of Thebes, where pinnacles of rock extend upwards from the river bottom making passage treacherous." 

What can Obama do? "The shipping industry in St. Louis wants the White House to order the release of more water from the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi, to keep waters high enough for the long barges that float down the river to New Orleans.

Foster said the extra water would be for 60 days or so—time for the Army Corps of Engineers to blast and clear the series of rock pinnacles down river, near the town of Thebes, that threaten barges during this time of low water.

But sending out more water from the Missouri would doom states upstream, such as Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, which depend on water from the Missouri and are also caught in the drought.

"There are farmers and ranchers up there with livestock that don't have water to stay alive. They don't have enough fodder. They don't have enough irrigation water," said Robert Criss, a hydrologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has spent his career studying the Mississippi. "What a dumb way to use water during a drought."

[This will be a very serious and ongoing problem as average rainfalls in the west and midwest continue to drop due to climate change.]