Nation : Miss. River Night Traffic Banned
Ice on the Mississippi River today forced the Coast Guard to ban nighttime barge traffic from Cairo, Ill., to the Arkansas-Louisiana border, delaying shipments of heating oil, coal and grain.
The restrictions will stay in place indefinitely along the 450-mile stretch of the river where 10 barges have run aground since Christmas Day, Lt. Cmdr. Rick Kowalewski said. Chunks of ice floating downstream have knocked over buoys marking the navigation channel, he said.
“That’s one of the reasons why we are allowing only daylight operation,” Kowalewski said. “(The buoys) are hard to use during the day and impossible at night.”
Besides daylight-only navigation, the Coast Guard is limiting the size of tows. Towboats can carry only 20 barges southbound and up to 24 northbound, but no more than 15 of the northbound barges can be loaded, the commander said.
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