Fort Smith to Benefit From Deeper River

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A deeper Arkansas River could mean big things for Fort Smith and the River Valley.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the Little Rock and Tulsa districts, has started work on the MKARNS 12-foot channel-deepening project, as I wrote about last week. MKARNS is the acronym for the 445-mile McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System that runs from the Tulsa Port of Catoosa to the Mississippi River near Helena-West Helena.

One person looking forward to the project’s completion — and that is still years away — is Marty Shell, the president of Five Rivers Distribution, which runs the Port of Fort Smith. Shell sits on a portion of the river shipping channel that is 26 feet deep, plenty deep for the heaviest of barges.

But to Shell’s west the channel is 9 feet for almost the entire length of the 130 miles or so of the Oklahoma portion of the navigation system.

“It is time for us to open it up and start moving commerce,” Shell said. “It will be very beneficial to the manufacturers who bring in their products. It will be beneficial to the farmers who ship out their products.”

The Oklahoma portion of the system includes the man-made channel in the Verdigris River between Muskogee and Tulsa, Shell said. Its 9-foot depth restricts barges to 1,600 tons of cargo; 3 more feet would mean that as much as 2,300 tons could be loaded.

Shell said the deeper river would make shipping more efficient, but it would also make the River Valley and surrounding area more attractive to commercial investment. He cited projects such as Big River Steel and Nucor in Mississippi County in eastern Arkansas that benefit from the deep shipping channel of the Mississippi River.

Big investments such as those could come to the River Valley with a deeper river channel. Yes, it will take millions of dollars and years of blasting, scouring and dredging to get those 3 feet, but the returns would be worth it, Shell said.

“With a liquid highway and a 12-foot channel, we have more to offer than Memphis, Tulsa, Catoosa, Dallas,” Shell said. “It will also create more business, being a feather or a tool in the economic war chest for the Chamber of Commerce or [the Arkansas Economic Development Commission]. We sit in a very, very prime spot for economic development. You don’t have to be a great salesman. The location would sell itself.”

Cassandra Caldwell, director of the Arkansas Waterways Commission, told me that the river is underused because much of the channel is only 9 feet deep. While at least 90% of Arkansas’ 308 miles are 12 feet in depth, the few stretches of less than 12 feet prevent heavier barges.

A barge drafting 2,300 tons at 12 feet would be rudely surprised to suddenly hit a 10- or 11-foot channel. The Corps expects the deepening project to take about a decade of planning, design and construction of one form or another, and federal funding is expected to be made available to see it to completion.

Shell said the Port of Fort Smith delivers goods to 14 states every day. Corps of Engineers tonnage statistics show more than 1 million tons of cargo were shipped in June on the river.

For the first six months of the year, total tonnage was nearly 6.3 million tons, a 19% increase from a year ago. The cargo most shipped on the river included sand, gravel and rock (1.9 million tons); chemical fertilizer (1.7 million tons); and iron and steel (701,000 tons).

“The stuff we are taking off the interstate system is oil, petroleum, agriculture, aggregates like sand and gravel — all the stuff you don’t want on the interstate system,” said Jay Townsend, chief of public affairs for the Corps’ Little Rock District. “It is extremely more efficient to transport those goods and commodities on the marine highway.”