A groundbreaking ceremony near Pittsburgh Aug. 11 set the stage for upgrading the Ohio River's oldest navigation system in 2024 at a cost of more than $900 million.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Pittsburgh District, welcomed industry, community and political leaders for the event at the Montgomery Locks and Dam facility. The ceremony marked the start of a construction project with benefits that its supporters say will benefit the nation's economy.
"You've probably noticed driving on site today [that] construction is already under way," said Col. Nicholas Melin, commander of the USACE's Pittsburgh District. "It's only fitting that we lift our shovels and take this step together continuing the tradition of great partnership."
Melin hoisted a shovelful of dirt alongside U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Austin Davis, the state's lieutenant governor; Mitch Landrieu, senior infrastructure advisor to President Biden; and Jaime A. Pinkham, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, among others.
"The southwestern Pennsylvania economy couldn't function without the Montgomery Locks and Dam," said Casey. "I worked to secure this investment from the infrastructure law so the [USACE] can upgrade the locks and dam to keep commerce flowing through our region."
He added that the project is not only critically important for Beaver County and the state, "but for a significant region of the United States."
The Montgomery Locks and Dam are part of the Upper Ohio navigation system, which sees 15 to 20 million tons of materials pass through its river chambers annually.
The Upper Ohio Navigation Project is expected to support 28,800 jobs over its construction life, and 5,400 jobs annually after it is complete, USACE said in a news release.
"The investment we make today will pay dividends, not for years or decades, but for generations," Casey explained, noting that the project was "long, long overdue."
Overall, the Pittsburgh District of the USACE operates 23 locks and dams on the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, saving shippers and consumers approximately $4 billion in transportation costs compared to using other means such as trucks or rail.
Modernizing Montgomery Will Keep Goods Moving
The Corps of Engineers first began building the Montgomery Locks and Dam in 1932, a project that finished in 1936. Today, the auxiliary lock has reached the end of its operational lifespan and is experiencing structural aging, the agency said earlier this summer.
Plans for a new chamber will bring added life to the facility due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which has provided more than $900 million in funds for various projects on the Upper Ohio River.
"What makes this project critical is the potential for structural failure of the lock walls, which would cause major interruption to river transportation," said Chris Dening, project manager of the Upper Ohio River construction. "Many of the walls have significant cracking along and across their lengths. We have observed leaking within the lock walls during operation, which confirmed the seriousness of the situation."
If one of the lock walls were to fail, he explained, it would impact operations on the Ohio River for several months. An unexpected failure would cause industry shippers to have to scramble to find new ways to reroute shipments at the last minute.
"The upgrades we are making at Montgomery Locks and Dam are just the first of three major investments to modernize the upper Ohio River navigation system," noted Steve Fritz, the Mega Project program manager of the Pittsburgh District. "We are building larger, newer, better locks that will provide a resilient navigation system in the Pittsburgh region for the next 100 years."
In the meantime, USACE's local office has taken several measures to address structural issues to avoid sudden failures. The office's engineers increased the frequency of their inspections at Montgomery and developed contingency plans for any potential emergency.
"However, those contingency efforts are costly, which is why we need to recapitalize the lock with a new construction," Dening said.
Building new locks at Montgomery will directly benefit commercial navigation by replacing older, smaller chambers, he added, avoiding future bottlenecks and slowdowns, and saving costs to transportation industries.
"The river navigation system provides a cost-effective method for transporting bulk commodities," according to Dening. "It is also environmentally friendly and reduces road congestion."
Additionally, the navigation system plays a vital role in the development of local industry. Cargo on the river includes mainly coal, but barges also transport coke, petroleum products, raw and finished steel, and aggregates. Various companies also use the system to transport large components for construction in the Pittsburgh region.
"Some of these components could not have been transported by other means due to their size," Dening said.
Transporting commodities on the waterways is four times less expensive than trucks and 33 percent cheaper than rail, USACE asserted. Towboats on Pittsburgh's rivers can push up to 15 barges at once, each carrying the same amount of material as 70 large semi-trucks or 16 railcars.
Three Lock Systems to Be Refurbished
The Upper Ohio River Navigation project includes three locks: Emsworth, Dashields and Montgomery, the first three on the Ohio River downstream from Pittsburgh. The average age of the facilities is 96 years old, a fact that cannot be ignored much longer, according to USACE engineers.
The BIL provided $857 million for Montgomery's construction and $77 million for work at Emsworth in 2022.
Montgomery is the first facility to receive a larger, 600-ft.-long by 110-ft.-wide lock chamber on the Upper Ohio. Engineers also plan to replace the smaller auxiliary chamber at all three facilities. Those chambers are the smallest on the Ohio River, causing bottlenecks and slowdowns during maintenance periods, proving too small for today's commercial barges.
USACE's Pittsburgh District has already completed project phases to prepare for the upcoming chamber construction. The plan includes removing the auxiliary chamber to expand the lock size, which will cut into the gated dam currently on the river.
The next phase will bring a batch plant on site, allowing crews to mix and pour concrete in place much faster than cement trucks.
Montgomery's new lock will require about 400,000 cu. yds. of concrete, equivalent to 1.6 billion tons. The batch plant will produce nine different concrete mixes used in various types of construction, such as underwater, structural and mass concrete, among others.
USACE also plans to build an onsite laboratory to sample and test the concrete to ensure quality.
"It's taken over a decade of dedicated effort from an interdisciplinary team to get us here today," said the USACE's Melin. "This team has developed and delivered a solid plan that we are now ready to execute. We're lucky to have the same team moving forward to deliver a quality product that will sustain the navigation needs of this region."
The 2022 funding makes the Ohio River the second-largest funded infrastructure project within the USACE.
The federal infrastructure law, passed in 2021, helps alleviate the problem of inconsistent funding experienced in the past several decades, which has caused major inflation in timeline and project costs. For example, the Corps' Pittsburgh District had received only $40 million combined in the five previous years for the Upper Ohio project.
But the economic impact of a one-year closure at Montgomery Locks and Dam would cost the U.S. economy nearly $180 million. The roughly 12 million tons of cargo would require over 100,000 railcars or 400,000 trucks to compensate for the closure.
The BIL funded the district for about half of the required cost up front, allowing Pittsburgh to begin work at Montgomery as early as next year, significantly speeding up the district's timeline for construction.
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