Three years after work stalled on a new lock at the Chickamauga Dam, construction should resume on the $860 million project by the end of the year using revenues generated by a new barge fuel tax Congress adopted last year.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wednesday released $3 million of the $6 million left over in its Inland Waterways Trust Fund to award a contract for additional work on the cofferdam and lock walls erected beneath the 75-year-old dam in Chattanooga.
Don Getty, the Corps' director for the lock replacement project, said the money will be used to grout cracks in the temporary dam and to dewater the area where the new and bigger lock will be built.
The Corps agreed to release the money at the urging of U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. The two lawmakers have worked to revamp the funding formula, raise the barge tax and boost appropriations for the Corps' inland dams and locks for projects like Chickamauga that were started but not finished because of a lack of funding.
Although Congress no longer allows the type of earmarks that previously helped designate money for targeted projects, Alexander and Fleischmann personally appealed to Jo-Ellen Darcy, the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, to spend excess funds on the new Chickamauga lock.
"Since my first day in Congress, Chickamauga lock has been a top priority, and today's announcement that construction will be restarted is a huge win not just for Chattanooga, but for all of East Tennessee," Fleischmann said Wednesday in announcing the extra Corps funding. "Senator Alexander and I have worked to reform the broken Inland Waterways Trust Fund and this funding is part of a string of success in fixing this broken system."
Alexander says the priority was to replace the Chickamauga lock "before it fails."
"The funding will be used for prep work so that the Corps can begin replacing the lock, which is important not just to Chattanooga, but to all of East Tennessee because of the number of jobs affected," Alexander said. "If Chickamauga Lock were to fail it would throw 150,000 trucks on I-75 and increase the cost of shipping goods for Oak Ridge, Y-12, and manufacturers across the state."
The Corps also will provide another $700,000 this year to the $12 million already allocated to the Kentucky lock, another TVA-built lock on the Tennessee River, and give another $2.3 million for extra work at the Olmsted Locks and Dam on the Ohio River, the Corps' top inland waterway project.
The Corps should have even more money available for the Chickamauga lock in fiscal 2016. Alexander estimates $29 million of funding should be available next year for the new Chickamauga lock. Getty said the extra funds in fiscal 2016 could be available for more contract work by next March.
Congress boosted the Obama adminstration's budget request for the Corps' civil works budget by $700 million in fiscal 2016.
The Corps began design and roadwork for the new Chickamauga lock a decade ago after studies showed that "concrete growth" in the rock aggregate and cement were damaging lock walls and gates in the original lock, which was first opened in 1940. The existing, crumbling lock, which is only 60 feet wide and 360 feet long, also is not big enough to handle more than one barge at a time.
The replacement lock will be 110 feet wide and 600 feet long and will be capable of handling six barges at a time.
The extra size should help speed the transport of goods and boost the volume of shipments through the Chickamauga lock, which totaled nearly 2 million tons last year.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or at 757-6340.