'Tireless' Dam Work Has Paid Off

Staff Photo By John RawlstonCracks in the Chickamauga Dam walls like the one pictured are one reason Tennessee elected leaders are excited to hear $3 million has been released for work on the new lock project.
Staff Photo By John RawlstonCracks in the Chickamauga Dam walls like the one pictured are one reason Tennessee elected leaders are excited to hear $3 million has been released for work on the new lock project.

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Chickamauga Lock funding restored, work to resume with leftover fundsU.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, often uses the word "tirelessly" when he describes how he has worked to get construction re-started on the new lock at the Chickamauga Dam, and word finally came Wednesday that his "tireless" efforts - and those of U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. - paid off.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has released $3 million that was left over in the Inland Waterways Trust Fund for work on the new lock.The amount is only .35 percent of the estimated $860 million cost of the project, but it's a start. That's what Fleischmann and Alexander have been looking for.With a start, it will be hard to deny the new lock a place in the Corps' plans in the coming years. And since the Corps also is giving more money to the Kentucky lock on the Tennessee River and to the Olmsted Locks and Dam on the Ohio River, two projects ahead of the new Chickamauga lock, more money should flow to the local project sooner.Indeed, Alexander estimated $29 million should be available next year for the lock. That could translate, according to the Corps' director for the lock replacement project, into contract work by March.The initial work will be to grout cracks in the temporary dam, or cofferdam, and dewater the area where the new and bigger lock will be built. It's now been a decade since design and roadwork for the new lock began.The project began after studies showed "concrete growth" in the rock aggregate and cement were damaging lock walls and gates in the original lock, which was completed in 1940.If that lock were to fail, an additional 150,000 trucks would be required to move goods up and down Interstate 75, which would increase the cost of shipping. The volume of shipments through the lock last year was 2 million tons.To facilitate the work this year, both Tennessee's senior senator and Fleischmann made personal appeals to Jo-Ellen Darcy, the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. That followed their 2014 success in getting reforms passed to the Inland Waterways Trust Fund and a barge tax passed - requested by barge owners - that would, in time, deliver more money, and sooner, to the Chickamauga lock project.Thanks for the "tireless" work.

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