Nearly four years after work was suspended on one of Chattanooga’s biggest building projects, construction crews were back on the job Monday, working to build a new and bigger lock at the Chickamauga Dam in Hixson.
As U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., and Nashville district officers from the Army Corps of Engineers watched across a canal, workers from Rembco Geotechnical Contractors began drilling into the bedrock of the Tennessee River to shore up the coffer dam in which the new lock will be erected over the next six years.
The $3 million contract represents the first sign of major work toward the new lock since funding for the inland waterways project ran dry in 2012. Although the existing 76-year-old lock is crumbling and requires aggressive maintenance to stay in operation, funding for a replacement lock has been crowded out by other major projects in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Fleischmann, who helped push through both a change in the funding formula and an increase in the fuel tax on barges to increase available funds for the Corps, heralded the restart of work as “a great day for the great state of Tennessee.
“When I was elected to Congress, I said I wanted to go to Washington to fix things that were broken,” Fleischmann said. “Little did I know that practically on my first day on the job I was informed that the Inland Waterways Trust Fund was broken and that the construction on the new Chickamauga lock was going to be halted.”