Water levels are rising on the Mississippi and it will affect you

After months of drought conditions that brought trade on the Mississippi River to stand still, water levels are finally returning to normal and that will affect you.

"Shipping conditions on the lower Mississippi River are starting to return to normal as rain has picked up and water levels have improved," according to Currey McCullough of RFD-TV.

McCullough noted that the Memphsis, Tennesse area is seeing upwards of an 18-foot rise in water levels which has brought the Mississippi back to its pre-October drought levels. But how did things get so bad in the first place?

Months of dry conditions in the Ohio River Valley in September and October of 2022 seem to be to blame. The U.S. Drought Monitor estimated that roughly 77% percent of the country is currently facing abnormal dryness or drought conditions, and that has been bad for everyone. 

More than 134 million Americans were affected by the drought, a figure that the Drought Monitor reported was the worst since the severe drought of 2016. 

While the drought in middle America at the time limited the growing season and encouraged infestation and disease in certain crops, it also reduced the Mississippi River to just 3 feet above sea level in some areas. 

"It's approaching some historical lows that we've never had here," said Heath Jones, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Emergency Management for the New Orleans District in an interview with the Atlantic. 

More than one-third of rainfall in the United States ends up in the Mississippi River, and that rainfall then feeds thousands of ecosystems and industries all along the river. Without adequate water levels, everything was threatened. 

One of the biggest problems caused by the river's low water levels was the changing transition point of fresh water to salt water in the lower Mississippi. Saltwater quickly crept higher into the river and that had a serious impact on residents In Louisiana. 

The area that was most affected was New Orleans’ Plaquemines Parish, which was home to roughly 24,000 people and hundreds of water-dependent industries that require fresh water to stay in business. But national officials warned that the situation would affect the wider country as trade on the river slows.

With water levels so low, trade along the Mississippi took a serious hit. Traffic jams and stuck barges were creating chaos all along the river. Bloomberg reported on October 7th that over 2000 shipping barges had backed up at various points along the river, and the situation hadn't improved. 

According to the Port of New Orleans, roughly $130 billion dollars of goods are ferried along the Mississippi River annually, a figure that represents about 90% of American agricultural exports. 

But all of this trade quickly reached a standstill as water levels continued to drop. Most shipping barges were unable to traverse the river at its low levels and the situation was dangerously close to shutting down all of America. 

“America is going to shut down if we shut down,” Mike Ellis, CEO of American Commercial Barge Line in Indiana, told the Wall Street Journal in mid-October.

But how can the situation on the Mississippi River have had such drastic consequences for the country? Well, because the river is basically America’s highway to the international world. Everything from steel and coal to soybeans and wheat uses the Mississippi to access the global market, and this is having a serious impact on inflation. 

In an interview with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe at the time, economist Alan Barret explained what the Mississippi’s low water levels meant for the flow of goods in America, and it wasn't good...

“If you think inflation is driving the cost of goods up, hold on to your debit cards because it could get worse thanks to the Mississippi River,” Barret said, “The river acts as a highway for critical goods, moving roughly 500 million tons' worth of products.”

The real losers in the situation were consumers. The shipping backup on the Mississippi couldn't be remedied with an existing truck and rail infrastructure and it was thought that products would be stored and the costs associated with storage and transport would be passed onto the end consumer. 

In the end, Americans were able to weather the storm with some clever management, and new rainfalls have helped bolster water levels all throughout the length of the Mississippi.