Touchet Valley To Lose River Access

WALLA WALLA - Last year, 2.2 million tons of prod­ucts were shipped through the Little Goose navigation lock near Starbuck - and much of these commodities moving downriver came from farms like those in the Touchet Valley. Wheat, barley, petroleum products (like fuel), fertilizer, hay cubes, peas, lentils, milk carton stock, containers full of merchandise, even wind turbines - 10 million tons of cargo - all travel the Colum­bia Snake River system each year. Now these companies are making plans to survive without this floating super-highway for three months while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completes re­pairs on several key locks throughout the system. "The entire system will be closed to water traffic from December into March," said Alan Feistner, deputy district engineers with the Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla district. "My biggest concern is with commerce moving up the system. People need to be planning ahead for any products that are shipped via barge." This could include fuel for schools, for example, Feist­ner said, which are purchased just once per year. Many fuel distributors in the region are still making plans for keep­ing up supply from Decem­ber through March. The closure allows the Corps of Engineers to con­duct

a $46 million retrofit of three navigation locks on the system, including those at Lower Monumental Dam, The Dalles Dam and John Day Dam.

Here in the Touchet Val­ley, the shut down poses a challenge for wheat farmers.

"It's unknown at this time just how we will be dealing with the closure," said Dave Gordon, general manager for the Northwest Grain Grow­ers, which owns one barge house on the Snake River and two on the Columbia. December through March represents a busy time for the export of wheat crops, Gor­don

said. Winter and spring wheat crops are harvested from July through October. And close to 100 percent of wheat grown in the Touchet Valley is exported to Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea, or the Middle East. "We can only do what we can do," he said. "We're try­ing to coordinate shipments. It's going to be dependent on when the export business comes in. We're hoping that the foreign countries will buy early, say October or Novem­ber, and will take the wheat in April or May." It's a little-known fact that the Columbia-Snake River system is the number one wheat and barley export gate­way in the nation and the sec­ond largest inland waterway system in the country next to the Mississippi, according to the Association of Washing­ton Businesses. The only other methods for shipping commodities into and out of the Touchet Valley are by rail or truck, and Feistner, with the Corps of Engineers, said costs are usually three times higher to ship by rail and as much as 15 times higher by truck. "It's very unlikely that we would be shipping by rail," Gordon said. "It's over 60 cents per bushel by rail; barge rates are 24 to 25 cents." Farmers and exporters are planning to stockpile their grain at ports, in silos and on barges anchored along the river, according to the Association of Washington Business. Columbia County Grain Growers have been prepar­ing for the closure over the last two years, said manager Mitch Payne.

"We're working around it," Payne said, declining to explain the group's plan in detail. "We don't have access to rail to Portland, so how we're going to work around it is complicated."

Payne said Columbia County ships close to a third of its wheat during the De­cember through March clo­sure period, but Payne said he isn't worried.

"I see no difference in be­ing able to trade our grain," he said Monday. "We're just happy the Corps of Engineers has been working closely with groups like ours to help mitigate the issue."

More information regard­ing the closure is available on the Corps Web site: http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/naviga­Waitsburg/ tion/lockoutage.asp.

Little Goose and Ice Har­bor locks, both well-known to residents and business people in the Touchet Val­ley,

will be closed for several weeks of repairs during the outage in late February and early March. The Corps has scheduled the river system closure for Dec. 10 through mid-March 2011.