Fall 2023 Newsletter

Even though conditions on the waterway have not been ideal, we’ve seen some increased tonnage on the river, which we discuss in this newsletter. We’ll discuss funding and dredging, backlog maintenance, and ORVA’s concerns as articulated to the Mississippi River Commission. We will also discuss ORVA’s input to the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) process, namely the request for modification of the Mississippi River and Tributaries (MR&T) Project to include the portion of the Ouachita River Levee System at and below Monroe, Louisiana to Caldwell Parish, Louisiana, and modification of the Ouachita-Black Rivers Navigation Project to include Bank Stabilization as a feature of the Project. Although separate, these two issues are closely related. Our partners in the Tensas Basin Levee District work diligently with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District to aggressively tackle bank caving and erosion through the PL 84-99 program. However, as you will note in the pictures at the bottom on page 14, we must also look northward to address bank stabilization before this issue becomes critical. It’s really only a matter of time before the issue there becomes dire. We are hopeful that we will see a resolution to the mussel issue in the spring and the long-awaited dredging will begin.