DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. — If we ultimately don’t get enough rain to get the Mississippi River back to some decent level for barge traffic, it could hit you in the wallet.
FOX13′s reporter Tom Dees spent the day along the Mississippi River at Bass Landing in DeSoto County and has been talking to people who have spent a lifetime down there.
They don’t see the rain making any difference.
The problem they said was, no matter how much rain we get, we’re going to need a whole lot more to make any difference in the river level.
”I don’t see it coming back up for another month or so, we just have to get a lot more rain up north, our rainfall here doesn’t affect the river here,” Don Smith said.
Don Smith lives in Walls, Miss., and has been around the Mississippi River all his life, he even helps take care of the Hernando Desoto River Park.
Smith said that barge traffic has been minimal as of late.
”They are a lot smaller, their loads are lighter because they can’t maneuver the big ones, because of the sandbars. They have been moving the buoys and marking the sandbars which are coming out into the river now,” Smith said.
In the course of staying out here for several hours, FOX13 only saw one barge, the only other traffic on the river was a frog and a water moccasin going about their daily routine.
Bob Francis of Southaven has been coming out here for 20 years and said he’s only seen the river this quiet once before.
”Oh yeah I have seen it lower I have been where I could walk along the river down there, but that was a long time ago,” Francis said.
From what FOX13 has been able to find out, 140 or more businesses in the Memphis-area rely on the river for shipping everything from grain to steel and construction materials.
“There are a lot of jobs there, those barges sitting still, they are having to sit still they are having to pay their employees they can’t move the freight,” Smith said.
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