Shippers Rush Wheat Deliveries In Effort To Beat Dam Shutdown

Shippers are racing to move barges loaded with wheat down the Snake and Columbia rivers before the Ice Harbor Dam is closed to navigation Jan. 1.

The locks at the southeastern Washington dam on the Snake River, 10 miles upstream from its confluence with the Columbia, will be closed for two months to replace a worn gate.

The closure comes at a time of record world demand for Northwest wheat.

Shippers agreed to the closure last summer, long before the wheat boom materialized.

The dam is the farthest downriver of the four Snake River dams that allow barge navigation to move cargo from grain-shipping ports in Idaho and Eastern Washington.

The steady parade of barges was halted for about 24 hours Sunday when a towboat clipped the top of a submerged lock gate at Ice Harbor.

Emergency repairs were made and traffic resumed, but only half as fast as before. Bad weather also slowed traffic.

Barges are being unloaded as fast as possible in the ports at Portland, Vancouver and Kalama, then are sent back up the Columbia and Snake to take on more grain.

Last year, 510.9 million bushels, or 15.3 million tons, of wheat were exported through the ColumbiaSnake system, according to the Merchants Exchange of Portland. Through the first 10 months of this year, the figure was 391.1 million bushels, or 11.7 million tons.

Japan has been the largest importer, accounting for 1.5 million tons, followed by the Philippines at 985,439 tons.

Other markets include Bangladesh, Chile, Equador, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Yemen.

Skip Hart, spokesman for Tidewater Barge Lines, said some barges will be diverted to storage in the TriCities area during the Ice Harbor closure.