The MV American Beauty waits for emergency dredging operations to finish near Brownsville.BROWNSVILLE, Minnesota (WXOW) - The main channel of the Mississippi River is open again for barge traffic.
Tow boats and barges made their way up and down river early Friday afternoon since closing Tuesday. A barge headed down river Tuesday morning went aground near Brownsville on a narrow part of the river.
Work crews began Thursday removing sediment that had washed down and filled in the area where the barge was stuck. Although the channel is open, dredging operations continued into Friday afternoon.
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BROWNSVILLE, Minnesota (WXOW) - The Army Corps of Engineers is dredging a stretch of the Mississippi River near Brownsville after a barge runs aground on Tuesday.
According to a Corps spokesperson, a barge tied to the MV David L. Fields from the Marquette Transportation Company ran aground Tuesday morning as it moved southbound on the Mississippi.
The spokesperson says dredging to deepen the channel began Thursday and should be done by noon on Friday. Until then, the river is closed to barge traffic.
Earlier media reports stated that the drought like conditions caused the low river levels that led to the incident. The Corps spokesperson says that was not the case. She says high water earlier this summer brought down sediment that collected in the area where the barge incident occured. She tells WXOW that it is not unusual for this to happen a few times during the summer months along the Mississippi.
Several tow boats and barges are waiting for the dredging operations to finish up so they can continue up and down the river.
