AASHTO Journal - USACE, Louisiana DOTD Plan Joint Waterway Work

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or USACE Vicksburg District recently entered into a feasibility cost sharing agreement with Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and the Red River Waterway Commission or RRWC to study the deepening of the J. Bennett Johnston or JBJ Waterway – also known as the “Red River” – to accommodate vessels with a 12-foot draft.

[Above photo by the USACE]

The USACE Vicksburg District – which encompasses a 68,000-square-mile area across portions of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana that holds nine major river basins – noted in a statement that the JBJ Waterway serves as a vital conduit for affordable transportation and economic prosperity for the region.

As the water routes connecting to the JBJ maintain a depth of 12 feet, increasing the JBJ’s channel depth from nine feet to an authorized 12 feet would significantly enhance cargo capacity on barges and broaden access to waterborne freight from other channels, the agency said.

Concurrently, the RRWC – a political subdivision of the State of Louisiana created in 1965 – is the local sponsor for USACE’s JBJ Waterway Navigation Project. The RRWC boundaries include seven Northwest and Central Louisiana parishes: Caddo, Bossier, Red River, Natchitoches, Grant, Rapides and Avoyelles.

The Louisiana DOTD’s Office of Multimodal Commerce Waterways division is assisting with this project as it works to continuously improve the maritime infrastructure for freight movement and economic development.

The USACE has aided state departments of transportation across the country on a variety of maritime projects – most notably with the recent effort to reopen the Port of Baltimore’s main shipping channel following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

In September 2022, the Baltimore District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Department of Transportation signed a Project Partnership Agreement or PPA to work together on the $4 billion Mid-Chesapeake Bay ecosystem restoration project.

The PPA outlines the roles, responsibilities, and financial obligations for both partners for the restoration of both James and Barren islands in Dorchester County, beneficially re-using material dredged from the Port of Baltimore approach channels and the Honga River, respectively.

In May 2022, the USACE headed up a major dredging project in Sloop Channel, NC, on behalf of the North Carolina Department of Transportation – a shipping channel located just outside the agency’s ferry division Ocracoke-South Dock Terminal.

That dredging project is creating a deeper, wider channel that will eventually lead to the return of larger, river-class ferries to the Hatteras-Ocracoke route.

Larger vessels will allow for the transportation of more vehicles and more people per each ferry departure, helping to alleviate traffic congestion issues on this particular ferry route.