Upstream Mississippi River drought threatens 7,000 La. jobs

Matt Lagarde, who manages a fleet of towboats in Convent, watched with dread last year as drought seared crops across the farm belt 1,000 miles upstream on the Mississippi River. Now the effects of the worst dry spell in 70 years are making their way to the river’s delta, says Lagarde, 41, who has worked on the nation’s busiest waterway for half his life. “Things just look fairly dismal over the next couple of months,” Lagarde tells Bloomberg. “In the next couple of weeks, you’re really going to see things start to tighten out.” Though rain has been plentiful in Louisiana as of late, operators all along the Mississippi have lost work as diminished crops sap export tonnage and low water narrows the channel and jams up barges. Lagarde’s employer, AEP River Operations, has had to shift workers around as it idled boats. It is working through January without the usual profit from the previous year to tide it over, Lagarde says. The company is not alone. Louisiana, a state sustained by river commerce, is braced for the impact as barge traffic slows in the shallow water. About 7,000 jobs in the state—more than in any other—would be at risk if record-low water forced shipping to halt, according to the American Waterways Operators, an Arlington, Va.-based industry group. Read the full story here.