Photo By James Finn | Lock and Dam Operator Jason Smith welds a bubbler pipe for Lock 14 in LeClaire, Iowa,...... read more read more
Now that spring has arrived in the Rock Island District, the busy part of the navigation season has arrived as well. While the 18 locks within the District on the Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway do not technically close for winter, the colder months of late December through mid-March are much slower for commercial and recreational traffic. Lock crews and maintenance crews take advantage of these slower times to ensure the locks, dams and associated sites are in the best shape possible when traffic picks up again.
From time-to-time, a lock will close completely for winter maintenance, as was the case with locks 13, 14, 15 and 19 on the Mississippi River this past winter.
“While the Mississippi River Project Maintenance Team completes much of the work, lock and dam crews at each site help however they can,” said Bob Castro, Chief of the Lock and Dam Section for the Mississippi River. “Full closure of a lock also gives lock and dam crews a chance to focus on work that’s difficult to complete during regular operations.”
“We are involved with safety and construction meetings with crew and contractors,” said Gary Kilburg, Lockmaster at Lock and Dam 12 in Bellevue, Iowa. “In the winter of 2018/2019, when our lock was dewatered for relief well installation, the lock crew took advantage of the chamber being empty and did work on our bubbler pipe system, replaced the sprinkler pump in the filling tunnel, added two rows of timbers to the upper gates and inspected anything that would normally be under water.”
Once a closure is wrapped up, lock crews work on putting all the pieces back together.
“Normally after a maintenance closure there is a fair amount of cleanup around the lock site,” Kilburg said. “Whenever there is a lot of activity, equipment and personnel on site, it’s good practice to ensure all safety equipment and machinery is put back in place and operational.”
The work doesn’t stop there as much needs to be done to get ready to move traffic again.” Typically, the crew has a day or two set aside for annual training purposes so they can get refreshed on training requirements, the Lock Performance Maintenance System, tow haulage units, accident/incident forms and standard operating procedures for locking vessels.
“Once the training items are done, we start up the bubbler system to break up any ice that remains around the miter gates and get ready to pass traffic,” Kilburg said. “After that, we ensure that all the machinery is greased, serviced and ready to operate.”
During a typical winter season, when there is not a maintenance closure, the lock crew goes through a to-do list which is compiled during the busy navigation season. These tasks vary from year to year, but include replacing and cleaning cam switches in the miter gate machinery, replacing pumps in the basement and crossover pits, repainting inside the lock house and shop, performing maintenance on boats and other equipment used at the lock, snow and ice removal and a host of other tasks.
“The weather in the winter months determines what we can work on each day,” Kilburg said. “We try to have inside and outside work lined up and, depending on the weather conditions, we adjust what we are working on that day. With our lock located in the northern part of the District, we tend to have a longer non-locking season due to ice buildup on the river.
This can give us an advantage to get more done, but at the same time can have a negative impact as we are subject to more inclement weather.”
| Date Taken: | 04.23.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 04.23.2021 15:04 |
| Story ID: | 394598 |
| Location: | ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, IL, US |
| Web Views: | 293 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Lock and Dam Crews Busy Prepping for Navigation Season, by James Finn, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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