After 24 years of construction, the Olmsted Locks and Dam may finally alleviate barge traffic on the Ohio River—next year. Only two massive precast “shells” need to be set in the river this year. After that, some minor cleanup work remains in the nearly quarter-century-long major infrastructure project.
Since the 1990s, ENR has written about the need to replace the failing locks and dams 52 and 53, respectively 85 and 86 years old, on the river just above where it meets the Mississippi at Cairo, Ill. (ENR 9/20/97 p. 20 and 11/14/11 p. 48). Their replacement, Olmsted, has been touted as both a necessary, state-of-the-art modernization and as a boondoggle that has caused other Army Corps of Engineers projects to be pushed further down the road because of its increasing schedule and cost overruns. Olmsted’s original authorized cost, $775 million, was long ago passed, and its completion is now authorized at a cost of up to $3.1 billion.