Photo By Melanie Peterson | Mike Holzer, civil engineer, talks to Aaron Pipelow, safety specialist, at the...... read more read more
Over the winter, the St. Paul District maintenance and repair team completed a project that set the stage for major maintenance upcoming at locks and dams 7 and 9. The maintenance included upgrading existing anchorages in preparation for new miter gates. New miter gates are scheduled to be installed at Lock and Dam 7, near La Crescent, Minnesota, this summer and at Lock and Dam 9, near Eastman, Wisconsin, in summer 2026. The existing miter gates are more than 90 years old.
Anchorage upgrades
The project involved concrete repairs and the installation of newly fabricated anchorages. “Each lock has a set of upstream and downstream miter gates which act as doors to the lock chamber. The anchorages act as door hinges for the miter gates,” Jim Cook, project manager, said. “The gates control the water level in the lock chamber only.”
The anchorages needed to be strengthened because the new miter gates are 56% heavier than the existing gates.
Maintenance and repair team
Work began the first week of December 2024 and was completed in February. Each project cost $1.5 million.
Brian Sipos, lockmaster at Lock and Dam 9, said, “Our maintenance and repair crew is doing the work, and it saves us a lot of money compared to using a contractor to do the same work. Our crew gets the work done in that short amount of time, approximately three months, and they get it done safely.” He added that it’s important that the work is completed during the winter in the non-navigational season because it shuts down the river. “It’s cold work, but our crew are professionals,” he said.
Navigation
The St. Paul District navigation program provides a safe, reliable, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable waterborne transportation system on the Upper Mississippi River for the movement of commercial goods and for national security needs. To do this, the district maintains a 9-foot navigation channel and 13 locks and dams from Minneapolis to Guttenberg, Iowa. Keeping this system open is vital to the nation’s economy.
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| Date Taken: | 04.24.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.24.2025 10:27 |
| Story ID: | 496067 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 15 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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