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Show the pools would soon impose an intolerable main- tenance charge; and that the large number of locks would make for very high operating costs. As high dams thus appeared preferable, the adoption of a high-dam plan almost automatically followed when Congress incorporated the necessary legislation in the TVA Act. Existing Structures and Traffic The existing navigation facilities are the nine reservoirs on which commerce may move, and the navigation locks which interconnect them. The following tabulation gives relevant statistics for these locks. The reservoirs are also basic to other uses of the river. Source: Corps of Engineers. Provision is made for larger locks as they are re- quired in the future. The facilities will probably eventually include a lock 110 by 600 feet and a smaller loctc at each main river dam. Except for Wilson and Hales Bar Dams, the previously constructed works were largely removed or inundated by the new reservoir developments. Through, dependable navigation was never ob- tained under the old projects. However, with com- pletion of tlhe new main stream reservoirs, a 9-foot navigation channel is now available from the mouth of the TenKiessee River to Knoxville, a distance of about 630 xniles (see figure 3). River Traffic With the completion of the 9-foot navigable chan- nel, an increasingly large amount of traffic is mov- ing over the river. The volume of traffic in 1949 was 508 million ton-miles. This was 15 times as great as the 1933 traffic, which was composed pri- marily of short hauls of sand and gravel, and forest products. Traffic now consists mainly of petroleum products from the Southwest and the Midwest; grains from the Midwest; automobiles from the North Central States; coal and coke from Ohio River ports; iron and steel from the upper Ohio River; phosphate fertilizer moving to Midwest distributors; and forest products moving to Ohio and Mississippi processing plants and to markets. Before the 9-foot waterway was developed, Ten- nessee River craft were mostly stern-wheel towboats and 300- to 500-ton barges of 4- or 5-foot draft. These tows still can be used, but today the largest towboats and barges, long used on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, can also operate on the Tennessee. These are propeller towboats ranging up to 2,000 or 3,000 horsepower, each of which will propel fleets of barges drawing 9 feet and capable of carrying 2,000 tons or more per barge. A single tow may represent the equivalent of four or five 50-car freight trains. Eighteen barge lines employed 50 towboats, car- rying 1,270,000 tons of long-haul traffic in 1949. There were also 1% million tons of sand and gravel, the principal short-haul commodity moving on the river. From 1933 to 1949 high grade traffic in- creased tenfold. The barge line revenues from this enterprise now amount to more than 4 million dollars annually, and the fleet is valued at over 7 million dollars. Shippers along the waterway saved about 6 million dollars in transportation costs in 1949, considerably more than all Federal costs for the operation of navigation facilities, including de- preciation. Effects of Navigation Improvements Improvement of the waterway has changed dis- tribution methods in the Tennessee Valley. An example is the petroleum industry, which no longer distributes its finished products directly from the refineries, but from bulk storage facilities con- structed at waterfront locations in the valley. Pipe- 718 Dam and lock Fort Loudoun ______ Watts Bar___ _______ Cbickamauga. ... Hales Bar____ ... ... Guntersvflle-- -Wheeler...... _______ Wilson: Upper lock ______ Lower lock......... No. 1____........ Pickwick Landing____ Kentucky.___ _______ Clear chamber dimen- Lift sions Afln-MUes Feet Feet Feet Feet vies Feet 602.3 360 60 72 80 45 813.0 629.9 360 60 58 70 40 741.0 471.0 360 60 49 53 40 682.5 431.1 265 60 39 41 35 634.0 349.0 360 60 39 45 35 595.0 274.9 360 60 48 52 40 556.0 259.4 292 60 91.7 92 30 507.5 259.3 300 60 ___________ 30 ...... 256.8 298 60 2.3 8 30 _____ 206.7 600 110 55 63 40 414.0 22.4 600 110 56 73 40 359.0 Length Width Normal Maximum Average time per single lockage Normal pool elevation Distance from mouth |