Army Corps Closes Two Local Locks

The Emsworth and Dashield Locks on the Ohio River will be closed most of this July, with traffic limited to the auxiliary lock at each facility. Scheduled maintenance is being done on the emptying valves of Emsworth Locks and the miter gates at Dashields by the Army Corps of Engineers. The repairs will run from July 6th to July 24th.

Army Corps spokesman Jeff Hawk says the Corps and local businesses have done their best to weaken the inevitable blow to the local economy. “We’ve coordinated heavily with industry so they could prepare their clients and supply them with their commodities ahead of time, so we expect less delivery during this time. That’s one of the reasons we took advantage of this period of time,” says Hawk. He says 74% of the locks’ traffic is coal related, so they scheduled the repairs over a miners’ holiday to minimize the impact of the closure.

Normally, 15 barges are put through the two-hour process at once, but the limitations of the maintenance will allow only one to pass through at a time. This is likely to cause massive delays, both in commercial and recreational vessels. The former are given priority over the latter, as always, so recreational boat users are urged to call Dashields at (724) 457-8430 or Emsworth at (412) 766-6213 to check for availability and wait times. More general information can be found at the Army Corps’ website.