- Drought has driven the Mississippi River to historic low levels, choking US agricultural exports.
- The crisis has increased shipping prices, and that cost may fall on consumers.
- Forecasts don't show enough rainfall to replenish the river until January.
A crisis of low water levels on the Mississippi River could soon reach consumers' wallets, and it's not forecast to end until January.
A summer of heat waves baked the central US, evaporating water off the Mississippi. In fall, a flash drought struck the Ohio and Missouri river valleys, preventing them from replenishing the larger river. At that point, they'd only contributed small amounts of water from snowmelt to its flow, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Paul Pastelok. By early October, the Mississippi River was breaking low-water records.
The receding waters have global implications. The Mississippi River basin produces about 92% of US agricultural exports, including 60% of US grain exports, which travel down the river to the Gulf to ship across the world. Much of that shipping stalled in mid-October, then resumed at a crawl. AccuWeather doesn't expect enough rainfall to replenish the river until January at the earliest. Experts say we haven't seen the full impact yet.
Consumers could pay the price for shipping slowdowns
While the US inland waterways system saves the country between $7 billion and $9 billion annually compared to costs of other systems, like truck or freight, economic losses incurred from the Mississippi River drought are significant. Through December, AccuWeather estimates $20 billion in losses caused by increased transportation costs, shipping delays, and job losses.
But Deb Calhoun, senior vice president at the Waterways Council — a group that advocates for modern waterway infrastructure — told Insider she expects losses to be far greater than $20 billion once all the data is aggregated, and consumers will feel the impact.
"Those shipping rates are going to go up, and ultimately, those get passed to the consumer," Calhoun said.
She added that still, transporting via the river is the "most cost competitive way" to move goods.
"We probably haven't quite seen the impact of it yet to the consumer market," she said, adding, "What everyone's concerned about now is getting the goods as quickly as possible to those destinations and those buyers around the world who are waiting for their product. So, commerce is moving right now, but it's moving inefficiently and it's moving really slowly."
The US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) has been dredging the river 24/7 to keep it deep enough for barges, USACE representatives told Insider. They expect to keep up that pace until the rivers rise again in January.
"We haven't had any channel closures — knock on wood — to date. But it gets to be a challenge as the river levels continue to go down," Lou Dell'Orco, chief of operations at the USACE St. Louis division told Insider.
An uncertain future for America's shipping artery
Supply chain issues are not unique to the drought — the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused countries in Europe to place embargoes on key goods like grain and energy supplies, meaning international buyers are turning to the US to get those goods, which are primarily transported via the Mississippi River. Coal is in high demand right now, Calhoun said, and the low water levels present a challenge to ship it out of the country.
"This is a temporary blip and we'll get back on track when Mother Nature cooperates," Calhoun said. "We've seen high water and low water in the same shipping seasons sometimes, and the industry will manage those different weather disruptions as they come."
Jon Deason, lead professor of the Environmental and Energy Management Program at George Washington University, isn't feeling as optimistic. He said higher food prices at the grocery store are just the first way consumers will start feeling the impact of low water levels.
Pastelok said it's unclear how climate change will affect the Mississippi River in the long term, but it's possible that the river's drought cycle accelerates. Instead of every 10 to 15 years, for example, drought could strike the river every five to 10 years.
"We can fix it. But so far, we haven't," Deason told Insider, adding, "And the reason we haven't is that the pain hasn't gotten sufficiently severe for people to focus on it and for elected officials to do something about it."
The climate crisis can push drought cycles into new extremes
Drought is part of the natural cycle of the Mississippi River basin. Waters were similarly low in 1988 and 2012.
"You can't really put it all on climate change," Pastelok told Insider.
Still, he said, climate change could be amplifying the heat waves, drought, and diminishing snowpack that brought the river so low. Scientists have to conduct rigorous analysis to attribute any single event to climate change, but on the whole they're confident that rising global temperatures make extreme heat and drought more severe and more frequent.
In that way, the Mississippi shipping slowdown shows how climate change can operate in the background to push stressful conditions over the edge into crisis.
"This is a global problem we're going to be having for a long time," Deason said. "For vulnerable places where the economy is heavily dependent on rainfall, like the Mississippi Watershed, it's a real issue."