On a bright afternoon at the Elizabeth Riverfront Park, a towboat pulled a barge of coal through the river and locals cast fishing lines from a dock into the Monongahela River. The coast looked clear.
Up the river, the Pittsburgh District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is at work removing the Elizabeth Locks & Dam. For 117 years, the dam regulated the water levels between Braddock and Charleroi, allowing commercial barges and weekend boaters to pass through this water highway.
“As with any piece of infrastructure that's very old, the older it gets, the more wear and tear it undergoes,” said U.S. Army Corps Col. Nicholas Melin.“And as with anything that was built a long time ago, the parts and components to those facilities get harder to find and harder to resource. It becomes more expensive to the taxpayer to maintain that facility.”
Removing the dam allows for uninterrupted traffic on that 30-mile stretch of river. Barges can move quicker and carry larger loads. And so, the $30 million decision was made to take out the dam. On July 15, through a series of underwater explosions, the demolition of Elizabeth Locks & Dam began.
Things didn’t go exactly to plan. Taking out a dam meant that the water level would be lower than it used to be in parts of the river. But in some, it fell lower than even the engineers expected. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler sent a letter urging the Army Corps to fix navigation issues caused by the dam removal.
“Due to significant changes in water levels, commercial barges continue to encounter shallow areas that damage equipment and impede regional commerce,” the letter said.
The Army Corps had to limit the size of loads that passed through the dam due to shallow water levels until it was able to open up a 100-foot navigation channel through the dam — allowing a one-way path for maritime traffic. Now, it’s at work finishing up removing the dam and establishing a “new normal” on the Mon.
“The water levels were higher,” Melin said. “They were stable for the entire 117 years that Elizabeth Lock[s] & Dam was in place. Once we removed it, we've now changed the water level and are working with all of the shoreside industry, with our municipalities that are along the river to make adjustments to their facilities for what will be the new normal for decades and decades to come. So, it's an ongoing process.”
Modernizing the river
Pittsburgh’s three rivers are a liquid economic engine. The Pittsburgh Port District supported 92,000 jobs and netted $1.5 billion in state and local tax revenue in 2021, according to an analysis by the National Waterways Association, an industry group.
About 50,000 barges moved through the 23 locks and dams in the Pittsburgh region in 2024, carrying 140 million tons of commodities, according to the Port of Pittsburgh, the state government agency for river traffic in southwestern Pennsylvania. These barges mainly carry bulk commodities.
“Think of gravel, think of coal, think of other large transportable commodities that are needed for industry, not just here in the region, but really across the United States,” said Matt Pavlosky, a spokesperson for the Port of Pittsburgh Commission.
“Our coal could be used as far away as a power plant in Wisconsin or the corn farmed in Ohio could make its way down the Mississippi River and be exported internationally," Pavlosky said.
An average tow in Pittsburgh rivers is made up of six to nine barges, according to the Port of Pittsburgh. One barge can hold as much cargo as 72 tractor-trailers or 15 railroad cars.
“If there's something that you need to move a lot of, over a great distance, it's better off to put it over the river,” Pavlosky said.
A towboat pulls the barge configurations though locked chambers and dams. The locks and dams form something like a staircase for river traffic to drive through, and they keep the water at a consistent depth. They’re needed here, in particular, because Pittsburgh has steep terrain. And the Pittsburgh District of the Army Corps is responsible for maintaining those locks and dams.
“You approach a lock,” Pavlosky said. “The boat goes and enters the lock, doors close behind the lock, [and] the lock either raises or lowers the water level to meet the next up step. So you continue to have what we call a draft, a 9-foot draft, or a 9-foot depth that's required in order to have industrial traffic move on rivers. It's basically the accepted standard of the industry in order to be able to move freight through the area.”
Last summer was very dry, and the water levels in the river were lower than usual, according to Melin. When the Army Corps opened up the Elizabeth Locks & Dam in July, the water level inside the lock chamber, “inside that water elevator, was a little lower than we wanted to see to be able to allow industry traffic to be able to move through fully loaded and safely," he said.
They limited the size of the loads that could pass through and then “went into a 45-day period where our contractor was working 18-hour days, six days a week” Melin said.
The Army Corps dredged a 100-foot channel right through the middle of the dam to lift the load restriction and allow freight to pass through. But outside of the navigation channel, toward the shore, the water is still very shallow in areas under certain conditions.
“Right now, for the most part, the channels have been coming back up to speed,” Pavlosky said. “What the problem becomes is as you deviate from the channel and you move over to a terminal facility, the depth there is probably lower.
"And that's where you see [companies] having to underfill a barge or, you know, basically put more freight in, more barges, less fall in order to move them up," he added. "And those companies will tell you that that does come at a greater cost. And again, it's cost, it's efficiency.”
The Army Corps is working on dredging — digging and scraping the bottom of the river to clear out a wider channel, as well fixing the areas of the river near marinas and turnarounds for some of the larger vessels where the water has dropped. Melin said it's aiming to have the dam completely removed and have the river ready for two-way traffic by the end of the year.
“If you were to be a recreational boater going out on the river at that time, you could drive freely between [John P. Murtha Locks & Dam] at Charleroi to Braddock without any interruption,” he said. “So that's the first thing that they would see.”
