NY Times: Severe drought affecting Mississippi River shipping.

[NNadir]

"CHICAGO, Aug. 14 - Rick and Rhonda Richards drove two and a half hours last Monday from Nashville to Metropolis, Ill., to hit the slot machines there, only to find that Harrah's riverboat casino had closed two nights before for the most unexpected of reasons: low water levels on the Ohio River. A drought ravaging parts of the Midwest this summer had left the boat nearly on the river bottom, making it difficult to board and disembark...

... As the worst drought since 1988 has deepened across parts of the Midwest, low-water levels are doing more than just inconveniencing gamblers. They are turning parts of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers into virtual sandbars, causing towboats and barges to run aground and delaying shipments of petroleum products, coal, chemicals, agricultural goods and road-paving materials.

The delays are threatening construction projects throughout the region, and the higher transportation costs could ultimately make this year's harvest of corn and other crops too expensive for some international markets, commodity analysts and barge-shipping officials said..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/national/15drought.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1124168404-3GY68X9uw3JveOfley/6GA

More to come...

[phantom power]

1. I think it would be cool to collect stories like this...

and every time some blowhard utters the canned talking point: "CO2 regs will kill the economy", I can take a copy of a story about shipping being closed down on the Mississippi, and make them eat it. Or a story about massive crop failures, or towns in Australia closing down, etc...