Commerce on Mississippi River may halt for months

As the first assessment of New Orleans port conditions circulated, experts said it might be next year before cargo movement returns to normal there and the even bigger Port of South Louisiana.

"I wouldn't be surprised not to see it for months," said David Sehrt, chief operating officer of the largest barge company, Ingram Barge. Even after repairs, "most of the terminals don't have electricity and nobody has any workforce."

The United States is the world's biggest agricultural exporter and most of what's exported floats down the Mississippi on barges and out from one of the Louisiana ports on ships headed for the Gulf of Mexico.

Now many fully loaded barges are drifting with nowhere to go. As the U.S. Coast Guard and other officials make their inspections, the lower Mississippi is closed to commercial traffic.

The barges could be sent elsewhere, Sehrt said, but "people haven't made arrangements; they're kind of waiting to see how long it's going to take" to reopen the waterway and its ports.

The traffic jam has left the barge companies unable to take on new loads just ahead of their busiest season.

Large quantities of grain originally headed for export are already languishing in Midwest elevators. Grain brokers with nowhere to send their stocks are offering less to farmers, who are trying to unload the remnants of last year's crop before the new harvest season, which is just beginning and will peak in a matter of weeks.

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