Record amounts of rainfall in late June caused high water problems that eventually closed the Mississippi River at St. Paul, Minn., to navigation in July. Patrick Moes, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers St. Paul District, said the problem was the amount of sediment the current dragged into the center of the 9-foot navigation channel between late June and the end of July. "The sediment that was dropped into the channel created sandbars," said Moes, "but there's been a big improvement since the closure a week ago (July 29)." Pool 6 near Winona, Minn., was scheduled to reopen on Aug. 6 and Pool 4, a channel between Wabasha, Minn., and Alma, Wis., was set to reopen on Aug. 8, according to Moes. Moes said 152 barges and 17 tow-boats were sidelined by the closure. The barges carried mostly non-metal corn and salt.
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