What's the crazy thing in the river at Cape Girardeau?

If you haven't seen it yet, you need to visit the Cape riverfront to take in the salvage operation taking place just east of the center of the channel. It's like a rotating, free-form fountain -- connected to a crane on a barge in the Mississippi River. For much of the day, water is spewed dozens of feet into the air while the clanking of metal reverberates to the shore. A part of it is reminiscent of a kind of "inflatable tube man" like you might see outside a car dealership or in a Halloween yard decoration, except that instead of fanned air causing the ghost or "tube man" to wildly rotate, it's the water pressure of the "fountain."

It's all part of an operation to clean up a sunken barge, which will take several months to accomplish. Why so long? The barge, carrying cement mix, was torn open in a collision, causing water to gush in and convert the mix to concrete, several sources told me. Lifting the barge with its cargo out of the water isn't an option; it's too heavy. So the concrete needs to be broken into small pieces, which is done with what appears to be a type of pile driver on the end of a crane. Then it is suctioned up and flung into the air, where it can be carried down the river.

For several months, I've been following the preparation for the project and talking to some of the guys working for Okie Moore Diving and Salvage, a company that has conducted salvage work for decades. They've been getting things ready on work platforms framed by cranes and boats, located in the river just south of Honker's Boat Dock. For several weeks before they moved into the channel, it wasn't unusual to see them welding on what one guy called "a hammer." Two weeks ago, under the direction of a Corps of Engineer vessel, Okie Moore set up on top of the water above the sunken barge.

Telephone calls to the company didn't lead to much information. It prefers not to comment on current jobs. And I didn't introduce myself as potentially writing about the matter when I spoke casually to the guys working on the project. So I want to be careful about what I share at this point.

It was Rob Erlbacher II, president of Missouri Dry Dock and Repair Company here in Cape Girardeau, who was able to give me some details about the work. He said a barge such as the one that sunk holds around 1,500 tons of cargo. He thought there was probably around 1,400 tons of cement mix inside this one. If I do the math right, that means the mix turned into more than 2.8 million pounds of concrete. And, if you figure that a 60 pound bag of mix can make about 1.35 sq. feet of 4-inch-thick concrete, that's about 63,000 square feet total -- or enough to build a narrow sidewalk from the floodwall in Cape Girardeau to the county courthouse in Jackson more than 10 miles away.

And it's all at the bottom of the river.

Erlbacher said that the company responsible for the collision was hoping the concrete-filled barge would settle into the river bed. Or that the current would "scour" the concrete on its own. Either one of these would save the company and its insurers the high cost of removing the barge and its ill-fated cargo. But over time, neither has happened, and the sunken vessel needs to be removed to prevent a potential obstacle for future navigation.

I'm hoping to find out more about the barge and the collision that caused it for an article in the regional business magazine, B. So far, I've learned about some of the rules around piloting on the Mississippi, as well as the high cost to clean up after these kinds of accidents. In the meantime, when you have a chance, head down to the river. There's a good chance you'll see the crazy "fountain" or one of the "hammers" in action. The sight is likely to continue into the new year.

Jon K. Rust is publisher of the Southeast Missourian. Email address: jrust@semissourian.com.