found this on local 12 news cincy



An inspector will be on hand today to try and figure out a fix for a broken lock at a local dam, which is causing a traffic jam of sorts on the Ohio. Barges carrying coal, steel and other products may be delayed for weeks because of the weekend equipment failure.

The commander at Markland Lock and Dams in Warsaw says the problem started Sunday morning. A vessel was traveling through the 1200 foot chamber but when the gates opened, one of the leaves fell off completely. The other one is damaged and still hanging from the wall.

Traffic stopped while engineers worked on a solution. Now, barges have to go through a smaller chamber piece by piece and that's turning a 30 minute trip into a 90 minute process. The commander is hoping those fully loaded barges will be able to lock through the smaller 600 foot chamber without causing further damage.

Col. Keith Landry of the Army Corps of Engineers told Local 12, "Assuming the tests with the fully loaded set of barges goes well we will continue to lock through while we're doing our assessments here. If this test does not go well it wouldn't be prudent for me to allow that to continue until I can stabilize this damaged leaf."

This morning, the commander will start putting together an investigative team to try and figure out exactly what is wrong with that gate. He says it could take several weeks to fix.

The Markland Locks average about 15 ships or barges a day