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| MWRD |
Like the Chicago River Controlling Works (CRCW), this lock does not use valves and conduits to fill the lock. It just partially opens the gates to lift vessels up to five feet. USACE calls these "sector gates." [usace-repair] (When the lock was closed in 2014, the barge traffic was able to use the Chicago River to get to the lake. [LoopNorth]) I presume the gates are part of a circle to keep ice from jamming between the gate and the sidewall. Or does it help with the flow of water when they are partially open? Actually, HAER-data reports that they were a cost reduction. "The use of sector gates allowed Army Corps engineers to experiment with less
expensive chamber wall construction since the network of tunnels, culverts and valves
located within the chamber walls for filling and emptying operations that characterized
locks with miter gates was not required." No "plumbing" in the chamber walls allowed them to use steel sheet piling instead of reinforced concrete for the walls. The curved upstream face of the gate alleviatse having to open the gate against water pressure.
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| B Thamus, Jul 2019 |
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| Jo Pin posted Good Afternoon from the Thomas J. O'Brien Lock & Dam is a lock on the Calumet River on the south side of Chicago in the South Deering/Hegewisch area. The dam is 326 river miles from the Mississippi-Illinois confluence. The up-river side of the dam is at Lake Michigan's level, 577 feet above sea level. The lock dimensions are 1,000 by 110 feet. The Thomas J. O'Brien Lock and Control Works is significant as a component of the Illinois Waterway, a navigable route linking Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River and beyond. The lock and control works are located on the Calumet-Sag Channel, an artificial channel that connects the Little Calumet River with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Army Corps designed the Thomas J. O'Brien lock (in operation in 1965) to accommodate the longer barge tow configurations in use on the waterway. Address: 2515 E 134th St, Chicago, IL 60633 Opened: 1960 Length: 297′ 0″ Marko Lucht: This may sound picky, but the O'Brien Lock is actually on the Calumet River, which splits into the Grand and Little Calumet slightly further south. The Cal Sag Channel picks up off the Little Calumet further southwest, just before Ashland. Jo Pin: Marko Lucht as researched and noted above: Thomas J. O'Brien Lock & Dam is a lock on the Calumet River. |
Significance: The Thomas J. O'Brien Lock and Control Works is significant as a component of the Illinois Waterway, a navigable route linking Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River and beyond. The lock and control works are located on the Calumet-Sag Channel, an artificial channel that connects the Little Calumet River with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Army Corps designed the Thomas J. O'Brien lock (in operation in 1965) to accommodate the longer barge tow configurations in use on the waterway. The lock is significant for its use of sector gates as the Army Corps experimented with a new gate type to reduce construction costs and accommodate the particular conditions at the site. [HAER-data]The Chicago River had stockyards and meat packing plants to pollute it. The Calumet River had steel mills. During 1911 to 1922 the MWRD dug a 16.2 mile long channel that was 20' deep and 36' to 60' wide to reverse the flow of the Calumet River. When the Illinois Waterway was built in the 1930s, studies were done to allow barge traffic to continue to the industrial Calumet Region. A 1933 report proposed at 110' x 600' lock to replace the existing 50' x 350' lock at Blue Island. [HAER-data]
When I looked at a satellite image, I noticed that the lock had three barges and a towboat and it looked like it did not have room for five rows of barges and a towboat. I was right, this lock is 110' x 1000' instead of the normal 110' x 600' or 110' x 1200'. It is 1000' because it was built before the USACE had installed tow haulage units in the Illinois River locks in the 1970s. [HAER-data]
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| Satellite |
The HAER historian includes a history of lock operations with the standard 35' x 195' barge to explain the 1000' lock length. In the following, the first column is the tow configuration between locks. The remaining columns are the cuts that went through a 600' lock. Originally, they used 8-barge tows that left a "hole" in the third row. This allowed the towboat to unhook from the tow and tuck into the hole to lock through with the barges. After it left the lock, the towboat would then have to move back to its middle position and tie onto the tow again.
8-barge tow:
xxx xxx
xxx xxx
xx xxt
t
To lock through a 14-barge tow, the tow would first have to be cut into 6-barge and 8-barge tows. Somehow the 8-barge tow would have to be anchored or tied down while the towboat unhooked and ran around the 8-barge tow to tie onto the 6-barge tow and lock through. After shoving the 6-barge tow out of the lock, it would lock back down and shove the 8-barge tow through like it did since the 1930s. It would then have to tie the two tows back together. Did they run a cable from the "b" barge in the diagram to the towboat? If not, it would seem the tow would have strength problems when it had to turn to the right. If they did, then unhooking and hooking the towboat for inter-lock transport would be even more tedious.
14-barge tow:
xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xxx
xxx t xxt
xxb
xx
t
The historian's 17-barge tow:
xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xtx
xxx
xxx
xtx
Today's actual 15-barge tow:
xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx t
xxx
xxx
t
Also like the CRCW, the dam has sluice gates so that the MWRD can control how much water is allowed to flow through the Cal Sag Channel to reverse its flow during normal times and to allow water to flow into the lake during floods.
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| HAER IL-164-I |
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| HAER IL-164-I |
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| Rod Sellers posted Where am I? |
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| Rod commented on his post Answer: Aerial view of Calumet River straightening south of 130th c1936. New channel is completed. Old channel is being filled in. Torrence Avenue would eventually be straightened and one bridge (134th and Torrence) eliminated. Other Torrence bridge (138th and Torrence) would be replaced. Attached newspaper map shows three step plan proposed in 1935 for the Calumet River. 1) Straighten Calumet River moving confluence of Calumet and Little Calumet Rivers from east of Torrence Avenue to west of Torrence Avenue 2) New Torrence Avenue Bridge across Calumet River at 124th Street 3) New bridge at 138th and Torrence Avenue. |
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| MWRD posted on Jun 6, 2023 A dredging boat at work on the Little Calumet River on December 1, 1927. |
The lock is interesting, but it'd appear that the primary purpose of this structure is to regulate water levels, because there is no natural fall, here, that'd require a lock, otherwise. I'm guessing the location is also because it's the only path they could get a straight stretch of river that long.
ReplyDeleteMy only question is that if the Calumet had already been reversed, what exactly was the purpose for its construction? Was there an event that kicked off planning for it? How often are the sluice gates in the dam opened and closed? I feel like there answer to this is obvious, but I can't quite figure it out.
I'm supposed to explain why in the referenced link: https://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2018/01/mwrd-reducing-chicagolands-great-lakes.html. (I'm too lazy to read what I wrote.) The bottom line is that after MWRD built sewage treatment plants, they no longer needed a strong current in the Chicago and Calumet Rivers to flush the "waste" downriver. So they built these control locks to reduce the flow. Other states were accusing Chicago of draining the Great Lakes and Chicago was given a quota of how much water they could remove from Lake Michigan. Since then, we have evidence that nature, not Chicago, controls the level of the lake. But I think the quota is still in effect. And they probably want to maintian a reduced flow to help the barge traffic use the canals.
DeleteThanks. I was able to also find more answers in a few other random documents I found on the internet, which were pretty hard to find, and from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
DeleteI think my intial confusion was having missed the part about the Blue Island Lock which predated it, so there was already some level of control of the waterway. The move of the controlling works to to O'Brien location seems to have primarily been to protect against 'backflow' into the lake from the polluted Little and Grand Calument rivers during heavy storms since the Blue Island Lock couldn't prevent since it was further upstream. I imagine, too, that it was put further "up" the waterway close to the lake, because then they'd have likely have had to build a larger lock for larger vessels trying to get into the habor from the lake.
But, yeah, mostly a flood control mechanism that allows them to draw down water levels on the Little & Grand Calumets and Cal-Sag Channel in anticipation of big storms to revent reversal of the waterways the O'Brien protects. From the MWRD website, I'm seeing that reversal at the O'Brien lock has been relatievly rare, only 5 times since 1985, whereas they've had to reverse the flow at the Chicago Lock 16 times over the same period. I'd be curious why that is.
Thanks for sharing your research. One reason the Chicago River reverses more often is probably because a much larger and urban sewer system overflows into that river. Also, when was the TARP tunnel for the Calumet system dug compared to the tunnels that protect the Chicago River? I know the reservoir for the Calumet system came online before that of the Chicago river. But both are rather recent, so I don't think that has a big impact on a "since 1985" statistic.
DeleteHere you go:
Deletehttps://mwrd.org/sites/default/files/documents/TARP%20Tunnels%20with%20dates%20they%20were%20placed%20online%20%281%29.pdf
Yeah, it would seem this wouldn't really explain it. Might simply just be that that area of town is slightly less developed with impervious surfaces, and that there are more small streams down that way to slow down the rainwaters before they get funneled into Little Calumet & Cal-Sag Channel. Just a guess.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteThe O'Brien Lock & Dam serves as a "guard lock." The controlling works (dam) isolates the upper pool from the lower pool. Upper is Lake Michigan and lower canal pool is controlled by next lock down at Lockport, Illinois. Upper pool will go which ever way mother nature wants. Before O'Brien Lock there was a lock at Blue Island, Illinois when the Sag Channel was built in the 1920s between the Little Calumet and the Chicago Sanitary Canal. When the Cal-Sag was widened in the 1950s, the lock at Blue Island was decommissioned and the new O'Brien Lock & Dam opened in 1960. This coincided with the opening of the St.Lawrence Seaway on Great Lakes. Lake Calumet is the international port of Chicago. Ships can make it to there which is ~7mi down the Calumet River from Lake Michigan at Calumet Harbor. O'Brien Lock is about a 1/2 mile down river from Lake Calumet. Cargo is then transferred back in forth from ships to barges to make its way south to The Gulf and all points in between. Interesting fact, you can take a boat from Chicago to Tulsa, Oklahoma or any place in world if the vessel meets the constraints of the Chicago Area Waterways (CAWs) or Great Lakes Seaway. In fact, petro-chemical shipments are common from Tulsa to Chicago just as they are from the Gulf Coast. There is a refinery on Lake Michigan in Indiana... BP, which is a destination point for Southern shipments back and forth.
DeleteThe lock is needed to keep the water elevations below the controlling works and to Lockport lower than Lake Michigan prescribed by USC 33 CFR $ 207.425:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/33/207.425
Without the lock, the pool to Lockport would be uncontrollable and fluctuate widely... With the lock and dam, the pool below the lock is kept relatively static. WithOUT the lock there's a possibly of water backflowing into Lake Michigan AND the ability of not being able to provide a 9 foot deep channel for navigation interests along the waterway and through to the rest of the Illinois Waterway down to the Mississippi River above St.Louis. Possible pollution would flow into the Lake and not south. The lock aids in flushing the Calumet River and southern end of Lake Michigan. The lock and dam at O'Brien serves various missions. Mostly flood and pollution control along with maintaining the economic benefits to navigation. The lock is the "elevator" around the dam. Roughly 7-10 million tons of cargo and 5,000 empty barges along with 20,000 recreational vessels transit past the O'Brien controlling works yearly.
O'Brien Lock & Dam was built for $6 million in 1960. Today a 60 day O'Brien closure costs the local and national economy $18 million in economic output. O'Brien Lock and Dam structurally and operations-wise is relatively unchanged in the last 6p years. Yet, it's reaching its life expectancy as critical economic infrastructure.
Now you know... The missions and the law.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9Og84A0Qo
Chicago Harbor Lock downtown on Chicago River serves the same purpose. There's a third structure on the CAWs at the North Shore Channel @ Wilmette Harbor, just a pumping station now with no lock... BUT there used to be a small lock there from the 1920s or so to the 1950s. Navigation can't hydraulically pass through to the Lake there at Wilmette Harbor. Pumping station is basically a dam structure.
I mean, I know all of this and this was pretty well described. The question is that the Blue Island Lock already provided control along this particular part of what would become the CAWS. My question was about why exactly the location was chosen for O'Brien? Why not rebuild at Blue Island or further up the Calumet? The location seems random aside from what I already mentioned that this location helps control backflows at the cofluence of the Grand Calumet with the Lilttle Calumet.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteNope. When we're talking about backflow, we're talking about just that: opending the locks and sluice gates to backflow into the lake to prevent the Little Calumet from overruning its banks during very high waters. Lockport can only drain so quickly from the system, and gates and locks are only close during minor or moderate rains. That's not a backflow; a backflow is literally only when it...backflows when the chanelside becomes higher than the lakeside.
DeleteIn the old days. There was really two ways to handle polluted water: Treat it or dilute. Dilute or flush it with Lake Michigan water towards The Gulf is the cheapest. It also created a man-made Waterway for industry to ship its product. As the water is being diluted and heading south I suppose disinfection happened naturally. Chicago IIRC correctly never disinfected until plants came online recently in the last few decades. Chicago IIRC has been normally treating storm water for the last 50 or so years. Disinfection is an added step if I am correct. Chicago historically just always diluted and sent its water south to be cleaned/diluted & disinfected naturally. I believe storm water is being treated first now when it can... These old water practices and the abundance of Lake Michigan water was a reason why Chicago could ship and do business cheaply with the Southern states. AND the two points at the Chicago River downtown and on the Calumet River (created with the Sag Channel during 1920s) are the only way to enter the US Western Rivers to and from the Great Lakes. These waterways are free from toll or impost "common highways" dating back to the Northwest Oridance under the Articles of Confederation AND one of the very first acts of Congress under our current US Constitution, reaffirmation (with some slight tweeks) of the Northwest Ordinace in 1789. Chicago is a "carrying point" according to the old terminology when the only way around the subcontinent divide @ Chicago was to portage what was being shipped to the Illinois/Mississippi/Gulf...
ReplyDeleteExcuse me for correcting again. The lock gates are sector gates. Not "normal" mitre gates. They are built this way in order to be able to move the gates against the pressure of the "head" (ie: difference in water between both ends of lock). Sector gates also prevent backflow and the gates from pushing open from the pressure of the head when the one end of lock gets higher than the other. At O'Brien... There's times when the lower canal elevation gets higher than the upper Lake elevation. Sector gates prevent the backflow... But mainly, sector gates enable the gates to be moved mechanically against the water pressure. At O'Brien Lock there are no lower emptying valves. The only way to empty the lock and lower the boats is to crack the lower gates and let the water spill out. You see BThamus' pic... 😉 😉 wink wink... THAT'S the lower end and the lock being emptied for boats going down or being made ready for boats going up to Lake. The upper end at O'Brien DOES have filling valves (those are the stacks you see on the aerial photo at upper gates to the left of the photo) to lesson the turbulence in lock chamber when raising a vessel. That water is sent through a culvert valve into the gate recesses, chamber when raising a vessel or getting the chamber ready for a download vessel. The chamber can also be raised by cracking the upper gates open a little bit. SO in conclusion gates are shaped that way in order to be able to move against the pressure of the head. Normal mitre gates... With pressure of head would remain tightly closed until a valve was able to be operated to equalize the pressure against the mitre. The curve of the gate redistributes the pressure evenly, acts like a cam so machinery can move easily, swing gates against the tremendous pressure that the difference of water creates.
ReplyDeleteWater through the sluice gates at dam is discretionary water. The 4 10' sluices are set determined by MWRD and relayed to lock staff. Normal conditions is all closed and the lock operation provides sufficient water to the waterway. MWRD will determine the amount of opening normally AFTER storms to add water when storm conditions dictated that canal be drawn down for added storm reserve capacity. Again, SEE:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/33/207.425
Alotta times MWRD will want only a few feet open on dam to aerate the canal for added oxygen and health. Note what I said about above on why O'Brien was built to add added "flushing" through to the SAG. There are fish screens (Asian carp) on the slices at dam/controlling works to determine fish movement north to Lake at times when lock is idle and dam slices open.
Go figure. In last 50 years the water is cleaned up so well that species can live in now. In the old days, it was so polluted, a nitrogen rich industrial "dead zone," that nothing living could get through to Lake from the south... You see the irony here, right?
Also... O'Brien is about 7 miles downstream. Chicago Harbor Lock is right at the Lake. Then there's Lake Calumet on Calumet River. I assume that is why there has been less water reversals at O'Brien. Water reversals are also more prevalent when Lake Michigan is on the low, down cycle, which is about every 10 years low, 10 years high. 0.00 guage is neither low or high water for Lake Michigan. That's 579.48' feet above mean sea level. As cited above the lower canal is kept at roughly 2 feet below that. Lake Michigan has been in the +, above that 0.00 guage since the harsh winter of 2014. Before that Lake Michigan was in the low cycle since 2000, it was in the negative, below that 0.00 guage, going almost to -2.00!... When that happens, the canal has to be drawn down further risking shipping from running aground. When Lake Michigan is naturally lower, there's more chance for the other side to match it and get higher. Remember neither high Lake or low Lake = 0.00 (579.48')... Lower end is normally kept at ~ -2.00'. I have seen the Lake as high as +4.30' just recently as 2019. That's trouble because water on upper end gets into gate machinery. Top of wall at the upper end of lock is +7.01'. I have also seen the Lake elevation at -5.00' during a winter seiche event! The lower end going below -3.00' when they draw canal down at Lockport, you'll see the metal structure of the lock appear. I have also seen the lower end be at +3.50'... If you look at aerial photo... That's almost onto the lower lawn! Again, hope this info helps... Oh, Lake Michigan is creeping low again and is roughly at 0.00 to +2 00. As strong storms and winds from the north push down the N-S fetch of Lake Michigan, those storms can routinely drive the upper elevation at the lock up +2-3' or in reverse like I mentioned about the seiche event, drive the water out -5.0'... That's why lock is there!
ReplyDeleteDo the math. The difference, head at O'Brien can in the range from +7' to reverse flow at negative feet. NORMALLY the head at the lock is in the range of 2-4'
Hope this info helps!
Original plans called for: "Turning Basin #6 below lock. That's where the marinas are today. Industry does push 8 jumbo barges which is roughly 800'x70' PLUS the tow boat (80-125') in one cut. They do push 8 at times, but it's hard getting around lower end bend in river with the marinas there and also the other bends below. Routinely 6 barges at 600'x70' PLUS towboat push through lock. You can add pleasure craft with that configuration IFF no hazmat material is included. That gives a 35' "ally" for the recreational craft to come in last, slide alongside tow config and the leave first. Around 9,000-9,600 total tons. Jumbo liquid, petrol-chem tankers are usually 300'×54'... They can push two of those "strung out" in one cut with towboats. If they do show up at lock longer then 1,000' feet (which is rare, they will usually fleet extra barges at Blue Island or South Chicago), they will "set over" tow boats, disconnect tow and slide alongside... They also can come in 3 abreast at 105' wide with normal barges OR 108' wide with two tankers... Usually geography of river discourages that... But it's been done. More routinely is like two separate tows pushing 750' long by 54' wide will share chamber. The one coming in last will slide in alongside and the total will be 108' wide in a 110' chamber. Then one tow leaves first and then the other. Same with multi-vessel lockages with 35' wide barges. One at 70' wide can come in and another at 35' can slide in alongside and share same lock cycle. With a muti-vessel lockages there is usually no safe room for recreational craft, they may to wait.
ReplyDeleteHere's a good shot of what I am talking about with 70' wide tows and PC (PleasureCraft/recreational)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6T4WHb6EYa0
Okay, finally got an answer for why this location was chosen, and it's pretty obvious once it was told to me: The lock and controlling works were built to mark the end/beginning of the 9-foot Navigation Channel Project. Why? Well, I've not gotten an answer to that, so you can only check the educated guesses I made above.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, they didn't want to impede the movement of the larger ships between Lake Michigan and Lake Calumet/Calumet Harbor. Maybe they but it below Lake Calumet because it would have been more difficult to regulate levels if they had the lake as part of the channel. The funny thing is that though it's called the 9-foot Navigation Channel Project, I believe that both sides of the lock are generally dredged to about the same depth, which is anywhere between 25-30 feet. So, it's not as if the bottom of the Calumet River sits significantly lower than the channelized Little Calumet and Cal-Sag Channel, as far as I know.
So, still searching for definitive answers on this.
Searching through old newspaper articles on this, it seems that there were very heated negotiations about where to put locks on the system and the number. The local govs obviously wanted them as close to the mouths of the rivers as possible to be able to better mitigation pollution which flowed out into the lake, the area's drinking water supply. The feds, on the other hand, only cared about navigation, and the fewer locks the better.
DeleteOriginally, the Feds only proposed one lock, and it would have been directly east of the the Blue Island Lock and IN the Little Calumet River. Chicago countered with a proposal for a lock significantly further downstream in the Calumet River proper around where the O'Brien Lock is, today, and an additional one in the Grand Calumet in Indiana just west of where it meets the Indiana Harbor Canal, which is where a lot of untreated sewage from Indiana was ending up in the lake. Indiana didn't want a lock anywhere on the Grand Calumet or Indiana Harbor Canal because they saw it as an impediment to navigation and an obstruction to relieve flooding.
Anyway, what ended up happening is that Chicago got one lock where they wanted one - on the Calumet proper - but the plan for making the Grand Calumet navigable was eventually dropped without support from Indiana. I've also learned that the "9-foot Navigation Channel Project" is the MINIMUM depth. So, yeah, the river is generally much deeper than from its border at 130th Street down to Lockport (appears it's all at least 20 feet deep?). North of 130th is the USACE's seperate dregding project of Calumet Harbor & River which keeps depths anywhere from 27-29 feet.