Industrial Canal Lock
 Looking south toward the Lower Mississippi River |
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| Length: | 195 metres (640 ft) |
|---|---|
| Width: | 22.9 metres (75 ft) |
| Type: | |
| Maximum lift: | 6 metres (20 ft) |
| Sill: | 9.6 metres (31 ft) |
| Waterway(s): | Lower Mississippi River, Industrial Canal |
| Year built: | 1923 |
| Geolocation: | 29°57′54″N 90°01′38″W / 29.965°N 90.02735°W |
The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lock—commonly known as Industrial Canal Lock or simply Industrial Lock—is a navigation lock in New Orleans. It connects the Lower Mississippi River to the Industrial Canal and other sea-level waterways. Because it is shorter and narrower than most modern locks on the Mississippi River System, the 1920s vintage lock has become a bottleneck between the nation's two highest-tonnage waterways—the Mississippi and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.
The lock is located at Lower Mississippi River mile 92.6 AHP. Owing to the confluence of multiple waterways at the Industrial Canal and Lock, the lock chamber is also considered mile 6 EHL (east of Harvey Lock) on the Intracoastal and mile 63 on the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal.
Although the depth over the sill is 9.6 meters (31.5 ft), most of the traffic through the lock consists of shallower-draft barge tows transiting the Intracoastal.
The Industrial Canal and Lock were built by the Port of New Orleans to provide navigation between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. The project was completed in 1923.
In the 1930s, the federal Gulf Intracoastal Waterway connected to the Industrial Canal via Lake Pontchartrain and used the lock to connect to the Mississippi River. Commercial traffic using the lock paid a local toll of 5 cents per gross ton. Beginning in 1944, the federal government leased the lock and the southern segment of the canal, eliminating the toll.
In 1965 another waterway, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (MRGO), was completed and began using Industrial Lock. The MRGO was a deep-draft channel affording ocean-going vessels a short-cut from the Port of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus three different waterways—the Industrial Canal, the Intracoastal and the MRGO—were now using the same lock to connect to the river.
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