Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway
The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway (popularly known as the Tenn-Tom) is a 234-mile (377-kilometer) man-made waterway that extends from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system near Demopolis, Alabama, United States. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway links commercial navigation from the nation’s midsection to the Gulf of Mexico. The major features of the waterway are 10 locks and dams, a 175-foot (53 m) deep cut between the Tombigbee River watershed and the Tennessee River watershed, and 234 miles (377 km) of navigation channels. The ten locks are 9 by 110 by 600 feet (2.7 m × 33.5 m × 182.9 m) the same dimension as the locks on the Mississippi above Lock and Dam 26 at Alton, Illinois. Under construction for twelve years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway was completed in December 1984 at a total cost of nearly $2 billion.
The Tenn-Tom encompasses 17 public ports and terminals, 110,000 acres (450 km2) of land, and another 88,000 acres (360 km2) managed by state conservation agencies for wildlife habitat preservation and recreational use.
Supported by southern Congressmen, the Tenn-Tom Waterway was widely criticized at its creation as an example of exorbitant "pork barrel" spending.
First proposed in the Colonial period, the idea for a commercial waterway link between the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers did not receive serious attention until the advent of steamboat traffic in the early nineteenth century. As steamboat efficiency gains caused water transport costs to decline, in 1875, for the first time, engineers surveyed a potential canal route. However, they issued a negative report at that point in time, emphasizing that prohibitive cost estimates still prevented the project from economic feasibility.
Enthusiasm for the project languished until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The development of the Tennessee River by TVA, especially the construction of the Pickwick Lock and Dam in 1938, helped decrease Tenn-Tom's potential economic costs and increase its potential benefits. Pickwick Lake's design included an embayment on its south shore at Yellow Creek, which would permit the design and construction of an entrance to a future southward waterway (leading to the Tombigbee river); should it be decided that such a waterway should be built in the future. Later, construction (under World War II emergency authorization) of Kentucky Dam at Gilbertsville, KY, near the mouth of the Tennessee river's entrance into the Ohio (river), would complete the "Northern" half of the future waterway. As early as 1941 the proposal was combined with other waterways, such as the St. Lawrence seaway, with the aim of building broader political support. Additionally, political candidates began to favor the construction of the waterway for political reasons, that is, in order to appeal to the voters in the South, rather than for economic reasons. In the early 1960s it was proposed that the canal could be created by use of atomic blasts.
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