Deep South’s ‘big ditch’

EPES, Ala. - Almost 100 years in the making, the 234-mile man-made Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway - connecting the Tennessee River from Pickwick Lake to the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system - was designed to fulfill the dream of growth and prosperity for the Deep South when it opened in 1985. It hasn't worked out. Delayed for decades by environmental concerns and detractors who called the Tenn-Tom project a boondoggle, the $2B shipping shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico has never come close to traffic projections used to sell it to the public. Poverty rates have increased in most of the counties it flows through in Alabama and Mississippi. There are pockets of relative prosperity near Demopolis, in west Alabama, where it has helped lure industry. Yet these days, fishermen along its banks are as likely to see cabin cruisers headed to the Florida Keys rather than tugboats pushing a string of barges. "It was the greatest thing that was going to happen. It was the thing. It was the hope," body shop owner and Epes Mayor Walter Porter said. "Now it's just a ditch." An $8M port, meant to help spur development in rural Sumter County, sits unused near the Mississippi state line. (Source: The AP 09/16/19) https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2019-09-16/2b-waterway-through-deep-south-yet-to-yield-promised-boom