Lower than normal rainfall in the US Pacific Northwest has shippers worried that the Columbia/Snake River System may face shallow water this coming summer.
The 106-mile shipping channel, from the river mouth at Astoria (Or) to the ports of Portland (Or) and Vancouver (Wa), is maintained at 40ft by the US Army Corps of Engineers, but the Corps has cautioned that one of the driest winters the region has suffered in the past 25 years may cause problems....
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Approx 235 words from Bulk Materials International, March/April 2001,
page 4.