When tow boat Capt. Steve Lumpkins moves coal through the century-old locks and dam on the Monongahela River at Elizabeth, he gingerly avoids weakened concrete walls and jutting metal rods that could gash and sink the 195-foot barges he pushes.

Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Steve Lumpkins of Follansbee, W.Va., ties up the Richard C. on Tuesday, after entering Lock No. 3 on the Monongahela River in Elizabeth. Congress in 1992 authorized funding for a $750 million upgrade of locks and dams on the lower Mon. Click photo for larger image. Online Graphic: An aging dam See a graphic that provides a detailed look at the work on the Elizabeth dam and lock wall. This is an Adobe Acrobat file, which requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software to view.

"There are big chunks out of the wall as we approach from the upper end and three spots that we avoid touching that could cause a crash. That metal could rip the whole side of a barge open,'' Lumpkins said from the Richard C., a tow boat he operates for Campbell Transportation, a major commercial river line.

The situation is likely worse under water. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a real concern that the locks and dam at Elizabeth, built on oak timbers driven through the river bottom and stone-filled wooden cribbing, are so badly deteriorated that they could fail and cripple commercial navigation and recreational boating.

A failure at the dam, which opened in 1907, could drop water levels below minimum requirements for safe navigation and cause transporters of commercial goods significant economic loss, said engineer William Karaffa, acting project manager for the Corps.

The removal of the Elizabeth dam from service is part of a much-delayed $750 million plus project to upgrade locks and dams on the lower Mon -- an effort authorized by Congress in 1992 and begun in 1994. The original timetable that would have seen construction completed this year or within the next few years has just been stretched out until 2019 or beyond because of significantly reduced federal funding.

One significant piece of the plan, a new $107 million gated dam on the river at Braddock that was largely fabricated on land and floated into place last year, is basically completed. It will be formally dedicated May 27 with a ceremony to be held from the deck of the Gateway Majestic.

But the river transportation industry will not see practical benefit from the new adjustable Braddock dam, which replaced an old-fixed crest structure similar to the one in Elizabeth, until the whole project is done.

In addition to the new dam at Braddock, 70-year-old undersize locks at Charleroi also must be replaced with larger modernized locks before the crumbling infrastructure at Elizabeth can be demolished and removed. The Charleroi locks -- chambers that allow boats to change elevation and navigate past the dams -- also are based on wooden timbers and can sway enough under water pressure to pinch a large barge between its walls. The adjacent gated dam at Charleroi is in good shape and will remain.

"The entire project was justified as a replacement of two locks for three, which in the long run saves operational money since you don't have to operate another lock, and it also makes industry and boaters happy" because they have one less lock to navigate, said Max Janairo, president of GeoSci Associates, and a retired district engineer with the Corps in Pittsburgh. "The whole project is tied together."

In a 1990 study done to justify the need for the lower Mon reconstruction, the Corps said it could not guarantee the structural integrity of older facilities such as Elizabeth beyond 2000.

Because of the progressive effects of usage and weather, Elizabeth is considered by the Corps to be one of the most deteriorated structures on the inland waterways navigation system, Karaffa said. He called the condition of Elizabeth and its continued ability to properly function a "grave concern" of critical importance for the transportation of coal, chemicals, fuel, steel and other commodities into and out of this region.

The eventual removal of Elizabeth's small locks would erase a bottleneck that requires boat operators to disassemble large tows of barges, send them through the locks in segments and reassemble them before moving on -- a costly delay for the barge operators.

The proposed changes also would visibly affect the river. Removing the locks and dams at Elizabeth would create a single navigational pool 30 miles long from the current two pools and cause the river to rise 5 feet between Braddock and Elizabeth. From Elizabeth to Charleroi, the river would drop 3.2 feet and require dredging.

Before the river pool can be altered, municipal services such as water intakes and sewage treatment plant connections for communities along the Mon must be moved and at least one railroad span, the Port Perry Bridge in Braddock, must be adjusted upward to meet minimum navigation clearance standards.

"Every piece of the puzzle has to fit together,'' said Richard Dowling, public affairs officer for the Corps in Pittsburgh. "A delay in one aspect leads to further delays down the road."

Deane Orr, a former riverboat captain who heads Upper St. Clair-based coal and gas producer Consol Energy's river operations, describes the commercial inland waterways system as a super highway from West Virginia to Pittsburgh that runs into an old country road on the lower Mon River.

"It is a really needed project,'' Orr said. "The vitality of the economy here is based on coal and the movement of coal to the power stations. Your electric bills and mine -- everybody's -- are based on the premise that we've got the coal close by and we can move it through waterborne commerce for pennies. That's what this is all about."

The concrete flume used to empty water from the locks at Elizabeth is so fragile to the touch that a finger poke can turn it into gray dust, according to Orr, who has explored the facility in a small boat.

"What starts out as a little crack, if you take your hands and push up on it with your fingers, it just falls apart,'' Orr said. "It's no longer concrete. It has chemically broken down."

This summer, the Corps will bring together boat operators, municipalities and others with a stake in river transportation to make emergency plans that could be enacted in the event of a failure, Karaffa said.

If the dam and locks were to fail and were out of commission for a year, the Corps estimates that delays and the subsequent need for alternative transportation would increase shipping costs to industry by at least $143 million, Karaffa said.

But with the problem left unresolved, it still will cost the industry about $10 million a year because of the small and inefficient size of the old locks, he said.

Not all facilities that use river transportation would be able to absorb increased transportation costs, and some do not have the capacity to ship by rail or truck, according to the state-funded Port of Pittsburgh Commission, which promotes river transportation.

Facilities served by barge along the Mon include U.S. Steel's coke works in Clairton, the nation's largest, and Consol mining operations in Greene County, the country's most productive underground mines.

Pittsburgh and its rivers can claim the title of the second-busiest inland river port in the country, with shippers hauling some 53 million tons of coal, petroleum, sand, gravel, chemicals and metals in and out of the area each year.

James McCarville, the port commission's executive director, estimates river transportation in the port's 11-county region directly supports 45,000 jobs. That estimate swells to 218,000 when indirect and induced spin-off jobs are counted, he said.

The Charleroi locks alone handle between 10 million and 13 million tons of goods shipped by barge every year. Trucks, by his calculations, would have a difficult time picking up that kind of volume.

To keep estimates neat and easy, McCarville figures 12.5 million tons of commodities moved by barge would work out to about 500,000 truck loads based on 25 tons per truck. Typically, barge trips on the lower Mon run about 250 miles each for a total equivalent of 125 million truck miles per year.

"Based on 250 working days per year, it would be 2,000 trucks per day moving 500,000 truck-miles per day, mostly along the Mon River through already congested communities," McCarville said.

The construction delays mean that none of the $30 million in annual benefits that the project is supposed to bring the region and the Mon Valley will be realized for at least another 15 years, he said.

In addition, McCarville estimates that every year the project is not completed adds $1.5 million in additional operations and maintenance costs and increases the likelihood of significant and otherwise unnecessary temporary repairs to the dam at Elizabeth.

Much of the scheduled work has been deferred because of budget constraints in Washington, D.C., presumably caused by the impact of the past recession and tax cuts on revenues, spending on the war in Iraq and a soaring deficit that has had a stifling impact on various domestic initiatives. The Corps estimates it needs $60 million to $80 million annually to put the project on an efficient construction schedule.

Actual funding for the lower Mon project has dropped from $60 million in fiscal 2001 to $37 million in fiscal 2004. The president's 2005 budget has earmarked $30 million for the project in 2005, including matching funds from a river fuel tax -- amounts that put the Corps on what it calls a "constrained" operating mode.

The Corps is slowing down construction efforts on the lower Mon and significantly reducing the size of its Pittsburgh-based staff through voluntary retirements because of budget constraints across the system.

The delays are particularly galling to the river transport industry because barge operators contribute a fuel tax of 20 cents a gallon into a trust fund that now has a balance of about $400 million. The fund, created in 1986, was intended to be used as a 50-50 match with federal money for new construction projects on the nation's inland waterways system. With promised spending slowed, that fund now has a surplus of more than $400 million.

"We keep paying this tax. The fund keeps growing and it's not being spent,'' said James Guttman, president of Mon River Towing Inc., part of the family-owned Guttman Group. "We've kept our share of the bargain. That's the bottom line and the government, for whatever reason when it comes to allocating the funds, isn't keeping their end of the bargain."

Peter Stephaich, chairman and CEO of Campbell Transportation, said the industry is aware that money is tight in Washington but he believes delays in construction on the lower Mon will ultimately prove to be penny wise and pound foolish.

"The total project now is only budgeted at $31 million (annually), half of what you really need to build at an optimal rate,'' he said. "If you do it too slowly, you waste time and you waste money."

The region's congressional delegation has pushed to increase funding for the project, but their voices are among the many that seek to improve funding for downsized waterways projects across the nation.

"Funding has been stretched out for years. We've been trying to minimize that reduction but over the last couple of years, with the deficit, the Corps of Engineers' budgets have been squeezed,'' said Matt Dinkle, a spokesman for U.S. Rep Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale.

"It was such a tough year,'' added Brad Clemenson, an aide to U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown. "And the 2005 budget is even uglier than 2004."