Think Out Loud

What the Mississippi River can learn from the Columbia and vice versa

By Rolando Hernandez (OPB)
July 2, 2025 4:20 p.m. Updated: July 2, 2025 8:21 p.m.

Broadcast: Wednesday, July 2

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Last week, stakeholders from the Upper Mississippi River toured the Columbia and Snake River to see what is similar and different from the two water systems. Last year, stakeholders from the Pacific Northwest visited the Mississippi as part of this continued collaboration between the two rivers. Michelle Hennings is the executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers. Gary Williams is the executive director of the Upper Mississippi Waterway Association. They both join us to share what the Columbia and Mississippi River can learn from each other.

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Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with a kind of cultural exchange. Last week, stakeholders from the Upper Mississippi River toured the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Last year, some of their counterparts in the Northwest did the reverse trip – they went to the Mississippi watershed. Their goal though was the same. They wanted to see what users of these two massive and iconic river systems could learn from each other.

Michelle Hennings has been a part of this exchange. She is the executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers. Gary Williams is the executive director of the Upper Mississippi Waterway Association. He was in the Northwest last week. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Gary Williams: Thank you, Dave.

Michelle Hennings: Thank you.

Miller: Gary, first – where did you go on the tour last week?

Williams: It was very comprehensive and it was a jam-packed week. We started out going from Portland up to Astoria, then we backtracked all the way to Lewiston. But along the way, we stopped at Cape Disappointment, Longview, Kalama, Vancouver, Bonneville Dam, Walla Walla, and hit Lower Granite Dam up at Lewiston, with a stop at the Tri-Cities where the confluence is for the Snake and the Columbia along the way. So, full view.

Miller: How much of that was new to you?

Williams: Well, I’ve had the benefit of coming to the Colombia and Snake River on a number of opportunities. But for our members, there was a lot more learning. And it exceeded their expectations of what we would learn from the Colombia and Snake, because you have a tendency to assume that everyone does the same things the same way. As our vice president Randy Carmichael of Upper Miss Fleeting likes to say, we have a tendency to live in hermit kingdoms often, where we don’t get out enough, collaborate and find out different ways of working with our agencies, organizations and one another.

Miller: What was one of the biggest takeaways or surprises that you experienced yourself or that you talked about with your fellow Mississippi River folks?

Williams: There are a lot of things that kind of struck home stronger than I think we had given consideration to. One is the hydroelectric opportunity, something that’s just an opportunity that we have not seen utilized on the Upper Miss as much. When the dams were built in the ‘30s, it was strictly more of a mindset of navigation only. And by the ‘50s, the Colombian and Snake were looking for solutions from the ‘50s and later years to utilize and harness that power for hydroelectric as well, giving a much more impactful economic benefit to that river system than the commerce and the amount of goods that people rely upon on the two rivers.

Miller: So is this just a sort of a historical nugget for you? Or did it make you think that you want to bring more hydropower to the Mississippi?

Williams: Opportunity is there. I think it’s something that definitely opened our eyes, as we have concerns that want to talk about establishing hydroelectric generation on the Mississippi. We need to be engaging with them and understanding what it is they want to do as a project, and being more supportive. We have a tendency as users, both recreational and commercial, to be utilizing the river in the way that we see and to talk only about that. And oftentimes it’s just kind of in our newspaper, the same as the general public, and we probably need to be more responsive to it. That’s just one takeaway.

Miller: Michelle Hennings, where did you go last year on your tour of, I imagine just part of the largest watershed and river system in our country?

Hennings: Actually, we made it down the whole Mississippi.

Miller: Did you really?

Hennings: Yeah, so we flew into Minneapolis and then we went over to La Crosse, Wisconsin. We had a board meeting with the Upper Mississippi Waterways Association. Ended up up down in Memphis, Vicksburg, and then we also went all the way down to New Orleans and the ports down there. So it was a very packed schedule, trying to get a lot of miles in about a week. So it was an amazing trip.

Miller: What were you hoping to get from that trip?

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Hennings: Well, the trip was a proactive step towards networking and establishing relationships with stakeholders from other river systems for future collaborations. Gary and I met probably like two years ago, a year-and-a-half ago. We were just talking about some of the challenges we have along our river systems and how we could actually come together, have conversations, learn each other’s river systems to be able to collaborate together on some messaging at the national level.

If you look at the Mississippi, you can see that there’s a lot of congressional districts that touch the Mississippi. And as you know, we’ve had some challenges in regards to the Lower Snake River dams and there’s been a lot of advocacy congressionally to support our infrastructure and to support our navigation, our energy, our irrigation and local economies. There was a lot of similarities between the two, although there are a lot of differences. And it’s been an amazing experience to learn each other’s systems and where we could work together.

Miller: I imagine that the differences between these two river systems are profound, but what were the differences for you that really stood out? From Gary, we heard about the big gap in hydroelectric power generation. What about you?

Hennings: Well, the size and length of the system.

Miller: You’re used to thinking about the Columbia as mighty, and then you went down the Mississippi.

Hennings: It was amazing to see how massive the Mississippi was – their size, their connectivity and their extensive infrastructure that needs to be built all along that river system. And the capability for me, I’m a wheat grower and represent the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, was the handling of the larger tows of the commodities that they were transporting. Ours is a four barged tow. They have up to – Gary can correct me – 40 barges they can transfer at once.

Miller: Forty barges, all linked together by one engine?

Williams: Actually, that’s true in the Lower Miss, they build those fleets up to that size with just one tow on it. Now, they may use some assist when they get down closer …

Miller: It makes me think of a train on the water.

Williams: It is, and that’s why we always like to say that it’s a replacement for train using the efficiency of floating on water.

Miller: Doing your ads for you at this point. [Laughs]

Williams: Thanks for the layup, Dave. [Laughs]

Miller: You’re welcome.

Hennings: And also, the Midwest has a lot of corn and soy, and the upper Midwest transports corn and soy through our system. So to be able to connect there and see each system, how we help each other out, we actually do. So that was a big highlight for me as well. And that’s a difference, just in the amount of agricultural product that they can move.

Miller: In the time we have left, I want to ask you this question. A few weeks ago I talked to the writer Robert Macfarlane on this show. His new book is called “Is a River Alive?” And his overarching point is that we all need to think about rivers as more than just service providers for human needs, more than just energy, transportation, irrigation or ecosystem services, but as beings in and of themselves. As people who live and work and think about your respective rivers a lot, I’m curious what you think of that idea. Gary?

Williams: I think it’s a great idea. And you look at the Upper Mississippi, which is north of Saint Louis to Saint Paul is what we call the Upper Mississippi. And just a section of that is 261 miles long, 240,000 acres of national wildlife refuge. There’s a whole living biosphere that is surrounded on our rivers and it’s very, very important to life beyond human beings. It’s essential to life and in the systems in the neighboring states that border these rivers.

Miller: Michelle, is the Columbia alive for you?

Hennings: Oh yes, for sure. We worked to support contributing to salmon recovery of hundreds of million dollars for our system. We have a wonderful ecosystem that has developed around our river system. Washington Association of Wheat Growers is in full support of that. It is an amazing body of water that runs there, and farmers want to make sure that that ecosystem is alive and thriving.

Miller: Michelle Hennings and Gary Williams, thanks very much.

Williams: Thank you.

Miller: Michelle Hennings is the executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers. Gary Williams is the executive director of the Upper Mississippi Waterway Association.

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