Crews from the towboat William R. Barr work on helping break up ice above the secondary lock chamber at the Willow Island Lock and Dam on Thursday. Heavy ice on the river is causing issues at the locks. Several other towboats were sitting idle upstream from the locks. (Photo by Art Smith)

NEWPORT — With temperatures remaining below freezing since last weekend’s winter storm, ice isn’t just hampering transportation on roads.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Huntington District temporarily suspended locking operations Wednesday at the Willow Island Locks and Dam on the Ohio River due to ice buildup preventing the proper operation of the lock gates on the main chamber.

“Both lock chambers are closed to navigation traffic until the ice accumulation is fully removed and normal operations can safely resume,” a release from the Corps said. “Corps employees at Willow Island are currently working to flush ice from the chamber as well as limit new ice formation through use of steam.”

Multiple towboats were sitting idle upstream from the locks Thursday afternoon.

The Corps said the ice was not impacting the Belleville Locks and Dam in a similar way Thursday.

Crews from the towboat William R. Barr work on helping break up ice above the secondary lock chamber at the Willow Island Lock and Dam on Thursday. Heavy ice on the river is causing issues at the locks. Several other towboats were sitting idle upstream from the locks. (Photo by Art Smith)

Marietta Industrial Enterprises is not impacted by the Willow Island lock closure, but the company made the decision to shut down its operations on the Ohio and Little Kanawha rivers Wednesday morning due to the ice accumulation, company President Trent Elliott said.

“We finally just couldn’t fight the ice anymore,” he said.

That means the company is missing out on transporting 3,000 to 4,000 tons of material a day, including feedstock for Eramet Marietta, coal for power plants, aggregate road materials and chemical-grade limestone for processing plants, Elliott said. They’re also accumulating demurrage, charges from barge lines of $200 to $500 a day for barges that sit unloaded, he said.

“We have to find something else for our people to do,” Elliott said, noting they don’t want their workers to go unpaid.

Some of the company’s 96 employees still have activities to do while others have been reassigned to re-side a building the company rents out, Elliott said.

Crews from the towboat William R. Barr work on helping break up ice above the secondary lock chamber at the Willow Island Lock and Dam on Thursday. Heavy ice on the river is causing issues at the locks. Several other towboats were sitting idle upstream from the locks. (Photo by Art Smith)

“This weather’s awful, but we’ll get through it,” he said.

According to the National Weather Service forecast, the high temperature will remain in the low 20s through Sunday, flirting with freezing or just above from Tuesday to Thursday.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com

The accumulation of ice led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Huntington District to temporarily suspend locking operations at the Willow Island Locks and Dam on the Ohio River Wednesday and into Thursday.(Photo provided by the U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers)

Ice buildup has prevented the proper operation of the lock gates on the main chamber at the Willow Island Locks and Dam on the Ohio River, prompting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Huntington District to temporarily suspend locking operations. (Photo provided by the U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers)