During an average week, Golden Triangle residents may not think about the barges that cruise up and down the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, carrying raw materials and people from port to port.

But the heavy rains from last week caused water levels to rise drastically, and three barges moored at Raymond D. Lucas Memorial Port in Clay County broke loose and floated away. Two of them eventually came to rest against the gates of the dam at John C. Stennis Lock & Dam in Columbus on Saturday morning.

At 6 a.m. Monday, one of the barges sunk. The barge, which belonged to Tom Soya Grain Company, was loaded with soybeans. A spokesperson from Tom Soya Grain declined to reveal the volume of the soybeans lost.

The two barges against the gates are also blocking water flow and water traffic from moving through the Lock & Dam, disrupting a very popular route, according to Rick Saucer, operations manager at the Lock & Dam.

An average of six million tons of goods travel the 234 miles of water along the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway every year. Everyday barges carrying fuel, coal, chemicals, sand and gravel, iron ore, scrap steel, wood products and, of course, soybeans, make their way up or down the Tenn-Tom, according to Saucer.

Currently the biggest of these industries is coal, but petroleum and chemicals are also big, Saucer said. A lot of raw materials travel down the waterway to the steel mill, he added.

“We get a lot of wood products on the north-end of the waterway, not so much on this end,” he said.

These products go through the Lock & Dam on barges every day, Saucer said. Usually about four or five barges go through per day, but it can be more.

“Some days you might have 10 or 12, and some days you have one or so,” Saucer said. “Of course, we also have recreational lockages in addition to commercial lockages.”

A lockage is any type of water transportation on the waterway. Commercial lockages includes towboats and barges, while recreational lockages include privately owned boats likes yachts and fishing boats. The Lock & Dam doesn’t track the exact number of barges that go through carrying different materials, but Saucer said about 1,300 commercial lockages pass through each year. In comparison, the Lock & Dam sees only 500 recreational lockages. In particular, yacht traffic moves up and down the waterway, heading south for the winter and north for the summer, “just like migratory birds,” said Saucer.