It's been three weeks since Capital Sand Co.'s dredge, the "Kathy Lee," took on water and rolled onto its side in the Missouri River, upstream from the Noren Conservation Access and the bridges between Cole and Callaway counties.
Kirk Farmer, vice president of Farmer Holdings Co., told the News Tribune on Friday it may be another month before the dredge can be removed from the river and officials learn what caused it to sink July 9-10.
"We are creating a plan to remove the dredge from the river, with the Coast Guard's approval," he said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the insurance company also are involved in the planning, he said.
"Once the plan is approved, the insurer hires a contractor and the contractor removes the dredge from the river," Farmer explained. "It depends on that contractor and their workload, as to when they can actually come up the river from St. Louis to remove the dredge."
Because the dredge remains in the river, he said, Capital Sand and Farmer Holdings officials still don't know if the dredge "is a total loss or a partial loss - we'll have to make that evaluation after the dredge is uprighted and brought back to the riverbank to do a survey on the damage."
The company brought another dredge to Mid-Missouri from Kansas City, so its dredging operations continue.
"We are supplying sand here in Jefferson City, and they'll move back up to Kansas City later in the year," Farmer said, but even a temporary loss of the Kathy Lee has "definitely hampered our efforts."
He said Capital Sand has "the capacity in our other dredges to produce what the market needs, currently. We have a little more dredging capacity than what the market needs."
Farmer said the dredging operation primarily produces "mostly fine sand, used as a finer aggregate, mixed with a courser aggregates that are quarried" and primarily used for mixing concrete and asphalt.
"It also goes into concrete blocks and sometimes fill material," he explained.
The Jefferson City operation supplies markets from Columbia through Jefferson City and the Lake of the Ozarks, "all the way down to Springfield," Farmer said.