The Interstate 20 bridge over the Mississippi River was expected to remain open today as officials try cutting into pieces a grain barge below, freeing it to float away from the bridge pier where it has been lodged for two days.

“The crane will chisel at the barge itself with a pointed metal I-beam and let it float without lifting it,” U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Lt j.g. Ryan Gomez said at midmorning.

The grain barge is one of 30 that got away from a southbound tow Wednesday afternoon, scattering in the swollen Mississippi River before some beached themselves and others were corralled up to a mile south of the I-20 and U.S. 80 bridges.

Traffic on the I-20 bridge was stopped immediately Wednesday for about two hours and again for a little more than two hours Thursday as a team of maritime emergency workers attempted to dislodge the barge from the pier.

The bridge was not to be closed to vehicular traffic today, said T. Marshall Hill with Louisiana Department of Transportation, because sensors detected no bridge movement during Thursday’s work.

“The cutting should be even less invasive than yesterday, and yesterday didn’t even show on the monitors,” said Hill, the district engineer for Northeast Louisiana.

Big River Shipbuilders and Salvage was to send a crane to the bridges from its yard at the Vicksburg port today.

The crane was to be disassembled at the yard, floated to the bridges and reassembled before being used to hold the barge while it is cut apart, Hill said.

He said the work was to begin today but might stretch into Saturday.

A pair of towboats, the Bruce L. Hahn and the Kay A. Eckstein, spent Thursday afternoon beneath the bridges pushing on the barge. The Eckstein, which was pushing the barges that broke loose Wednesday, and the Hahn are both owned by Marquette Transportation of Paducah, Ky.

Traffic was routed off the interstate for nearly three hours, backing up eastbound lanes past Delhi, westbound lanes past Bovina and creating gauntlets of 18-wheelers on U.S. 61 South once traffic was reopened.

The Mississippi River level at Vicksburg was 42.2 feet this morning, up a tenth of a foot in the past 24 hours. Forecasters with the National Weather Service expect the river to crest at Vicksburg’s 43-foot flood stage Tuesday despite rain expected over the weekend in Vicksburg and upriver.

“The Arkansas River’s cresting,” senior service hydrologist Marty Pope said this morning. The weekend rain “really shouldn’t have a great impact.”

The river remained closed to southbound traffic today. Northbound traffic resumed by midday Thursday on the Louisiana side after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the west side of the shipping channel, said U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Scott Anderson during a press briefing in Vicksburg.

“We cannot safely let any traffic go south through the bridge because the barge is sticking into the channel as it leans into the bridge pier,” Anderson said. Erosion below the pier has not been a concern in the salvage effort, he said.

Coast Guard officials aboard fleet boats owned by Ergon Marine and Industrial Supply monitored the two tugs’ powering the barge from the river bottom.

Ergon Marine’s fleet of tow boats routinely assist the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Detachment unit in Vicksburg, rounding up loose barges on the river and being a communications link for maritime interests on the river — efforts that earned an award in 2008 from the Coast Guard for outstanding response and assistance after that year’s near-record flood stages in Vicksburg.

The Coast Guard, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is tasked with protecting maritime borders. Its unit based at the Port of Vicksburg is a maintenance unit; its closest search-and-rescue unit, the Lower Mississippi River command center, is in Memphis.

In 2008, stages topped out at 50.9 feet, the highest in Vicksburg in 35 years. Five barge tows struck the U.S. 80 bridge between March 26 and May 3, the first four in 10 days’ time. In 2009, the bridges survived the river’s spring crest of 47.5 feet without a barge strike, reportedly due to slower currents. The last barge strike was to pier 4 on March 22, 2010, a year and a day before Wednesday’s strike.

Drain valves remain shut at three locations on the city’s floodwall. Additional closures to prevent water from the Yazoo Diversion Canal from seeping under the wall aren’t planned by the city Sewer Department unless current crest predictions are changed.

Northwest of the city, Chickasaw, Long Lake, Laney Camp and Ziegler roads were closed due to high water. Backwater flooding has inundated farmland along Chickasaw and Long Lake.

The Kings Point Ferry is out of service until further notice, and the vessel is docked at the Port of Vicksburg. Jackson Lane, which dead-ends into brush in Kings, is expected to take on water when the stage hits 43 feet.

Eagle Lake was at 76.5 feet this morning, up four one-hundredths of a foot. The Muddy Bayou Control Structure is open and is expected to bring the lake’s stage up to 76.9 feet over several days.

Levels on the river side of the Steele Bayou Water Control Structure on Mississippi 465 stood at 89.8 feet, up three-tenths of a foot. The land side held at 85.4 feet overnight; the river side was at 90 feet, up two-tenths of an inch in 24 hours.

Crests are forecast for Wednesday on the land side near 86 feet and 91 feet on the river side.