Repairs to broken lock gates at New Savannah Bluff will be completed in time for July 4 boat traffic between Augusta and the coast.

"They are reassembling the last cylinder and by July 1 we should be back in business," said Augusta Port Authority Chairman Frank Carl.

The locks on the Savannah River near Augusta Regional Airport were closed in March after operators could no longer make the gates function.

Augusta's Recreation & Parks Department later arranged a $30,000 repair to the hydraulic systems that open and close the gates, which allow boats to pass between downtown Augusta and the lower Savannah River.

Dr. Carl said the repairs are limited to the immediate problem of fixing the broken gate and are not part of a broader rehabilitation that has been proposed to bring the 71-year-old structure up to modern standards.

Although the locks are no longer used for commercial navigation -- the purpose for which they were built in 1937 -- the gates are opened periodically to accommodate recreational boat traffic and to allow migrating American shad to swim upriver each spring to spawn in the Augusta shoals.

Augusta operates the lock and dam, which is owned by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The corps plans to turn the site over to a consortium of local governments at some point, but an estimated $22 million in renovations -- including the addition of a fish passage system -- will be required before then.

So far, Congress has not allocated the repair funds.

In other business Thursday, the Port Authority heard a proposal from Brian Graham, the director of the Professional Disc Golf Association, to develop a nine-hole disc golf course along the grassy levee near the Boathouse building on the Savannah River.

"The idea would be to get a short, recreational course where people could get acquainted with the sport," he said of the project, which would be laid out by course designer Andrew Gordon and cost $7,700.

The Augusta area already has several disc golf courses that have grown in popularity, he said. "We thought disc golf would be a great fit for this area of the river."

Tonya Bonitatibus, the development director for Savannah Riverkeeper -- who was at Thursday's authority meeting -- said the idea warrants consideration.

"It's a good, clean sport that gets people outside, and it gets more people down to the river," she said.