Area port wants to keep growth going

Coming off a record-setting year for cargo shipped in and out of the Southeast Missouri Regional Port, officials are looking at the keys for turning expansion possibilities into solid plans.

Local economic development representatives call the port one of the Mississippi River's "premier" small ports, with potential for continued growth.

During the past 20 years, the value of publicly owned infrastructure assets at Semo Port has almost doubled, from $12 million to nearly $23 million. Other investment, which stood at $63 million earlier this year, has grown faster, officials say, reflecting a focus on accommodating private industry.

In 2014, the port just south of Cape Girardeau handled 1.3 million tons of cargo, according to lease reports. Most of the cargo was shipped by barge, followed by truck and rail car. Until last year, 2012 held the record for cargo, and numbers had been on a steady rise for several years until a falloff in 2013.

In recent years, the port has found ways around the threats to business as usual -- most notably dredging at the port, an integral, annual process that scrapes the silt and mud from the riverbed to allow commercial traffic to dock and load or unload during times of low water levels.

The harbor at Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority as seen Tuesday. (Glenn Landberg)

Upon development of the port in the mid-1980s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered into an agreement with the port to dredge the harbor for 35 years into the future. But dredging for many ports on the Mississippi River came to a halt in 2010 as the Corps ran into budget shortages.

The port since has found ways, such as grants or using its own money, to pay for dredging, or it has received dredging service on the Corps' dollar at the last minute, eluding a shutdown. Now the old deal seems to be back on track, port officials say, because the Corps dredged the harbor in 2014 and officials have been told it will happen again this year.

Larry Dowdy, a commissioner on the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority board, told Corps representatives Monday at a meeting of the Mississippi River Commission the funding of dredging by the Corps saves the port between $500,000 to $600,000 each year and contributes to the port's ability to expand.

"We can use those funds to invest and to accelerate development of the port, whereby we can adequately provide reliable access to our incoming and outgoing freight to customers," Dowdy said.

Port executive director Dan Overbey said the money the port now doesn't have to use on dredging overall makes the port a more viable business.

Wes Uhrhan with Girardeau Stevedores and Contractors, Inc. watches as wire coils are loaded on a truck after being pulled from a barge Tuesday at Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority. (Glenn Landberg)

"If we can save money off the dredging end, we can turn around and put it to a more productive use," Overbey said. "And first things first, for the customers that are here, you've got to keep the harbor open."

Savings can be put toward developing sites for additional businesses at the port and maintaining the port's current infrastructure, Overbey said. Extending utilities, building roads and laying down railroad tracks are examples of projects the port can do with the additional dollars, but the project also sometimes requires extra funding through state and federal economic development grants.

"A lot of what we do is five or 10 years out in front of getting a company to locate," Overbey said. "Usually if one decides to put in a facility, they want to move fast, so we have to be ready."

Many projects at the port are being planned, are partly done and awaiting state funding or are on a wish list.

A demand for more rail access is prompting the building of several kinds of tracks to add to the port railroad, including a piece that will be partly paid for by about $425,000 in state-allocated funds. That money, however, may not come to the port anytime soon -- it is part of the general revenue budget restraints put in place by Gov. Jay Nixon last year.

Earlier this month, a group of local Missouri House representatives -- all Republicans, including Kathy Swan, Donna Lichtenegger, Holly Rehder, Tila Hubrecht, Don Rone, Steve Cookson, Andrew McDaniel and Todd Richardson -- sent a letter to Nixon requesting release of the funds.

Projects the port is funding include repairing a side of the harbor and timber train trestles. The port also is adding a piece at a time to a new system Overbey said may take more than 10 years to finish and will depend on available funding.

The project includes adding train tracks that can carry unit trains that will transfer materials onto a conveyor that will dump them onto barges in the harbor. The port also would like to add a maintenance building in the next two to three years.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed," Overbey said. "If we can keep the Corps going with dredging, control our costs and the rent and so forth comes in, we can keep moving ahead."

Port authority officials also are examining how current federal permitting rules for dredging, construction of new infrastructure and other activities at ports can affect their bottom line and expansion.

Dowdy told Corps officials Monday permitting needs to be hastened and streamlined to help small ports keep schedules for projects, which saves both of them time and money, and that permits should match a project's schedule.

Dowdy said ports having to reapply for permits when there has been no change in harbor configuration and no changes in plans can hamper investment at the ports by holding up the process.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3632