SEMO Port receives $500,000 state grant

~ Funds will be used for railroad track, paving roads and stormwater drainage.

The Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority has been awarded almost $500,000 from a state transportation grant, which its director says the port needs to help pave the way for an imminent new agriculturally based business there and others down the road.

Executive director Dan Overbey said at an announcement luncheon Wednesday that the grant amount is more than 10 times greater than what the port received in state transportation funds last year and is the largest state grant the port has ever received.

"So obviously we were pretty happy to get it," Overbey said at Port Cape Girardeau in front of state legislators, port board members and media representatives.

Last year, the local port received $40,000 in state transportation funds and the year before that, it received none. The port in Scott County serves as a way to transport goods either by railroad or river.

The grant will be used to help the port expand, Overbey said, including paying for 2,500 feet of new railroad track, paving gravel roads as well as some related stormwater drainage work and added utilities.

At least part of the work will accommodate a new corn-milling business that the port hopes to officially announce in a couple of weeks. The railroad and paved streets would extend to the new business, which Overbey declined to name.

The new business would be a first for the port. Unlike the grains, coal and corn that is among its chief shippers, there has never been a business there that deals with processed foods. Those type of businesses frown on gravel roads, which create dust and could potentially contaminate their product, Overbey said.

The infrastructure work could get started as early as spring and no later than summer, Overbey said.

Today, seven companies are located at the port: Girardeau Stevedores, Midwest Agri-Chemical, Consolidated Grain & Barge, Missouri Fibre Corp., First Missouri Terminals, Midwest Grain & Barge and Motive Rail, Inc.

State Rep. Lanie Black, R-Charleston, is the chairman of the transportation and economic development committee and a man Overbey and other legislators credited with getting many ports across the Bootheel more money.

Last year, Missouri ports received $400,000. This year, ports in New Madrid, Scott and Pemiscot Counties, St. Joseph and New Bourbon, accepted more than $1.5 million, Overbey said.

Black said budgetary problems in recent years had caused legislators in other parts of the state to push port improvements to the back-burner.

"I had to make people in St. Louis and Kansas City understand how poor the economic conditions in the Bootheel are," he said. "I told them ports have more potential to elevate the environment down here than anything else."

Ports are also more advantageous these days, he said, with high diesel costs. He said it's also more environmentally friendly and helps control highway traffic congestion.

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137