PORTS TO THE WORLD

River sand, rice, grains, coal, road salts, aluminum, lime and fertilizer. Last year saw more than 2 million tons of these products move through our region's seven major river ports. Five of these ports are in Missouri or under construction here. Two others are in Kentucky. The Pemiscot County Port at Caruthersville moved nearly 500,000 tons, as compared with approximately 350,000 tons each at the Southeast Missouri Port Authority on the Cape Girardeau-Scott County line and at the New Madrid Port Authority, where Bootheel rice producers account for production of the commodity most frequently shipped.

These ports have helped move Missouri producers into world markets. The experience a few years ago of the New Madrid facility, in particular, vividly illustrates this fact. At the outbreak of the Gulf War in August 1991, a significant amount of rice being shipped out of this facility was destined for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The embargo on Hussein's outlaw regime imposed by President George Bush and other world leaders meant, overnight, that those shipments halted and new markets had to be found. In due course this was done, and shipments continued to increase. The point, however, was made: Bootheel producers ship a product much in demand, to distant parts of the world.

These robust and growing tonnage figures are bearing out the rich promise foresaw by visionary leaders who passed Missouri's port authority law as an economic development tool more than 20 years ago. Former Sen. Albert Spradling Jr. of Cape Girardeau sponsored the bill in the Legislature with the enthusiastic backing of then-Gov. Kit Bond (now U.S. senator), who signed the measure into law.

After passage, the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority, as a joint venture between Cape Girardeau and Scott counties, became the first in the state to be incorporated pursuant to the new law. Many public-spirited citizens have given of themselves without compensation in the years since to fulfill the promise that was only a glimmer back in the mid-1970s. And now, the forthcoming completion of Nash Road, with its direct route to I-55, heralds a new era of increased development and shipments to one of our most promising gateways to world commerce.