DOT Funds Port Projects Big and Small

OMAHA (DTN) -- For decades, grain movement on the Missouri River from Iowa and Nebraska was virtually nil, but that changed somewhat when an Iowa farm cooperative reopened a port in Blencoe, Iowa, in 2021.

On Friday, the Port of Blencoe, Iowa, will be one of 41 ports across the country that will receive a share of $653 million from the Department of Transportation's Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP). The funds will go to a range of large seaport projects as well as several smaller ones up and down the Mississippi River and other inland waterways that will help with the flow of both grain and fertilizer.

Through Monona County, Iowa, the Port of Blencoe will receive $10.26 million to help build and expand the NEW Cooperative Inc. grain-handling and fertilizer facility on the Missouri River at Blencoe, which is about 55 miles north of Omaha. The total project is expected to cost about $12.8 million.

"The project will benefit grain shippers by reducing transport costs by increasing competitiveness and the volume of grain that can be handled," the project details state. "The new facility will also decrease the travel time required for shippers to move their grain to market."

The Port of Blencoe dates back to the 1930s but was essentially never developed until NEW Cooperative built both a facility to load barges and a fertilizer storage shed. The cooperative and port got a boost earlier this year when a new road was built from the interstate to the port facility. The small port has allowed the cooperative to save thousands of highway miles and staff hours by bringing fertilizer up the Missouri River by barge rather than trucking from a Mississippi River terminal.

Frank Huseman, project development manager for NEW Cooperative, said the Missouri River has been underutilized, but the cooperative started developing the port to help save shipping costs, especially for bringing in fertilizer to western Iowa rather than trucking it from a Mississippi River terminal. The cooperative brings in the fertilizer and then sends other products back downstream.

"We're really excited and really grateful to have something like this," Huseman said of the new federal grant. "We started the process of updating the port in 2018 and view it as another way for our members to market their products. It's kind of an on-ramp to the world market. We were going out on a limb, but we hope it has an economic impact on the western Iowa area."

Huseman noted this was the third time the DOT has issued these port grants, but it was the first time the department made a special carve out specifically for smaller inland waterway projects.

The DOT announcement is part of the Biden administration's recent moves to highlight infrastructure and other investments and comes on the heels of President Joe Biden's trip this week to Minnesota.

Among the biggest investments will be $52.6 million to help expand the Long Beach, California, port with more intermodal rail tracks and roadways around docks as well as upgrading utilities in the area to reduce pollution. Long Beach was a focus of attention as the pandemic began to ease when more than 150 ships were stacked up in 2021 waiting for a chance to unload at the port. Administration officials said this week that the time for a ship to dock at Long Beach and other ports has been cut by 90%. Officials also noted global shipping costs have come down 80% since their peak in 2021.

"While the immediate bottlenecks have been addressed, there is more to do for the supply chain moving forward," said Mitch Landrieu, an adviser to the president.

As far as inland river shipping, while the Mississippi River remains low, USDA's weekly Grain Transportation Report shows barge freight rates this year on the Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio rivers are running between 45% to 55% below the three-year average rate for southbound grain flows right now.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg highlighted demand for the funds, saying the 41 projects were approved from 153 applications seeking roughly $2.8 billion for port projects around the country. "It demonstrates enormous demand for this," Buttigieg said.

The dollars come from a mix of funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and annual appropriations from Congress. Buttigieg took the liberty to criticize efforts in Congress that could cut annual funding by roughly 30% for this port fund.

"We need to be doing more, not less, to strengthen the supply chains," Buttigieg said. "I am just mystified Republicans would want to slash funding for ports after everything we have been through with our supply chain."

Another major project that will receive $54.2 million will help expand cold-storage capacity for food exports out of the Port of Tacoma. The project will convert a yard terminal for trucking and install roughly 40 refrigerated cargo racks and power supplies to help triple refrigerated capacity at the port.

Along with the Iowa project, agriculture will see some specific investments along the inland waterways and other port expansions. Some of them include:

-- A $15.8 million project at Port Milwaukee in Wisconsin will receive nearly $9.3 million to increase the inflow and outflow of grain by 1.3 million bushels annually. The construction will include two grain storage bins as well as adding more grain and cargo-handling equipment to expand port capacity for grain. The new facility will allow the port to handle the loading or unloading of two commodities at the same time. Back in July, the DeLong Co. had a grand opening at Port Milwaukee for a $40 million agricultural export facility to move more commodities including dried distillers grains (DDGs) that was expected to boost exports out of Milwaukee by 400,000 metric tons a year through the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. That project was considered the largest investment in the Milwaukee port in 60 years. The new dollars will help with the second phase of those efforts.

-- On the Ohio River at Shawneetown, Illinois, the port has been converted in recent years from an old coal-loading facility to a fertilizer offloading port. That facility is receiving $10.1 million to build a new 1.25-mile access road to increase the staging capacity for semi-trucks from 10 trucks to up to 105 semi-trucks at any given time, which is expected to dramatically reduce bottlenecks and congestion at the facility.

-- At La Grange, Missouri -- north of Quincy, Illinois -- a $13.9 million project will receive $11 million to build a new dry bulk cargo handling facility on the Mississippi River. The project will build a new 200-foot cargo dock and a 1.6-mile access road as well as a 400-foot conveyor system.

-- At Rosedale, Mississippi, near the convergence of the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, the port will receive $8.7 million to help fund a $10.9 million project to build a conveyor assembly to handle more inbound cargo and rehabilitate another conveyor for outbound cargo. That port has multiple grain facilities as well as a manufacturing and shipping facility for a steel company.

-- A new barge terminal will also be built on the upper Mississippi River at Wabasha, Minnesota, with $2.5 million to help build roads and add utilities for the operation. The project will create a new terminal with better protection from flooding that will also help with the flow of agricultural commodities and other cargo on the river.

-- In Red Wing, Minnesota, $1.9 million in funding will go to help with new mooring cells used for grain barges to help with loading and offloading. The mooring cells will also help double grain storage capacity at the dock.

-- On the Arkansas River, $15 million will go to an intermodal project at Fort Smith, Arkansas, to build a slack water harbor on the river to help moor and offload up to eight barges at a time on the border with Oklahoma.

For more, see "St. Lawrence Seaway Strike Ends as Tentative Agreement Reached" here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Also see "President Stresses Importance of Boosting Farm Profitability and Rural Investment" here:

https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

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