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ARKANSAS MAY SEE JOBS FROM PROJECT

By Patty Wooten/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, November 3, 2006 11:11 PM CST

A $5.2 billion expansion of the Panama Canal offers a tremendous economic opportunity to Southeast Arkansas if the region can obtain funding to extend rail service to the Port of Yellow Bend, five miles south of McGehee, according to economic developers.

“The Panama Canal has served us well in terms of international trade but what has happened in recent years is the container vessels have got so large they cannot travel through the Panama Canal, so they’re moving to ports on the West Coast rather than come all the way around South America to get to ports on the Gulf and East coasts,” said Derrill Pierce, director of the Monticello Economic Development Commission.

But that will no longer be the case when the 92-year-old Pacific-Atlantic linking Panama Canal is expanded.

So what does that have to do with Southeast Arkansas?

Once the Panama Canal is expanded, and assuming rail service is extended to the Port of Yellow Bend and the Southeast Arkansas Intermodal Facility at Wilmar becomes fully operational, products on those large container vessels can be transported through the Panama Canal to either the Port of New Orleans or Houston, up the Mississippi River through Yellow Bend and loaded onto rail containers and carried to the intermodal facility and transferred to trucks, according to Mary Seymore, director of the Bradley County Industrial Development Corp.

“There has been a lot of flak that so many jobs are going overseas but the other side of the story is international trade has skyrocketed, particularly in the Far East,” Pierce said. “This could mean thousands of new jobs in Southeast Arkansas.”

But those jobs don’t come without a price tag.

The cost to extend rail service to the Port of Yellow Bend would cost an estimated $10 million to $14 million, depending upon which of three identified rail routes is selected, according to Fred Denton, chairman of the Chicot-Desha County Metropolitan Port Authority.

Pierce said the Southeast Arkansas Cornerstone Coalition is expected to ask area lawmakers to urge the Arkansas Department of Economic Development to help fund the rail extension.

“ADED gave McCrory $1 million to help build a rail spur to create 300 jobs,” Pierce said. “So we’re going to urge them to allocate $1 million of the 2007 Community Development Block Grant appropriations for the Yellow Bend Port to assist in the extension of the rail service, which is crucial to the development of the intermodal facility and our ability to participate in rapidly expanding international trade.”

State Rep. Gregg Reep, D-Warren, said the rail extension to Yellow Bend has “been on the table a long time” and he feels confident Southeast Arkansas legislators will do whatever they can to try to get it funded.

“To fully utilize the Yellow Bend port and benefit Southeast Arkansas economically, access by rail is vital,” Reep said. “I feel the whole group (the Southeast Arkansas caucus) would do whatever we could. We would pursue any and all avenues of financing.”

An environmental and cost estimate study of the three potential rail routes to the port is already under way, according to Denton.

The study is being funded through a $300,000 federal transportation appropriation secured by U.S. Rep. Mike Ross and U.S. Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln.

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