Director Kenny Gober Retires After 30 Years At Yellow Bend Port
A small port with big plans on the Mississippi River has said farewell to a long-serving port director. After 30 years of service, Kenny Gober, executive director of the Chicot-Desha Metropolitan Port Authority, was honored by friends and associates at a retirement party February 15.
The authority’s slackwater port, located just south of Arkansas City, Ark., is called the Yellow Bend Port. Its location, its 350- by 810-foot slackwater harbor that can accommodate a four-barge tow and its proximity to I-40, I-20 and I-30 have made it a grain shipping center. According to the present executive director, Allen Evans, the port moved about 218,000 tons of rice, soybeans, corn and wheat in 2022. “We’re in negotiations to bring in lime, hardwood chips and gray rock cargoes,” Evans said. The port acquired an overhead crane in 1995 and gave it a major upgrade in 2020.
Under normal conditions, the port’s harbor has 18 to 20 feet of water. During last year’s drought, it had to shut down for three weeks, but it has since been dredged by the Vicksburg Engineer District. The port operator is Bruce Oakley Inc.
As soon as water levels allow, Evans said, the Corps will begin mat-sinking and revetment operations at the port. “We hope and pray that we won’t be seeing a repeat of the 2011/2012 season,” he said, when a flood and drought followed in quick succession.
The port is in the midst of putting together an application for a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Port Infrastructure Development Program to help with the installation of a 6-mile rail spur into the port. The port hopes to service a $50 million plant being built nearby in Chicot County that converts waste to energy. Florida-based MD Power LLC plans to build and operate the plant. The plant, the first one of its type in the South, according to Arkansas Business, will use a new process that doesn’t burn the waste, but rather heats it to the point where it gasifies. MD Power has said it will pay the county $1 for every ton of trash it provides as a feedstock.
According to Evans, the port is ideally situated to have the waste barged in and transferred to trucks. If the rail spur is put in, it would become a barge-to-rail operation.
