Paducah Port Begins Major Refurbishment

Work to revitalize the Paducah-McCracken County Riverport Authority’s bulk yard through federal grant funding is underway, with several other grant projects in various stages also moving forward at the same time.

The port authority received a $3.32 million Port Infrastructure Development Project (PIDP) grant from the U.S. Maritime Administration (MarAd) in December 2021 and authorization to proceed last August. Since then, the port has been developing bid packages and going out to market on five of the seven components.

The port is located within the city limits of Paducah, Ky., from Mile 1.3 to Mile 2.0 on the Tennessee River.

A local company, Heflin, demolished an antiquated truck scale at the port in April, but the first new construction associated with the grant began in late June, said Tim Cahill, the riverport’s executive director.

Storage Dome Roof Replacement

The work involves installation of canvas fabric tension roofs on the existing foundations of two storage domes. Both the 110-foot diameter and 108-foot diameter domes previously had traditional roofs, which were blown away in a windstorm.

Cahill said the port was ready to load a customer’s product into one of the now completed domes, and the other was expected to be finished within days.

Bulk Storage Inc., of Beecher, Ill., received the contract for the work.

Zack Deery, president of Bulk Storage, said the company has constructed buildings in at least 30 states, and this is its fifth barge-loading terminal project.

“We’ve been doing a lot of retrofits because a lot of facilities, especially barge and terminal facilities, have storage domes that are very old, and the dome system can only last about 30 years, whereas the concrete foundation wall can be there 60-plus years,” he said. 

Replacing the traditional dome with a fabric system takes less time than traditional construction, which proves to be an efficient use of both time and funding. The fabric lets in natural light but is watertight and has a 20-year lifespan, Deery said. The domes’ existing conveyor systems can be reused.

“The revitalization of the domes has allowed us to immediately expand our business with an existing long-term customer of the port’s in western Kentucky,” Cahill said, referring to Superior Graphite.

Matt Pringle, director of purchasing and logistics for Superior Graphite, said the Paducah Riverport is a key supply chain partner within the company’s inbound logistics network.

“Superior Graphite has had a 40-plus year business relationship with the Paducah Riverport,” Pringle said. “Tim Cahill and his team are great to work with. Heavy windstorms destroyed the domes in the winter of 2018, and Paducah Riverport was able to find a solution while dome reconstruction was underway. This PDIP Grant approval has helped us to rebuild the riverport domes, which will ensure our partnership continues for years to come. It has also supported our progress towards becoming an Active Anode Material producer for the Li-ion battery market.”

Other Associated Work

Cahill said he also expects the arrival of positionable conveyors and a new stacker in mid-July, along with generators to run them. The new equipment helps give the riverport redundancy in case of power loss. That redundancy is especially important since western Kentucky lies along the New Madrid Fault, he said. The new assets will also allow the port to expand into an additional area within the 20-acre yard, he said.

Three radial stackers, which allow the port to shift bulk products from the barge river berth to multiple stockpiles in the bulk yard facility, will replace two built in 1966 and one from 1972. Much of that work is already under contract, Cahill said.

The projects represent a major upgrade to the existing bulk commodity yard, modernizing it to increase the yard’s handling capacity and safety, while improving its environmental impact. The grant required a $500,000 local match, including $140,000 from existing customers, according to the grant application posted on the riverport’s website. An additional $100,000 each was provided by the city of Paducah and from McCracken County, along with $160,000 from the state of Kentucky.

DRA Grant Award

The riverport also opened bids late last month on a contract to revitalize a 19,600-square-foot warehouse built in 1977. The project is part of a Delta Regional Authority assistance program grant of more than $418,000 awarded to the port. The grant will pay for new walls and a refurbished roof system and be used for the port’s supersacks and metal business. The grant required a 10 percent local match.

The DRA is funded by annual congressional appropriations as well as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

According to the grant application, extending the life of the warehouse is designed to generate increased shipments through the gateway in New Orleans, thus expanding towboat and barge cargo shipments in conjunction with the utilization of the U.S. Marine Highway System via the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee rivers. Barging the materials rather than trucking them will lower greenhouse gas emissions, while also reducing wear and tear, maintenance costs and congestion on the highway system, the application said.

Pending Grant Applications

The Paducah port has applied for Kentucky Riverport Improvement Grant funding for two pieces of equipment, Cahill said. The Kentucky Water Transportation Advisory Board considered grant applications from across the state  at its June 24 meeting, with approval of the Kentucky secretary of transportation forthcoming.

Additionally, each public riverport in Kentucky was awarded a total of $1.5 million over the next two years as part of the state’s new Kentucky Public Riverport Construction and Maintenance Project for fiscal year 2025. Cahill said the Paducah port has requested that its funding pay for the total evaluation and repair of nine barge mooring cells serving two areas: the general cargo and bulk cargo docks on the Tennessee River. The cells date back to the 1970s or earlier, Cahill said. The Kentucky Water Transportation Advisory Board also reviewed that project June 24 to ensure it meets the requirements for the program.

Riverport West Expansion

The riverport also received a $3.5 million allocation in Kentucky’s House Bill 1 for environmental work and design to the 90 percent level for its Paducah-McCracken County Riverport West expansion on the Ohio River. The bill was signed by the governor and posted for passage in both houses of the legislature on April 12.

The project at Ohio River Mile 944 is part of a larger development called the Ohio River Triple Rail Site. The Greater Paducah Economic Development Corporation (GPEDC) has been trying to market for that development for the past few years.

Through its industrial development authority, GPEDC owns or has optioned about 800 acres of property, expandable to 1,000 acres, in west McCracken County. The site is 9 river miles west of the land-locked Paducah-McCracken County Riverport Authority, located in the downtown Paducah area near where the Tennessee empties into the Ohio River.

Plans call for a three-berth site with a general cargo laydown area. One berth would, by law, be accessible as part of the public riverport. The other berths likely would be made available to any company interested in multimodal activity as part of the larger development.