Paducah Port Director Announces Retirement

After four years as executive director of the Paducah-McCracken County Riverport Authority, Tim Cahill is announcing his retirement.

Cahill, 67, intends to stay on until the port authority’s board selects his replacement and will help with on-boarding, a process that could take a few months. The board will hold a meeting within the next week to finalize the recruiting process.

“We’ve got a great team that has really rejuvenated the place along with our customers, who have supported us immensely,” Cahill said.

Cahill said he made his decision in consultation with his doctors and family. He suffered a detached retina in September 2021 and has had ongoing issues related to multiple eye surgeries.

“It’s been an ongoing battle, and unfortunately the vision is just not going to come back,” he said.

Cahill said he is proud of the work the team has accomplished at the riverport and that it would not have been possible without federal, state and local officials working together with the port and its customers to advance projects important to the region as a whole.

“We’ve got the ship, the barge, whatever you want to call it, pointing in the right direction now,” Cahill said, pointing to multiple projects that have helped to upgrade or replace aged infrastructure at the port and add new opportunities for the port and its customers.

One of the most recent of those projects involves the planning and design for an extension of the riverport at Ohio River Mile 944. Riverport West is part of a larger development called the Ohio River Triple Rail Site.

Earlier this year Kentucky’s House Bill 1 allocated $3.5 million for environmental work and design to the 90 percent level. 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.

Cahill said he received the executed memorandum of agreement providing notice to proceed with Riverport West planning on July 30, and he has begun work on drafting Requests for Qualifications (RFQs) for potential contractors.

The major rehabilitation of the port’s bulk yard began earlier in July, funded by a $3.32 million federal Port Infrastructure Development Grant.

Along with three new ground conveyors and one stacker, the port has received two barges of cargo for one storage dome, and the other is ready to receive cargo, Cahill said. Both domes received new steel frame and fabric roofing systems as part of the grant. A new truck scale project is underway, and the port has awarded a contract for three primary radial stackers, which will arrive in 2025.

The port recently awarded a contract to replace the wall panels and add a new roof coating system to revitalize a 19,600-square-foot warehouse built in 1977, with funding coming from a $418,000 federal Delta Regional Authority assistance program grant. The wall replacement is scheduled for mid-August with the roof work to follow. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of the year.

Kentucky’s recent investments into its public riverports, coming on the heels of the Kentucky Freight Study, have provided funding that has been essential, he said. In addition to providing the allocation for Riverport West, House Bill 1 included $1.5 million for each of the state’s active public riverports, divided over two years. 

“That’s just an incredible amount of money that, to my knowledge, has never been put into the ports by the state,” he said.

The Paducah-McCracken County Riverport Authority expects to use that funding to inspect and revitalize nine barge mooring cells built in the 1970s or earlier.

“That could never be done in today’s world without that cash infusion for major maintenance projects or equipment projects,” he said.

He also pointed to a change in the funding formula for the Kentucky Riverport Initiative grants, which now require a 20 percent match. Previously, those grants required a 50 percent match. Recently, the Kentucky Waterways Transportation Board recommended the Paducah port’s application for KRI funds for two new pieces of equipment, a new skid steer to use in barge loading and unloading and a 48-foot flatbed trailer for moving a customer’s supersacks around the port’s warehouses.

Total grant funding is close to $10 million over four years, with existing customers and, in some cases, city and county governments providing the local funding match. Cahill said those groups have been behind the port “1,000 percent.”

“We’ve done a great job of moving forward in a lot of different ways, but unfortunately I have to step away,” Cahill said.

The board is working to identify a candidate to continue the implementation of the current projects while also finding a candidate to lead the way with the Riverport West development project and other future projects, he said.