St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Blunt Heralds Jefferson County Port, Says It Is in Prime Spot

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By Leah Thorsen

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt on Tuesday called the Jefferson County port one of the most exciting things happening in the state, saying its location and the widening of the Panama Canal make it a prime spot for a bustling barge facility.

"I think the Mississippi River is about to become more important than it has been in 100 years," Blunt said after a tour of the port in Herculaneum.

Local port investments have grown in recent years in preparation for increased barge traffic due in part to the widening of the Panama Canal, which could mean more traffic on the Mississippi.

Blunt said that widening, expected to be ready in 2016, presents ample business and job opportunities locally, especially when the locations of highways, rivers and railroads are taken into account.

"Focus in on where they all come together in our country and you're basically looking in our backyard," Blunt said.

Jefferson County organized a port authority decades ago, but its efforts were stymied by two factors: no place to build a port, and no good routes to connect the river to nearby Interstate 55.

Solutions to those problems have emerged in recent years. The end of smelting at the Doe Run lead plant in Herculaneum opened up riverfront land, and the Joachim Creek Bridge opened in 2012, providing the sought-after interstate connection. Other sites in Pevely and Crystal City are expected to be part of the project.

The Jefferson County Port Authority says the port could support between 6,500 and 7,800 permanent, full-time jobs in the county.

"The inland ports basically have twice the bang for the buck regionally than even our big ports on the coast have," Blunt said, saying that a coastal port may only serve an area 300 miles inland whereas a port in St. Louis, Herculaneum and southeast Missouri can serve that much area on each side of the river.

Blunt's tour included seeing a barge being loaded with frac sand from Fred Weber Quarry a few miles away.

The Riverview Commerce Park in Herculaneum opened in September on 18 acres, and is the port's first facility. It's is a project of Riverview Commerce Park LLC, a partnership of Environmental Operations Inc., J.H. Berra Construction Co. and Fred Weber Inc.

About 100 truckloads of frac sand are being loaded daily into barges and trucks, said Stacy Hastie, chief executive of Environmental Operations. The sand is used in hydraulic fracturing operations.

Remediation work is under way -- Doe Run stopped smelting lead in December after more than 120 years at the site --and developers hope to build a barge dock next year.

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