Posted on June 10, 2024
HOUSTON (Nexstar) – U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg joined local leaders Friday to commemorate the addition of Wharf 6 to Port Houston.
“By making sure Port Houston is ready for the increased demand that we already know is coming, we’re able to support the economic growth that matters not just to this region and the Gulf Coast, but really to the competitiveness of the entire United States economy,” Sec. Buttigieg told Nexstar Friday.
The Houston Ship Channel is one of the busiest waterways in the world and home to Port Houston, the busiest port by tonnage in the country. It is completing a new area for container deliveries, including a 1,000 foot long landing area outfitted with three massive cranes.
The addition is thanks, in part, to a $22 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. It’s a slice of the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. The total cost of the Wharf 6 project is about $92 million.
“This is exactly the kind of project that we intended for Congress to support and for the administration to help create the jobs, improve the supply chain, and prove the vitality of the economy in this area. This is why we did it,” Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, said.
Garcia joined Buttigieg and area leaders on a boat tour of the ship channel after commemorating the new wharf. She says she still has a long list of priorities she hopes his department will fund in the future. That includes, chiefly, the ambitious expansion of the Houston Ship Channel.
The Port has already been awarded $142 million to expand the channel through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, however, they are still in need of $179 million from the federal government.
“I have a list, and I want him to look at it more than once and continue to help us to bring home the money,” she said.
