Posted on November 21, 2016
By Tim Croft, The Star
The 2017 session of the Florida Legislature appears more important by the month for the Port St. Joe Port Authority.
There is now a paying client and a lease for a portion of the former Arizona Chemical site.
And a letter of intent close to being finalized between the St. Joe Company, collaborator with the Port Authority on port development, and the same client for a portion of St. Joe land within the port planning area.
“He is moving forward,” said Port Authority board member and port director Eugene Raffield of the owner of a company that will ship wood pellets to international markets from the Port of Port St. Joe.
Infrastructure, such as scales and utilities, are being pulled together and discussions are active with the U.S. Coast Guard regarding guidelines for barge traffic.
In turn, the process has been initiated to secure the release of some $6 million in Department of Transportation grant funds that would be used, with some matching funds from St. Joe, to repair Genessee Wyoming rail lines between the port and points north to Chattahoochee.
An exercise is ongoing among economic development stakeholders in four counties, Gulf, Franklin, Liberty and Gadsden, on identifying assets and economic connections to be made between the Port of Port St. Joe, the Apalachicola Municipal Airport and the I-10 corridor.
And, finally, the work on the engineering and design of infrastructure to contain some 5 million cubic yards of spoil from channel dredging is nearing completion.
That is a crucial step as dredging the federally-authorized shipping channel is impossible until spoil infrastructure is in place.
Tommy Pitts with Mott MacDonald said last week that modeling has been completed and work on the design drawings has begun.
“We can see the finish line,” Pitts said. “We think three months is realistic for completion.”
The engineers continue to examine soil options for optimal stability for the large berms to be built to hold all the spoil, the reasons two-fold.
Stability is crucial given the high volume of water to be contained.
“All this is aimed at the best engineering system at the least cost,” said Billy Perry with Mott MacDonald.
But the real work will clearly come during the coming legislative session when port and local economic development officials will be lobbying hard for funding to continue the port development.
A case for which was made more important with the recent announcement that Eastern Shipbuilding out of Bay County, and which owns a 62-acre parcel along the Intracoastal Canal as well as portion of the paper mill site bulkhead, won a $10 billion U.S. Coast Guard contract.
Funding needs include at least $20 million beyond the $20 million already earmarked for channel dredging with at least another $10-$11 million needed to complete spoil infrastructure.
That in addition to the rail grant dollars.
Raffield said the second letter of intent within the port planning area should be the key to “opening doors that have been closed to us.”
Florida lawmakers, Port Authority members hope, will be ready behind those doors.
In addition, the state lawmakers will accept the first dollars destined for Triumph Gulf Coast, funding that is seen by local officials as a potential pot for port development funding.
Source: The Star
