The Mississippi River is the most important asset to the Quad Cities region. Unfortunately, for decades it has been taken for granted or simply not leveraged to its full economic potential.
But that continues to change.
One important change is an innovative strategy by a few intrepid leaders in getting national recognition with a newly formed Corn Belt Ports designation along the area above Locks and Dam 26 on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway.
It’s not unlike the effort by various cities in the region coming together decades ago to become the Quad Cities region in an effort to leverage something greater than individual communities.
Today, Corn Belt Port leaders also are working with local and regional partners to help create a system of local port districts to help leverage grants and other investment within the four Corn Belt Port regions. Those port regions in the upper Midwest are each 200 miles long and handle about 50 million tons of cargo.
The successful initiative to market those ports in a more collective manner and get them recognized by federal authorities was captained by former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Commander and retired Colonel Bob Sinkler, according to a recent QCBJ news article.
Sometimes it takes a vision by someone locally to help the federal government understand the collective importance of regional assets.
Before Corn Belt Ports was included by the federal government as part of Marine Highway 35, there was a major gap in that official map of Mississippi River ports between St. Louis and Minneapolis.
That’s important, Mr. Sinkler said, because that river chart is used by Washington to allocate federal dollars. It’s also, in part, why there had been no federal investment except routine maintenance in that large region for decades.
“Everyone knew we had waterways here, but they didn’t recognize that we had ports, so we really had to marry both of them together and maximize the amount of investment coming in,” Mr. Sinkler said. Creating the Corn Belt Ports regions also helped “organize this crazy mess that we have out there.”
That complex network includes port statistical areas, port districts, port authorities, port and economic development organizations, private terminals, public docks, harbors and joint harbors. “We were confusing ourselves, and we were definitely confusing the national level on how we were organized,” he said.
And there was and is no time to waste in its formation because the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden into 2021, will be allocating billions in dollars to key infrastructure projects. The region around the Quad Cities might very well have missed out on additional infrastructure money if the Corn Belt Ports hadn’t been formulated when it did.
We applaud the leaders who helped craft the vision to get this designation and push for more federal investment. It is the type of economic leadership that will help the Quad Cities thrive for decades to come.
