Russellville Waits for Intermodal Splash

A proposed intermodal facility is planned on the north side of the Arkansas River in Russellville.

Russellville officials have plenty of experience being patient.

Leaders of the Pope County seat made plans two decades ago for a $50 million intermodal facility to be built south of the city on the banks of the Arkansas River. The city owned about 300 acres in the area and proposed acquiring nearly 600 more for an industrial park alongside a slack-water harbor.

The harbor and park would be connected by short-line rail with the railroad running through Russellville and, with Interstate 40 just a short hop away, the facility would be easy to access by water, rail and highway. It could become a beacon for attracting industrial investment and jobs.

That’s what Russellville and Pope County leaders thought. Two decades ago.

The intermodal facility site still sits undeveloped, except for a gravel mine where the operator scooped up material and then departed. Lawsuits over multiple environmental studies have been part of the holdup.

In early June, U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall ruled for the intermodal proponents in a 2014 suit filed by the city of Dardanelle and the Yell County Wildlife Federation. Those groups had derailed the intermodal plan with a 2004 suit that successfully challenged a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finding that the facility would have little environmental impact.

Another, more in-depth study was ordered and the Federal Highway Administration took over as the facility’s lead agency. That study, delivered nine years later by Parsons Infrastructure & Technology Group of California, determined that the facility and slack-water harbor would have little environmental impact; Dardanelle and the YCWF filed suit again in 2014.

The groups’ lawyer, Richard Mays of Heber Springs, said no decision has been made on whether to appeal Marshall’s ruling. Mays said his clients are convinced that the harbor and the facility’s construction on a floodplain south of Russellville will cause future floodwaters to be redirected to Dardanelle or the Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge south of the city.

“It’s in a floodplain; when you take that much floodplain out of operations, in the event of a flood, the water has to go somewhere else,” Mays said. “In our opinion, it would go to the area on the opposite bank of the river.”

All for One
Russellville Mayor Randy Horton remembers hearing about the intermodal facility idea long ago, and all these years later he is running the city and holding onto hopes that the complex will be built.

Horton said a complex in Russellville would be a boon for the entire six-county region — the city formed the River Valley Regional Intermodal Authority to promote and support the facility — and not just for his city. He said industries have approached Russellville about locating plants in the area but the lack of river access has been a deal-killer.

“The home run idea, the gift from the heavens, would be to locate a plant here,” Horton said. “The competition is so fierce out there for economic development you have to have an option for everything in the arsenal or you don’t make it to the second round of cuts.”

Horton said he hopes Dardanelle will work with the project instead of against it. He said the facility would be closer to Dardanelle than Russellville.

“The jobs are as much for people in Yell County as they are for people in Pope County and the city of Russellville,” Horton said. “This is a regional endeavor. We’re so co-dependent, that is how we have to think. The term is sister cities, but we’re twin sisters.”

Marvin Gerlach, president of the intermodal authority board, said business owners in Dardanelle have told him they support the facility because it would stimulate economic activity. The lack of river access leaves the valley region with no chance to land investments such as Big River Steel, which went to Osceola in 2014, Gerlach said.

“The city of Russellville is trying to build more than a river port over there,” Gerlach said. “Our intention is to build the harbor and get the barges coming and create the industrial park by using it as a recruiting tool. We can’t tell anybody that we have access to the river, and we don’t know that we are going to have it, so you can’t lead somebody on saying, ‘Hang with us, guys.’”

Stalled Momentum
Mays, the opponents’ attorney, said one factor in Russellville’s fervor for the proposed site — rather than alternatives that he said pose less of a flooding risk — is that the city owns part of the property and leaders have said they would annex the site.

“[My clients] object to the location that was selected. It wasn’t just selected; it was preordained, in our opinion,” Mays said. “It’s pretty hard to claim it is for the benefit of the entire region. It would certainly provide, perhaps, employment opportunities for people who live in other areas, but the primary economic benefit for the facility would be in Russellville and Pope County.”

The plaintiffs could still delay the project by appealing Marshall’s ruling or filing suit with a different objection. He said costs are a factor because the plaintiffs are fighting the federal government, which has deeper pockets than Dardanelle and the YCWF, a sportsman’s club founded in 1946.

Mayor Horton said the project is worth whatever time it takes because the benefits are potentially so grand.

“Here’s the reason you don’t give up on it: The upside of it can be so huge,” Horton said. “I’m a blue-collar guy, and what means something to me is that paycheck on Friday. Then that number gets spent on the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker and it turns over in your local economy. It’s life-changing for a community. As big as it is with the first dollar spent, it’s the rolling over and over that is the impact.”

For Gerlach, the current state of limbo hasn’t cooled the fervor to see the facility to completion. Gerlach said the intermodal authority board he heads still has about $2 million on hand to start the project when and if that day arrives.

“We’re waiting on the go-ahead to build it,” Gerlach said. “The first thing we have to do is raise some more money. We have some seed money to get the project started, but not nearly enough to finish it with.

“We’re still actively planning to build this thing. We’re ready to go.”