David C. Fisher Director, Port of Beaumont

Port of Beaumont Navigation District of Jefferson County, Texas ● 1225 Main Street Beaumont, Texas 77701 ●

● (409) 835-5367 (409) 835-0512 FAX ●

PORTOFBEAUMONT.COM

On the right side of the river

NEW TERMS Commissioners

Clark, Smith sworn in for

new 6-year terms

Page 8 PORT SCENES Page 6

IN THIS ISSUE:

Change of Command

Longshoreman hits $10,000 hole-in-one

Port gets its share of pipe and pulp

Director’s Note

PROGRESS 

Across the Neches River from Beaumont, an ambitious project has been completed

that will open the door to

PROGRESS

Changes keep port on firm footing for future

Recent eco-nomic condi-tions have taught us how important it is for businesses to do all they can to be as resilient as possible when times get tough. Although 2009 pre-sented many challenges, it also provided its share of opportuni-ties.

As we look back and recap 2009, we can see that the groundwork was laid for a strong 2010 and beyond.

The most tangible result of this is a $60 million capital im-provement program under way.

In this annual review of the most recent calendar year, you’ll read about the first major dock construction by the Port of Beaumont in more than 35 years. The new wharf and other improvements will make the port even more competitive as the global economy rebounds.

Fisher

Port of Beaumont’s new Orange County Wharf

2009 ANNUAL REVIEW

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Handing over the reins  

Clady takes command of 842nd Transportation Battalion  

ONLOOKERS: Students from Beaumont’s St. Anne’s Catholic School attended the ceremony, along with dozens of area dignitaries.

Lt. COL. TOM L. CLADY Commander, 842d Transportation Battalion

Lt. Col. Tom L. Clady is a distin-guished military graduate of North-east Louisiana University and was commissioned as a U.S. Army second lieutenant in the Transpor-tation Corps in 1989.

Clady holds a bachelor of busi-ness administration degree in mar-keting from Northeast Louisiana University and a master’s degree in administration from Central Michi-gan University. He has also com-pleted a host of military training courses in various fields including logistics and strategic deployment planning.

During his highly decorated military career, Clady has served in leadership positions at installations across the United States and in Panama, Somalia, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Clady is married to the former Stacy Mills and has two children, Paul, 16, and Kristen, 13.

THE TRANSFER: U.S. Army Col. Craig B. Hymes, left, Commander of the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command’s (SDDC) 597th Transpor-tation Group, stands at the moment command of the 842nd Transportation Battalion is handed to Lt. Col. Tom L. Clady (third from left) from Lt. Col. Marshall Ramsey during a May ceremony aboard the M/V Cape Vincent. Sgt. Maj. Randy Manns prepares to present the unit’s colors to the men.

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Expanding eastward 

OCTOBER 2008 FEBRUARY 2009 NOVEMBER 9, 2009

A host of dignitaries joined Port of Beaumont commission-ers and staff last fall to dedicate the port’s new deepwater wharf on the East bank of the Neches River.

Elected officials from Orange County watched as the first ship to call at the new facility dis-charged a cargo of steel billets destined to the adjacent Gerdau Ameristeel plant. The BBC Colorado eased into the new berth just two days after the port accepted the wharf from its builder — Orion Construction.

In the past two years, there has been a lot of activity on the site, located directly across from the port’s Jefferson County fa-cilities.

Workers drove more than

830 24-inch concrete pilings and carefully and cleanly eased more than 840 heavy pre-cast concrete deck panels into place.

They’ve done all this while balancing—sometimes almost tightrope walking—atop an intri-cate web of rebar among a stacked grid of concrete pilings suspended several feet above the Neches River. Lanier & As-sociates, the port’s consulting engineers, designed the new facility.

The wharf, which comprises about $20 million of the $60 million in capital improvement projects under way at the Port of Beaumont — received its first ships in November.

Construction of the new wharf laid the foundation for a new frontier in the Port of Beau-mont’s nearly 100-year history.

For the first time, the port is taking advantage of the unim-

Port Commissioner Georgine Guillory (holding scissors) gets an assist in cutting the ceremonial ribbon to open the new wharf from Commission Chairman C.A. “Pete” Shelton, left, and Orange County Judge Carl Thibodeaux, right. Others in the photo include Port Di-rector Chris Fisher, second from left; Gerdau Ameristeel Plant Man-ager Ricardo Anawate, Port Commission Vice President H.M. “Henry Nix, Port Commissioners Louis Broussard and Nell Clark, State Rep-resentative Mike Hamilton and Orange Economic Corporation Direc-tor Bobby Fillyaw.

$20 million deepwater wharf dedicated in Orange County

Continued on page 4

BELOW: Aerial photos show the rapid progress made building the new dock.

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$8 million in grants boost Orange County developments

U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) announced in early 2009 that the ports of Beaumont and Orange each have received $4 million grants to develop transportation infra-structure projects and provide jobs for Southeast Texas.

The grants are a portion of a $400 million funding allo-cation made by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) under the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance and Continuing Appropriations Act.

Congress passed the act in 2008 to assist economic recovery in regions severely affected by natural disasters during that year.

In all, ports and other economic entities in Texas, Ar-kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma received portions of more than $130 million doled out by the administration under the act.

“As these ports develop, they really support hundreds, if not thousands of jobs in the region long term,” Brady said of the ports’ importance to Beaumont’ media.

The Port of Orange will use its allocation to create intermodal cargo transportation facilities for handling petro-chemicals. Modifications will include a new 430-foot bulk-head and a staging yard for containers and project cargo.

The Port of Beaumont will apply its funds to create new rail connections to the 240 acres it owns in Orange County. The port is also using $2.4 million in transportation grants issued in 2005 to fund improved roadway access to Inter-state 10.

Brady

CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS

The Port of Beaumont’s current expansion brings about $60 million in improve-ments.

New Orange County wharf $20 million (Completed 2009)

Rail expansion project $16 million (construction began January 4, 2010)

SDDC Headquarters building $5.4 million (completed 2008)

Harbor mobile crane $5.3 million (purchased in 2009)

Orange County surfacing (20 acs.) $4 million

Orange County rail access $5.7 million (grant awarded in 2009)

Open storage surface improvements $675,000 (Completed late 2009)

Operations office rehabilitation $580,000 (Completed 2010) Orange County Roadway-I-10 Access $3.125 million

WISH GRANTED: U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady presents a $4 million grant to port commission-ers during a ceremony in February. From left, Nell Clark, Board Vice President Henry Nix, Board President Pete Shelton, Brady, Port Director Chris Fisher, Board Secretary-treasurer Georgine Guillory, Louis Broussard and Lee Smith.

peded river access on the east bank of the Neches River. The port owns a 455-acre parcel of property on the river’s east side, much of which it has had possession of for decades. In 2007, the port began improving a sec-tion of the property and used it to store steel pipe that arrived by the boatload for liquefied natural gas projects across Southeast Texas and southwestern Louisiana.

Complimentary improvements to parallel completion of the 650-foot wharf will include improved surfacing for the road linking it to Interstate 10 and rail spur connecting the facility to the three Class 1 railroads that pass through the site.

All of these developments put addi-tional progress immediately within reach. The entire area under develop-ment in Orange County is adjacent to a 240-acre tract which is available for immediate development as the port continues its expansion.

Continued from page 3

5

WAITING HIS TURN: Longshoreman Preston Williams awaits ropes so he can secure a steel pipe load. In April, Longshoremen unloaded 4,000 pipe joints that arrived via train for coating and is destined for a British Petroleum project.

In April, longshoremen completed moving 4,000 40-foot units of 26-inch steel pipe from train to truck and storage.

BNSF Railway trains began delivering the pipe in late March for Houston-based Bredero Shaw, a division of Shaw-Cor. The pipes eventually will be used to construct a pipeline in South America.

Longshoremen lifted the pipe joints from railcars directly onto flatbed trucks, which ferried the cargo to Bredero Shaw’s coating facility on the southern edge of the Port of Beaumont.

Once coated, the pipes will be loaded onto ships and sent to the pipeline construction site.

The Port of Beaumont has become a popular location for pipe shipments.

Between 2007 and 2008, Bredero Shaw’s port facility coated and shipped about 132,000 short tons of pipe for vari-ous energy projects.

During the same period, the port handled more than 293,400 short tons of steel pipe bound for ongoing energy construction projects locally and abroad.

PIPE SUR

GE 

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Port scenes

TOP LEFT: A Jefferson Electric Co. employee slowly feeds cable to another worker installing wir-ing beneath the Main Street Wharves. TOP RIGHT and CENTER: Crews unload wood pulp from Brazil alongside the M/V Clifford Castle. LEFT: A longshoreman pulls ropes to steady a steel pipe load as longshoremen move the cargo from railcars to trucks. The pipe was taken to a nearby storage lot for cement coating.

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Port scenes

THE WINNER: Mark Bridges, president/business agent for ILA Local No. 1924, cen-ter, receives his $10,000 check at the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District (SAGCD) ILA office in Houston. Also pictured are, (l. to r.) Stephen Vaughan, Raciel Gon-zalez, Stacey Sinclair, SAGCD secretary/treasurer Mike Dickens, Bridges, SAGCD representative Alan Robb, SAGCD president Clyde Fitzgerald and SAGCD presi-dent emeritus Benny Holland.

THE FOUR POPS: International Longshoremen’s Association members (from left) Wayne Cosby, Oscar Snider, Jr., Mark Bridges and Eric Delahoussaye finished second in the Buddy Raspberry Scholarship Fund Golf Tournament in Deer Park, Texas, in June.

Longshoremen with the International Longshoremen’s Association Local No. 1924 took their dockside prowess to The Battleground golf course in Deer Park, Texas in June to participate in the Buddy Raspberry Scholarship Fund golf tourna-ment. The team — Wayne Cosby, Oscar Snider, Jr., Mark Bridges and Eric De-lahoussaye — finished second at 18-under par, just two strokes behind the winning team.

Even without a first place finish, one team member certainly didn’t go home empty-handed. From 180 yards away, Bridges sank a hole in one at hole No. 6, which was exactly what someone needed to do in order to win the $10,000 purse attached to the prize hole. The tournament was sponsored by Tucker, Vaughan, Gardner & Barnes law firm.

NEW ARRIVAL Port accounts payable clerk Danielle Townley and her hus-band, Micah, welcomed Danicah Malyn Townley into the world on June 17, weighing in at 7 lbs, 6 oz. Mom reports that Danicah is a “really good baby” and is sleeping well through the night.

ILA team takes second at golf tourney; Bridges claims prize 

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STAFF David C. Fisher, port director Bill Carpenter, deputy director Ernest L. Bezdek, trade development director John Roby, customer service director Kirby Dartez, operations director Al Matulich, dock superintendent Brenda Whitworth, finance director Sam Serio, maintenance superintendent Janet Floyd, human resources manager Norman Reynolds, port authority police chief

Port of Beaumont Navigation District of Jefferson County, Texas

MISSION STATEMENT: The Port of Beaumont Navigation District of Jefferson County, Texas is responsible to the taxpayers of its district for the improvement of navigation and the development of maritime shipping and waterborne related commerce to and from its wharves; and for maintenance, development, extension and improvement of wharf and dock facilities of the Port of Beaumont to promote economic growth in our district, the State of Texas and in the interest of national defense. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS C.A. “Pete” Shelton, president H.M. “Henry” Nix, Jr., vice president Georgine Guillory, secretary-treasurer Floy Nell Clark Louis Broussard, Jr. Lee E. Smith

Port of Beaumont Commissioners Lee Smith (left) and Nell Clark (center) pose with board president Pete Shel-ton after their swearing-in ceremony in May.

Commissioners Nell Clark and Lee Smith were sworn in for new 6-year terms before a full gallery of spectators during the board’s May meeting.

Clark told the Beaumont Enterprise that she was pleased to serve another term.

“I’m very comfortable with this group,” Clark said. “I love to serve on this board.”

Smith told the Enterprise he is ready to continue working with his colleagues.

“The whole board has been working together real well and making progress,” he said.

Clark became the first woman to serve as port commissioner when she was appointed in 1999 to fill the remainder of the term belonging to her late hus-band, Leroy Clark.

Smith was appointed to the board in 2002 to serve the remainder of the term from commissioner Bo Al-fred, who vacated his seat to become a Jefferson County commissioner.

Commissioners also elected board officers in May, with the three officeholders retaining their posts. Pete Shelton again will be president, Henry Nix is vice president and Georgine Guillory is secretary-treasurer.

Staying the Course  

School days

The port teamed up with the Beaumont Fire Department in May to provide personal-ized books to students at Beaumont’s Dunbar Elementary School. Dunbar second-graders Kalie Smith, Jalen Wells, Deion Murdock and Lauren Cox hold their person-alized books as they pose with (back row, from left) Human Resources Manager and Executive Assistant Janet Floyd, Commissioner Georgine Guillory, Beaumont Fire Investigator Marcus Rogers and Commissioner Lee Smith.

Port Maintenance Department staffers demonstrated their culinary skills and earned top honors in the seafood category when Texas port cook teams held a “Taste of Texas” at the annual convention of the American Association of Port Authorities in Galveston. Displaying a pan of boiled shrimp are, from left, David Williams, Larry Vickery and Maintenance Superintendent Sam Serio.