Maritime Administration awards grant to Tenn-Tom

NORTHEAST MISSISSIPPI — Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) is welcoming the award of a $1.76-million grant to support a Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority project to increase the container barge capacity between the Port of Itawamba and the Port of Mobile.

The funding was announced tby the Maritime Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation, as part of its America’s Marine Highway Program. The grant will be utilized for a Tennessee-Tombigbee Freight Project involving the purchase and modification of nine barges for a new container transportation service from the Port of Itawamba.

The Tennessee-Tombigbee Freight Project is among the Marine Highway Projects selected for development by the U.S. Department of Transportation in August. This initiative, as part of Marine Corridor 65, promotes new container-on-barge service to function as a new route between manufacturing centers near Port of Itawamba container terminals on the Gulf Coast.

Also in August, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority signed a two-year memorandum of understanding with the Panama Canal Authority that pledges cooperative efforts to promote the Tombigbee inland waterway as an international trade route.