Drake Thanks Steele for Helping CCPA Grow
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio -- The Columbiana County Port Authority’s meeting Monday night was short and bittersweet, the agenda dispensed with in minutes, the only resolution that required board approval the hiring of a replacement for “the most honest, insightful person I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with,” said CEO Tracy Drake.
Drake was referring to Sandy Steele, manager of administration and finance, who will retire and be replaced by Diane L. Ksiazek, a former commercial banker from Wintersville.
In lauding Steele’s contributions to the development agency, Drake noted that he came to the port authority at the end of 1993, Steele a few months later.
“When we both got here,” he recalled, “we had about $3 million in cash on hand. We’ve turned that $3 million over at least 10- to 15 times, so we’ve done our job in getting money out into the community to do projects – and we’ve done that without local tax support. We’ve been pretty good at getting grant monies and those types of things, and we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished.”
Steele plans to work with Ksiazek through her Jan. 1 retirement date; she said she’ll move to Florida but return to East Liverpool frequently to visit friends and family.
When Steele and Drake took over operations of the port authority, no one could foresee how the oil and gas industry would transform Columbiana County’s economy, Drake observed. “Nor had we even identified the Wellsville site for potential development.”
Today the Wellsville Intermodal Facility and its 60-ton bridge crane stand out in the agency’s portfolio, its evolution along the banks of the Ohio River validation of the priority placed on cargo transportation -- and potential for continued growth.
Just in the last two weeks, Drake told reporters following the board meeting, Harvest Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of Houston-based Hilcorp Energy, started construction of a truck transfer station at the Intermodal Facility.
“They are moving quickly,” Drake said. “They say sometime in November there will be 200-plus trucks a day moving through that site just to deliver liquids from the shale fields for transshipment over to the Marathon site.”
Marathon Oil operates a storage and transfer terminal adjacent to Hilcorp’s 3.2-acre site, and discussions continue with Marathon about expanding their tank farm at Wellsville, Drake added.
In addition, Cimbar Performance Minerals, which supplies barite to Anchor Drilling Fluids processing plant there, is planning to increase the amount of maritime cargo “from about 50,000 tons a month to 200,000 tons,” Drake said. “So things are really jumping.”
Meantime, the port authority continues to negotiate with Aqua Infrastructure LLC, a subsidiary of Aqua America Inc., and other parties to complete the sale of the Youngstown & Southern Railroad and the adjacent rights-of-way. Aqua had said it planned to use the short-line that runs from Youngstown to Darlington, Pa., to transport water, sand and other materials used by the oil and gas industry. A letter of intent was expected to become a purchase agreement by June 30.
“We’re in discussions with Aqua as well as others with potential to do a deal that may be bigger than what we were looking at before,” Drake told reporters covering the meeting.
“We’re going to have a deal. It’s just a matter of what final form it takes," he added.
"I think we'll be able to announce something in the next 30 days."
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our twice-monthly print edition and to our free daily email headlines.