Kyle Kellams: And let's begin this final Friday and this next-to-last day of January 2026 with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Michael, welcome back.
Michael Tilley: Well, thanks for having me back. I apologize for folks having to finish out their last day with me. But that's your call.
Kellams: That's true. We can look back at the year of river tonnage. That tells us a lot about the economy. If you go to TalkBusiness.net, you find out about river shipments. What do we know?
Tilley: Well, we know it was down this year, almost 20% compared to last year. And if you take out the historic flood of 2019, it's almost a 10-year low. But what's interesting is a couple of the port operators I've talked to on the two biggest ports, primarily Fort Smith and Little Rock. They had pretty good years, but there's some complicated factors. They also are shipping stuff out. That's more than just river operations that keeps them going.
But we had little over 10 million tons shipped on the river in 2025. And again, the reason we keep up with this, you mentioned before is that it's kind of a foundational aspect to the economy because they're shipping chemical fertilizers, sand, gravel and rock, iron and steel, a lot of those things that are initial inputs, and then they're also pushing wheat and soybeans and that kind of thing out of the market that are outputs, so to speak, of the economy. So it's a good economic picture.
But that tonnage in 2025, like I said, was down 19.5% compared to about 12.5 million tons last year. The December tonnage was down 18%. And what we're hearing, or what we're being told, is that there were several lock and dam repairs on the river this year, which halts traffic. But the biggest culprit was low Mississippi River traffic. And so that prevents a lot of the outbound and inbound traffic from happening.
And there was also I didn't track down to see who the specific companies were. But like Marty Shell, who runs the Port of Fort Smith and Port of Van Buren, said that there have been a couple of ports on the river that lost a couple big customers, and so that that can also have an impact on tonnage. But Marty Shell was telling me it's the best year he's ever had.
You know, they gather up, you know, a lot of the stuff they get goes out to 17 states as far as Colorado. They ship a lot of ag products to Colorado. So the more I learn about this Port of Van Buren, Port of Fort Smith, you realize they're just not picking up nails and taking them down to the local hardware store. I mean, this is a multi-state operation.
But a couple of the big drivers for the decline, sand, gravel and rock, which is the biggest category every year in terms of tonnage, was down 21%. Chemical fertilizers, which are used broadly across the industry, also a big commodity on the river, that was down 30%. Those are the two things that really pushed the traffic down.
And there was a little bit of, people are just not shipping right now. There's this tariff uncertainty. And so that's also caused a lot of, and you can look at the major ports, the East and West Coast ports, their tonnage is down also. So that had a little bit of play in that also.
Kellams: Well, I apologize if people were tuning in to hear us talk about water slides because we've done that for the past few weeks. But don't worry, we do have a greatest hit. Consent decree back in the news.
Tilley: Yes. Yeah, just a different kind of water. A little brown water.
Kellams: Oh, gosh. Yes.
Tilley: The city is under this consent decree and it has been since 2014, 2015 where the feds said for decades, the feds have said you got to fix your sewer system. And the City of Fort Smith said, okay, yeah, we'll get around to it. And they kept saying that until the feds put this consent decree on them and said, no, you got to fix them or we will take over your system.
So here we are. The voters approved last May a $360 million package. But people have for a while been saying, even people on the board, people in the community have suggested that the city needs to hire a third party to manage. I mean, it's the consent decree. We're talking about hundreds of miles of sewer pipe, hundreds, if not thousands of manhole covers. Those are just a few examples of stuff that has to be fixed, assessed, and then you have to follow up on it as the repair work.
So it's a large, extraordinary, complicated, expensive project that on a good day is going to generate surprises. So the city has kind of come around and said, okay, we're going to do this. So this Tuesday, this past Tuesday, they heard a presentation from Todd Mitke, who's the engineering director for the city, and they are going to put out this request for qualifications to hire an engineering firm.
They're looking for one that's had experience or is in ongoing consent decree work for a city, but they'll do several things. For example, they've talked about creating a collection system dashboard. It's kind of a central info point for the trouble spots, where have we inspected? Where have we not inspected, what's the flow and rainfall look like. And they'll also, based on their experience, say, look, you've got these 150 projects or whatever it is, of those. Here's the 20 priorities. Here's the 30 or so that we think you can bundle together. They'll bring in their experience to find out where the efficiencies are, where maybe where you can save money and that kind of thing.
So I was and I'm kind of a cynical person at this point in my journalism career. I was somewhat impressed by what all they're looking for. And it seems to be a pretty progressive, well thought out plan to bring in this engineering firm.
Now, of course, as I say, the devil's in the details, who do you get? Are they really qualified? The city has an evaluation team. They'll narrow them down to what they think the top three are. Try to get those to the board for interviews by mid-April and hopefully, hopefully by mid-May have this firm on board.
And there is some need to move fast. You know they have this bond money coming in. They've already approved around $50 million in work. And so that needs to be monitored. They need to start preparing for next year's work. It's something they need to get right, but they also need to move quickly on.
Kellams: If you go to TalkBusiness.net right now, you can find an article about federal appropriations and how in the latest round, the city of Fort Smith didn't receive any money. But in this article you point out but in other rounds, money has been received.
Tilley: Yeah. And there will be some other rounds coming. But these three most recent rounds, there were some big dollar projects around the state. And what was obvious or what was kind of glaring, if you're from Fort Smith, there was not a Fort Smith project on it.
And we report when federal funding comes to Fort Smith. So we also need to have to cover the other side. But there was a little, I think, there's some folks who maybe wanted to point blame to the city, but I think it's also necessary to point out that the city has done pretty well in the last few years.
You know, there's been at least $600 million either committed or directed to the city through the military, in fact, to stand up this military pilot training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base here in Fort Smith, over $100 million, well over $100 million to complete this Interstate 49 segment between Alma and Barling that will run right through the Fort Smith metro. They've had $12 million for water transmission lines in the past, $16 to $20 million for the slackwater harbor. So there's been a lot of funding come to the area. One of the issues this year, when I talked to the city, they pointed out that because of the budget issues last year with the shutdown and they're for these budgets, they had to combine essentially two years of funding into one cycle. And the members of Congress were also limited into what they could propose.
And so that just made it super competitive for cities and counties and other types of local government, state government to receive funding. Not what the city would have wanted. They have some requests out there and some other funding that may come down in the next few weeks. I mean, they're hoping for money for more water transmission line work, for 911 call center equipment, for some neighborhood water work, so they have requests out there. But I guess kind of two points, it's rare that the city doesn't get at least something in these funding budgets, but it's not like they haven't been pretty generous in the past couple of funding cycles.
Kellams: Finally, nobody asked me, but I've always thought that the perfect place to hold conference championships in athletics for the Great American Conference, which has six Arkansas teams and four Oklahoma teams, is Fort Smith. So no one asked me, but somebody else agrees.
Tilley: Well, maybe somebody did ask you and you're just being modest, so. But yes, that's what they're doing. So the Northside, this new, very nice, you could be forgiven for thinking it is not a high school gym, but a college gym. But the arena at Northside High School, which was opened just two or three years ago, it's a $14.5, maybe $15 million facility. But that is where they're having the Great American Conference tournament. Begins March 5, runs through March 8. As you said, mostly Arkansas colleges. Arkansas Tech University, my alma mater, is part of that conference.
In fact, the women, I think as of a few days ago, the Arkansas Tech women, which everybody gets a prize if they know what their mascot is.
Kellams: Golden Sons.
Tilley: Golden Sons. Thank you. And it's S-O-N-S. The men’s changed to Golden Suns, S-U-N-S. You know, no one took me seriously on that for probably for good reason.
But yeah, that's coming in. But the key thing is that I thought the key thing was the economic impact. And so I talked to Ashleigh Bachert. She's the head of the Fort Smith Convention Visitors Bureau. They estimate about 1,300 people will attend, about 500 people staying overnight. And it's almost a $600,000 economic impact. And I know Ashleigh and her team, they estimate these very conservative. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than almost $600,000, but that's a good 500 people staying overnight, eating in your restaurants, shopping, 1,300 people total. That's a great impact.
And they're going to bid– These are bid out for two-year runs. They're going to bid and try to get them back for 2027 and 2028. So good luck to them on that effort.
Kellams: And Arkansas Tech is not the only school in the GAC that has different mascot nicknames for men's and women's teams.
Tilley: I'll take your word on it. I've never been much of a mascot history person.
Kellams: Well, that's because you have other things to do. But I will tell you. University of Arkansas at Monticello. The men are the Weevils. The women are the Blossoms.
Tilley: Well, little yin and yang there, I guess.
Kellams: Yeah. All right. Michael Tilley knows so much more than mascot nicknames. And you can find out what he and his colleagues are doing at TalkBusiness.net. Talk to you in February, Michael.
Tilley: All right. Thank you, sir.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
