By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — When fully completed, the new Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio, will be an efficient and environmentally friendly rail link between the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic ports. And the facility on 500 acres in Wood County is music to the ears of soybean farmers in northwestern Ohio.

“This facility wasn’t designed with soybean farmers in mind, but it will certainly benefit them,” said Jamie Butts, Ohio Soybean Council communications manager. Eleven percent of Ohio’s soybeans are grown within a 25-mile radius of the new terminal and 31 percent of soybeans are grown within a 50-mile radius. We identified this as an opportunity to help farmers ship out their beans.”

This Intermodal facility in North Baltimore will become part of a larger CSX project called the National Gateway, which currently connects the transportation of goods and commodities from Midwest markets to Mid-Atlantic ports.

In addition to construction of the new Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore the plans include improvements (at a cost of $700 million) to the three major rail corridors already in place, such as improving ports, upgrading rail lines and preparing bridges and tunnels as needed to accommodate the more efficient double-stack trains.

“Transportation certainly is an important issue for Ohio soybean farmers and specifically when it comes to rail transportation because specialty beans like these are already transported using rail containers,” Butts said. “Now they’ll be able to utilize double-stack cars and that could mean the shipment of more beans.”

John Lumpe, executive director of the Ohio Soybean Council, Rusty Orben, director of public affairs at CSX Transportation, Jay Kelley, business development manager at Adayana Agribusiness, and members of the media gathered in Bowling Green last month to learn more about the Northwest Ohio Intermodal facility and its effects to industry and businesses in northwestern Ohio.

This new facility is a new addition to the I-70/I-76 corridor between Washington, D.C. and northwestern Ohio via Pittsburgh, Pa.
“This terminal will put Wood County at the center of a very significant transportation system, especially those in agriculture,” said Tom Blaha, executive director of the Wood County Economic Development Commission.

Lumpe echoed that sentiment.

“There are 26,000 soybean growers in Ohio and the U.S. is the sixth largest exporter of soybeans,” Lumpe said. “Ohio’s logistics advantage is that it is located closely to areas where soybeans are grown, and the new terminal is ideal for those growers. This puts northwest Ohio at the center of the global market place.”

Presenters say the benefits go well beyond agriculture. Construction will employ about 400 people, along with 200 permanent jobs at the terminal. Development of warehouses and other distribution-related business is expected to generate as many as 2,600 additional jobs. They also point out that each railcar would remove three truck trips from already congested highways. Trains, they add, are three times more fuel efficient than any other over-the-road alternative and would save roughly $119.5 million in highway maintenance.

The National Gateway program anticipates $30 million in federal funding, $30 million in state funding, and a $175 million investment by CSX and its affiliates. The Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal is expected to be fully operational by 2011. Groundbreaking for the new terminal got under way in May.