Regional meeting highlights river issues, opportunities
Published 4:22 pm Tuesday, July 7, 2026
CANTON — Mid-America Port Commission Chairman Doug Aeilts says it’s easy to see the Mississippi River as a barrier rather than a bridge between Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri.
“The river’s a great opportunity,” Aeilts said. “We probably don’t utilize it near the extent we could in this area.”
To highlight potential opportunities, MAPC teamed up with Corn Belt Ports and Tri-State Development to offer a regional river and port meeting designed to leverage port investment.
The meeting takes place Wednesday, July 30, in the Robert W. Brown Performing Arts Center on the campus of Culver-Stockton College in Canton. A tour of Lock and Dam 20 at 8 a.m. precedes the meeting, which begins at 9:30 a.m.
The program offers regional port perspectives, state Department of Transportation updates, a rural regional economic development outlook, and a Corps of Engineers briefing, along with a networking lunch.
“It will highlight a lot of the local ports and their projects either in progress or getting ready to progress. There’s a lot of things happening with port development,” Aeilts said. “We want to try to enhance attention to the river and the issues it has, the opportunities it creates, and talk about local economic development between the three states.”
Corn Belt Ports Executive Coordinating Director Bob Sinkler said the meeting hopes to attract “the people making things happen in the Tri-State area” to focus on action and results.
“We want to celebrate the success we’ve had over the last 12 months, which has been significant, and chart a course for the next 12 months to continue to be successful in meeting the economic development needs of the region,” Sinkler said.
Tri-State Development Director Sean Freeman sees value in bringing together the three organizations.
“If there’s an opportunity to bring folks together on an issue we know will have a lot of impact on economic development in our region, all our ports getting together and looking at the future of port development in our area, that’s a huge asset to us. We’re glad to be part of it,” Freeman said. “Our collective collaboration makes it so all of us are going to build our networks through this meeting.”
Corn Belt encourages and supports similar meetings focused on each of its four regions.
“Clearly the greatest infrastructure investment need and greatest opportunity is in the Mid-America Port Commission area, so we want to do everything we can to help them raise their profile and attract federal and state investments from a wide variety of programs,” Sinkler said. “We just want them to be as competitive as they possibly can.”
The event marks the first standalone meeting for MAPC in cooperation with Corn Belt Ports.
“In the past, we’ve tacked a day onto what used to be UMIMRA,” the Upper Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers Association, Aeilts said. “They’re dealing with more national issues. This is to deal with more local issues.”
MAPC, Sinkler said, also can draw on its unique relationship with the Tri-State Development Summit, which makes the region a national leader in rural economic development.
“We just want to continue to highlight that and ensure that business practices that are emerging out of the Tri-State area can be shared with other rural regions in the Midwest and beyond, and that is happening,” Sinkler said. “The whole focus is on bringing more investment into the Tri-State area. Everything from communications to multimodal transportation to energy — all the infrastructure needs that the area has a need for.”
If You Go
Registration for the July 30 Corn Belt Ports and Mid-America Port Commission regional river and port meeting is available online at cornbeltports.com/corn-belt-ports-mapc-registration-form-2026/.
