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Nov 12, 2023

Boiler for Pratt Paper plant will close Henderson, Kentucky, roads

HENDERSON, Ky. − One of the larger objects ever moved in Henderson County is

HENDERSON, Ky. − One of the larger objects ever moved in Henderson County is expected to result in some temporary traffic disruptions on Henderson's southwest side for a few hours this Tuesday morning.

An enormous boiler evaporator — weighing 211,000 pounds and measuring 20 feet wide, nearly the width of two highway driving lanes — will be transported to the construction site of the $600 million Pratt Paper complex on the Kentucky 425/South Bypass.

It is scheduled to be offloaded from a barge by a 500-ton-capacity crane brought specially in for the job at the Henderson County Riverport.

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Then it will be carefully transported by a large truck and lowboy trailer three miles by highway at a speed of about one mile per hour.

Although times and dates could change, the schedule is for the machinery to leave the riverport at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

From there, the oversized load will travel east on Kentucky 136-West toward U.S. 60-West, which should take one hour.

After crossing the U.S. 60-West intersection, the load will proceed east on the Kentucky 425/South Bypass, reaching the Pratt site in about one hour.

Henderson Police and the Henderson County Sheriff's departments will block key intersections and direct traffic around detours, notably around U.S. 41-Alternate and U.S. 60-West when the big load is on the Kentucky 425 portion of its journey.

The planning and execution of the delivery of the big load from its manufacturing site in Abilene, Texas, to Henderson has been painstaking, involving Pratt, crane and heavy-transport companies, a specialty barge company, the riverport, utility companies, the City of Henderson, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, law enforcement and others. It's also involved keeping local industries that will be impacted by the road closures up to date.

"It's been a major coordination," in the words of Missy Vanderpool, executive director of Henderson Economic Development, which led the recruitment of Pratt in 2021.

Vanderpool said Pratt General Manager Ed Kersey has praised City Manager Buzzy Newman for leading the local coordination.

After leaving its manufacturing site in Texas on Oct. 8, the big load was placed on a barge at the Port of Houston that sailed across the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay, then transited north along the Tombigbee River, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, the Tennessee River and finally the Ohio River to Henderson.

The machinery will be part of a boiler system that will provide steam for the Pratt mill that will recycle used corrugated containers such as shipping boxes into paper that will be used for manufacturing new corrugated containers and retail displays for customers such as Amazon, the U.S. Postal Service, Procter & Gamble and The Home Depot.

The Pratt complex is projected to employ 320 people at wages and benefits averaging $39 per hour.

Production at the corrugated recycling mill is expected to begin during the third quarter of 2023.

When the Pratt project was announced in July 2021, Gov. Andy Beshear said it represented the largest jobs announcement in Western Kentucky in the past 25 years.