Barkley Regional Airport is one of many to receive transportation funding in Kentucky

PADUCAH, Ky. (KBSI) – Recently HB1 was approved for Kentuckians, which provided 550 million dollars of funding to enhance transportation in Kentucky.

General aviation airports received $200,000 of funding for each airport. The air carrier airports received different levels of funding. Barkley Regional Airport received 2.5 million. Owensboro airport received 2.5 million.

The other commercial airports in Kentucky received more because of their size.

We talked with Barkley Regional Airport Director Dennis Rouleau on how the funding will help the Paducah airport.

The funding will go towards a number of different things. Such as a runway project, safety measures an extra road and more.

“This will go to some very important projects we have at Barkley in the last grant we received 5.2 million and that project is going towards a runway rehab project phase two it’s also going to a fuel farm and a rehab of the fix base operator” says Rouleau.  

 According to the Director several projects needed attention to ensure safety. Such as the runway pavement. Currently there is a patch in the runway.  

“Like the interior primer road that’s a safety item for us. So, we want to keep items off the active pavement so we had an interior primer road at the old terminal and now were going to extend that road from the old terminal to the new terminal so any fuel trucks any airport vehicles that are not licensed to be on the road can safely travel on a dedicated roadway for them and still stay off the active pavement.” 

Having the airport run safer and more efficiently will bring in more renters to the airport and help to boost the economy and community. Rouleau says he’s thankful for the state legislatures that made this happen. 

“I want to thank the legislatures. Particularly the local ones. That have been supporting Barkley regional airport.”