Barkley Regional Airport to receive funding for runway lighting project
PADUCAH, Ky. (KBSI) – A regional airport will soon see some much-needed enhancements, this comes after the us house of representatives passed a funding package on February 3rd, 2026, that will fund the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration and more.
Barkley Regional Airport will soon receive more than $3 million dollars’ worth of funding for enhancements and to improve overall safety.
Dennis Rouleau is the Executive Director of Barkley Regional Airport authority. He shares that they’ve worked on many improvement projects for the airport over the past couple years, but their airfield lighting system has needed rehabbed for quite some time.
“All those components are well over 30 years old and out of date and the parts are not available anymore” says Rouleau.
Rouleau says the airfield and runway lighting plays a big part in safety and functionality to an airport.
“It is vital to keep the airfield running, and operating, because normally a commercial service, aircraft cannot be taxing, not on an unlit, taxiway so that affects us” says Rouleau.
According to Rouleau the funding will take several months to get to them, and they will need to add additional grant funding to fully fund the runway lighting project.
Rouleau says he applied for the funding for the runway about a year ago and received much support from Kentucky senator,
“I went to Washington personally to meet with the Senator, and, to ask for this project and a few others and he was gracious enough to include this on, as a congressional directive spending. So, this is, you know, this is a very important and, the senator, recognized it.”
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