This past week, U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Hot Springs, brought the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., to south Arkansas for a tour of Highland Industrial Park in East Camden.

With all the growth in jobs and plant expansion at the park, federal officials are keeping tabs on workforce readiness. In an exclusive interview with The Fordyce News Advocate, Westerman said concerns are alleviated after touring the facilities and speaking with defense company executives.

“If you talk about Highland Park, there’s people that travel hours to get there to work. That was something Chairman Rogers was asking all the companies that we met with today, about the workforce. I knew what the answer was going to be because I’ve heard it before, but these companies love the quality of the workforce in south Arkansas,” said Westerman. “It’s kind of in the DNA of the folks that live down there.”

Southern Arkansas University (SAU) and SAU Tech have developed workforce programs to train employees for the jobs being added, particularly in the fields of engineering, manufacturing, aerospace, energy, and construction.

“They haven’t had problems staffing jobs when they open up yet. They realize it’s a very rural area, but it seems like the workers just keep applying for jobs when jobs open up,” said Westerman.

In recent months, there have been hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments made in Highland Industrial Park, home to dozens of aerospace and defense manufacturers.

“Everybody’s excited about Camden and the projects that are happening. There’s been a tremendous amount of expansion at the Highland Industrial Park, and there’s a lot more on the books,” he added. “With the U.S. goal to spend a higher percentage of our GDP on defense, when you look at the kinds of defense products that are made at Camden, you can see potential for just unbelievable growth down there.”

A Big Appropriation

Westerman, who was touring the Fourth Congressional District last week, revealed he has filed an appropriations request for nearby Pine Bluff. He said he is seeking $9.8 million for upgrades to the Port of Pine Bluff.

“I’ve requested what we call ‘Community Project Funding’ for a project at the Pine Bluff Port,” said Westerman, whose Fourth District represents Pine Bluff and Jefferson County. “The request is $9.8 million, and the port operator would put in another 10% to do some much-needed projects there to get the port back up into good operating condition, which will be beneficial to help bring more jobs there to Pine Bluff and the Jefferson County area.”

“This will be for next year’s appropriations. We had to have our requests into the appropriations committee within the past couple of weeks,” he added.

Westerman said the appropriation will go through a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee called THUD (tee-hud), which stands for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. That subcommittee is chaired by Arkansas Third District U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Rogers.

“He’s done well for the state in that capacity… in getting projects approved,” said Westerman.

In late January, the U.S. Department of the Army awarded a lease contact to Hanwha Defense USA to build and operate a new munitions facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. Hanwha, a South Korean conglomerate, will invest $1.3 billion in the operation and hire 200 skilled workers.

The effort is a major step in modernizing the U.S. munitions supply chain and enhancing wartime ammunition capacity.

“It will be a big expansion at the Pine Bluff Arsenal,” said Westerman.

He also said the U.S. Department of War is discussing a potential drone facility at the arsenal.

“This administration is refocused domestic munitions and industrial defense production and I think the Pine Bluff Arsenal is going to be a big beneficiary in that,” he said.

Lithium Potential

Westerman also said that south Arkansas has great potential to thrive as the state’s lithium deposits are developed for commercial use. Billions of dollars are being invested in Arkansas to tap into the Smackover Formation, a rich deposit of lithium that can be mined for commercial use in batteries and electronics.

“The demand for lithium just keeps going up. Right now, we’re seeing the price of lithium going up and this is another thing that we’re working on in Congress. We want to make sure that we can produce the minerals and the elements here in the U.S. and not be so dependent on China. China has really cornered the lithium market. So there’s going to be a lot of emphasis from the federal government to make sure we can source things like lithium domestically,” said Westerman.

He also said there is a new project underway at the federal level called “Project Vault.”

“I was in the Oval Office with the president when we did this,” said Westerman. “It’s using the XM Bank to establish something similar to the strategic petroleum reserves, but doing it for critical mineral reserves. It would ensure that China can’t dump on the global market and drive prices down, which is something that pushes investors away from doing projects in the U.S. because China controls so much of the market.”

Westerman thinks with the reserves developing and technology ripening, the Smackover Formation will benefit for decades from the lithium industry.

“I think it’s really bright days ahead for south Arkansas and lithium,” he said.