A coal terminal that has anchored Superior's waterfront for half a century is nearing the end of its run. The Walter J. McCarthy Jr. is expected to arrive soon at the Midwest Energy Terminal to pick up the last load of coal before the facility shuts down for good.
Midwest Energy Resources Company, known as MERC, built the terminal and began receiving coal there back in 1976, according to Northern News Now. Over the five decades since, millions of tons of coal have moved through the facility, the station reports, making it a fixture of the Twin Ports shipping economy long before anyone was talking about phasing it out.
Now the city of Superior and the Duluth-Superior Port Authority are looking for businesses to take over the site, per the same report. No successor operator or specific future use for the property has been identified yet, leaving the terminal's next chapter an open question for the waterfront.
A Lease That Was Never Going to Be Renewed
The writing was on the wall more than a year ago. MERC's lease was set to expire June 30, 2026, and the company had already indicated it did not plan to renew it, Northern News Now reported in late 2025. That timeline lines up with the closure now playing out on the docks.
The shutdown comes with real costs for workers, though the exact number affected depends on which outlet you ask. Northern News Now has reported the closure will eliminate approximately 60 jobs, while MPR News put the figure at 56 employees losing their jobs. WJFW reported that all 54 affected employees had been notified of the permanent layoffs. The discrepancies among the three counts haven't been reconciled.
A Long Slide From Coal's Peak Year
Coal shipments through the terminal peaked back in 2008, and MPR News reports they have since declined by about 75 percent as electricity generation increasingly shifts to natural gas and renewable sources like wind and solar. Exactly how big that 2008 peak was depends on the source: Wisconsin Public Radio cited a record 22 million short tons loaded that year, while WDIO put the record at 22.3 million short tons for the 2008 navigation season.
Coal's share of overall port tonnage has also been described differently across reports. MPR News says coal made up about 15 percent of the total tonnage shipped out of the port in recent years, while Wisconsin Public Radio reported that figure at between 16 and 18 percent. Either way, the trend line points the same direction, and it tracks with national numbers: the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. coal consumption totaled 88.8 million short tons in the second quarter of 2026, down 10.2 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.
Not the First Dock to Go Quiet
The coal terminal's closure echoes another long-running operation at the Port of Duluth-Superior that wound down as demand shifted. Wisconsin Public Radio notes that the CHS grain terminal saw its 2022 shipments fall to the lowest level since 1890, a sign that commodity terminals built for a different era of shipping have been struggling across the port, not just the one handling coal.
For now, the arrival of the Walter J. McCarthy Jr. marks the symbolic close of MERC's run on the Superior waterfront. What comes next for the site remains in the hands of the city and the port authority as they continue their search for a new tenant.
