Georgia port plan runs into political barriers

On an unusually hot March day in 2007, the governors of Georgia and South Carolina pledged to set aside decades of economic rivalry and jointly build a port.

Standing atop a shadeless berm on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River — the proposed site of the Jasper Ocean Terminal — Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue told South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford that “we will work with you for the economic prosperity of both our states.”

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A cargo ship is seen at the Garden City Terminal earlier this year. Plans are pushed for a Jasper port, since some leaders say the Garden City port will eventually reach capacity levels.

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Bi-state peace, love and harmony, it seems, have a relatively short shelf life.

Less than 2½ years later, South Carolina legislators question Georgia’s commitment to the Jasper port. Powerful senators threaten to thwart Georgia’s decade-long push to deepen the Savannah River from the Atlantic Ocean to its prosperous Garden City Terminal above Savannah.

The discord grew louder Thursday when two South Carolina members of a commission that oversees the river — men who likely would support the deepening — resigned.

It all seems like a return to the business-as-usual days of ports one-upmanship. But the stakes today are incredibly high.

Cargo flowing through Georgia’s ports totaled $16.3 billion last year — with metro Atlanta accounting for nearly half that — according to an independent analysis of international trade.

And, with port traffic expected to explode by 2014, once the Panama Canal is upgraded to handle the next generation of supersized container ships, Georgia can’t afford to lose South Carolinians’ support for a deeper river.

“There is an awful lot of cargo potentially coming to the Southeast U.S., and there is room for successful ports in Charleston, Savannah and Jasper County,” said Jim Lientz, chief operating officer for Perdue. “If all three ports work hard and do the right thing, there will be ample business for everybody.”

Georgia officials want to deepen the Savannah River an additional six feet — to 48 feet — to handle massive ships that can carry up to 12,000 containers.

It will cost upward of $500 million to extend the deepening to the Garden City Terminal above the city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean, 30 miles away. Georgia taxpayers will shoulder half the cost if the feds approve the river’s deepening.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would have to grant a permit for the deepening, is expected to release a delayed environmental impact study of the proposal by year’s end. An economic analysis should also be made public then, said Billy Birdwell, the corps’ Savannah District spokesman.

South Carolina critics, and Georgia environmental advocates, question why the corps should deepen the river all the way to Garden City when the Jasper site sits only 16.75 miles from the Atlantic.

“While we are fully aware of proposals for a Jasper Ocean Terminal, federal rules only allow us to evaluate a deepening based on existing facilities,” Birdwell said via e-mail.

South Carolina legislators aren’t mollified. Republican Sen. Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Finance Committee, said earlier this month that a consultant should be hired “to ensure that Georgia doesn’t get that permit.” Otherwise, he added, “we can kiss [Jasper] goodbye.”

GOP Sen. Larry Grooms, chairman of the Transportation Committee, fears that both Jasper and the port at Charleston — with a depth of 45 feet — will suffer.

“A worst-case scenario for South Carolina would be that the Savannah River is deepened all the way to Garden City and the Garden City Terminal would then be able to expand, and therefore, Jasper may not ever be economically viable,” he said Friday.

The Savannah River Maritime Commission, a South Carolina entity that oversees the river, voted Thursday to hire a consultant to scrutinize the corps’ deepening report once it’s released.

At that same meeting, two members resigned. Bill Bethea, who is also chairman of the Jasper Ocean Terminal Joint Project Office, the bi-state board that is laying the groundwork for the new port, said he couldn’t remain on two commissions seemingly working at cross-purposes.

Steve Green, chairman of the Georgia Ports Authority, said the authority will invite Leatherman and others to Savannah to learn more about the deepening.

“Although they’re well-meaning, they’re just ill-informed about the importance of the harbor deepening to the ability of the Jasper port to come into existence,” said Green, a Savannah developer. “For the federal government to pay its share of the deepening, a cost-benefit ratio of the port must justify taxpayer dollars. There’s no rationale for them to deepen just to a potential site.”

It has taken Georgia $40 million worth of studies to get this far with the corps — and Savannah, the nation’s fourth-biggest container port, already possesses a well-oiled network of cranes, warehouses, roads and rail.

Jasper, where construction is a decade out, is all sand, marsh and scrub. No paved roads, rail or buildings exist. Port boosters estimate a minimum $350 million in startup costs.

South Carolinians opposed to a deeper river up to Garden City may ally themselves with environmental groups on both sides of the river.

“Georgia officials know that environmental interests will try to stop harbor deepening up to Garden City if Jasper can be built,” said Judy Jennings, an executive committee member for the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club. “And here’s the glitch, and the lawsuit that we’ve been working on since 1997: The corps has to consider all alternatives, and a port at Jasper has always been an alternative. But the corps has concluded that Jasper is still so far-fetched that they don’t consider it a viable alternative.”

The corps’ Birdwell said no deepening decision has been made.

“The Garden City Terminal can only grow to a certain point and then it runs out of room,” he said in a phone interview. “At that point, a Jasper County port becomes a real viable option.”

South Carolina and Georgia legislators will be asked in their upcoming sessions to approve a bi-state compact allowing a joint port to be built. Congress must then sign off on the compact.

Once the corps’ environmental and economic analyses are released later this year, the public will have 90 days for review and comment.

Four federal agencies must then sign off on any deepening. Bids and dredging could take an additional five years, ample time for the global economy, terminal operators and politicians on both sides of the Savannah River to determine when — if — Jasper gets built.

“State lines are arbitrary barriers,” Bethea said. “Yet we share the Savannah River — part of the economic engine for the entire region, not just South Carolina or Georgia.”