WHAT’S NEXT
Wednesday’s settlement furthers Georgia’s efforts to deepen the Savannah River. Possible next steps:
- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, South Carolina officials and the judge who mediated the dispute are expected to soon sign off on the settlement.
- Congress or the White House gives final authorization for the $652 million project to proceed.
- Additional environmental tests could take place this summer.
- Deepening the river below the port could proceed later this year.
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CONTINUING COVERAGE
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has covered what proponents call Georgia’s most significant economic development project since Savannah River deepening studies got underway 15 years ago. The in-depth coverage has included daily updates and lengthy reports, including last year’s Port Wars project.
Georgia will pay $33.5 million and turn over 2,000 acres of land it owns in South Carolina to settle a lawsuit by environmentalists and officials in the neighboring state that threatened to further delay the Savannah port expansion.
The deal announced Wednesday is key to the port project’s future — and, proponents say, to Atlanta’s economic development — but political, financial and environmental hurdles remain.
The deal could fall apart, for example, if a little-proven technology to add oxygen to the Savannah River fails. The $652 million project to deepen 38 miles of Savannah River and harbor, to accomodate bigger cargo ships, also needs final approval and financing from Washington.
The Georgia Ports Authority approved the settlement Wednesday afternoon. In essence it allows a South Carolina environmental permit to proceed. Georgia and South Carolina officials did not comment, citing a judge’s gag order.
Huge hurdles remain before major work to deepen the Savannah River by five feet can proceed.
“This is truly a conditional permit,” Randy Lowell, an attorney told members of the the Savannah River Maritime Commission, one of six plaintiffs, during the settlement hearing in Columbia, S.C.
Environmental groups, as well as South Carolina’s environmental agency, sued last year to stop potential damage to Savannah River fish, as well as surrounding wetlands. They received strong backing from S.C. elected officials who worry that the port of Charleston is falling irreversibly behind the port of Savannah in the race for global trade.
Savannah and the port of Brunswick pump an estimated $39 billion into the state’s economy, according to a University of Georgia economic impact study. Roughly 100,000 jobs across the metro Atlanta region depend upon goods flowing in and out of the ports.
Backers say the port expansion will keep Savannah attractive for larger ships.
Georgia taxpayers already have put up $231 million of the $652 million price, and the state will need to come up with an additional $30 million under the federal-state formula to deepen ports. The rest, nearly $400 million, is supposed to come from Washington.
President Obama requested only about $4 million the last two budget cycles to deepen the river. And the project awaits final federal approval of the river deepening.
The deepening will subject fresh-water wetlands to greater quantities of salty water. To mitigate the damage, Georgia and federal officials had planned to spend $311 million of the $652 million mitigating environmental impacts.
With Wednesday’s addition of $33.5 million, more than half of the project’s cost will be for environmental projects.
The agreement stipulates how the new money will be spent: $15 million to buy and preserve wetlands; $3 million to monitor water quality; $3 million to monitor the endangered Shortnose and Atlantic sturgeon; and $12.5 million to “improve the water quality and aquatic functioning of the Savannah River.”
In addition, the state will turn over 2,000 acres it owns on the S.C. side of the river for a wetlands-wildlife refuge. The land is valued at $10 million.
“We have long said our mitigation plans meet the letter and spirit of the nation’s environmental laws,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Billy Birdwell said. “Any agreement reached through mediation would only provide more certainty to parties who have opposed the project that environmental issues are adequately addressed.”
Sturgeon, especially in warm months, stay near the river bottom where oxygen is at a premium. Deepening the river will also allow salt water to creep further upstream, further hampering sturgeons’ ability to breathe.
The Corps, charged with deepening the river, has planned to spend $72.2 million pumping oxygen into the river depths via so-called Speece cones, or mechanical respirators — “bubblers” in everyday parlance — to reach the sturgeon. But the technology has never been used on such a massive scale.
“Our studies show the plans for oxygen injection into the Savannah harbor will fully mitigate for changes in oxygen levels caused by the deepening,” Corps spokesman Birdwell said.
If the Speece cones fail, South Carolina can opt out of the settlement and sue again to halt the deepening.
For now, the settlement “gets the ball down the road,” said Ron Brinson, a former president of the American Association of Port Authorities who lives in Charleston.
“The environmental agencies had some real concerns. They put their foot down. And they got what they want.”
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