President Obama, in his budget released Monday, gave Savannah only a pittance of the money sought to deepen its harbor.
Georgia legislators, along with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, had lobbied the White House to give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as much as $105 million to deepen the harbor and a 36-mile stretch of river heading to the open sea.
Instead, Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget included only $600,000 in “pre-construction” money to inch the ballyhooed project forward.
Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, labeled the amount “disappointing,” adding that the paucity of federal dollars will set back the deepening project at least four to six months.
Time is critical. East coast ports expect mega-container ships to call by 2015 once reconstruction of the Panama Canal is completed. Virtually every port along the Atlantic Ocean wants to deepen harbors in order to accommodate the larger ships.
Georgia’s congressional delegation will now be impressed upon, Foltz said, to include deepening money via the usual budgetary process. Georgia taxpayers have already ponied up more than $100 million for the deepening project, money that Foltz said can be used for environmental mitigation and without any federal matching dollars.
“We need to get this thing done,” he said.
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