THE BIGGER PICTURE
Though it’s nearly 250 miles southeast of Atlanta, Savannah’s port helps power the metro region’s economy. Goods flow from the port through metro Atlanta distribution centers, and the ports of Savannah and Brunswick together support 100,000 metro Atlanta jobs, according the University of Georgia. Project backers say the deepening will keep Savannah competitive with rival ports that also are expanding. Skeptics question the need for the deepening or its purported benefits.
The Obama administration snubbed the Port of Savannah on Tuesday in its annual budget request, signaling a delay for the groundbreaking of the state’s top economic development priority and drawing the ire of political leaders.
The port expansion project received just $1.62 million for continued study, and the Army Corps of Engineers said the project cannot yet begin with money the state already has set aside. Georgia’s Congressional delegation thought it had won language to authorize the project in a recent spending bill, but the administration disagrees, placing an additional hurdle for a project a decade in the making.
Tuesday’s announcement was expected to be a landmark moment for the long-delayed $685 million quest to deepen the Savannah River from 42 feet to 47 feet to accommodate bigger ships coming through an expanded Panama Canal.
Georgia has hoped for about $400 million from the federal government over the next several years and expected President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget request to be the first big commitment of federal dollars.
But Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, said the Savannah project cannot move forward until Congress passes a long-delayed water resources bill, which has been stuck in a House-Senate conference committee since November.
Congress must authorize the project at its current price tag in order for work to begin and federal funding to flow, and the water resources bill would do that.
A massive spending bill passed in January designated the Savannah project as an “an ongoing construction project.” In the delegation’s eyes, that should have been enough to allow the Georgia Ports Authority to sign a project agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers and start digging this spring.
But in a news conference Tuesday, Darcy said the short-term spending bill language was not enough to allow a project agreement.
“The actual construction stage for this project wouldn’t be authorized,” she said. “That has to be done by Congress.”
Darcy added, “we are all very hopeful we can see that happen.”
The reasoning left Georgia leaders flummoxed. Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson pointed the finger at the White House budget office, which he said asked the Corps not to approve the project.
“I don’t know whether they’ve got a fiscal problem,” Isakson said. “I don’t know whether they’ve got a political problem.”
Gov. Nathan Deal vowed to push ahead with the project with the $231 million already set aside as the state’s share of the price tag, but that would still require Corps approval.
Vice President Joseph Biden was in Atlanta on Tuesday for a fundraiser for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn, his presence a reminder of his visit to Savannah last year when he declared in colorful terms that the port project would go forward.
“Vice President Biden promised in the past year that we’d get this project done come ‘hell or high water,’ but it’s more accurate to say the administration is going to put us through the former to get to the latter,” Deal, a Republican, said in a statement.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat who has lobbied hard for the port deepening, issued a more subdued statement from Chicago, where he is spending the week as a resident fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics — run by former Obama chief adviser David Axelrod.
“We’re pleased with the support and commitment the Obama administration has provided to make sure this project continues moving forward,” Reed said, via a spokesman.
Other politicians voiced frustration.
“This is a test case on how to measure not twice before you cut once, but measure a thousand times before you dig a single shovel full,” said U.S. Rep. John Barrow, an Augusta Democrat.
“I am shocked and bewildered at the Obama administration’s continued stonewalling of this vital project for our economy,” said U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican.
Isakson said the first big sign of trouble came Thursday, when Office of Management and Budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell called Isakson and Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Isakson said Burwell told him the ground breaking could not begin until the end of the fiscal year because it would set a bad precedent for other projects to change from planning to construction mid-year.
“It didn’t make a lot of sense to us,” said Isakson, who traveled to Panama with Biden and Reed last year. The group inspected the soon-to-be expanded canal and talked up the importance of deepening the Savannah harbor to accept the bigger ships that will soon come through.
A White House official explained, in an email, what happened. “Because Congress hasn’t reauthorized the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) in more than 7 years, many projects like the project in Savannah, GA, haven’t been able to move forward,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak by name. “This is not a budget problem, this is an authorization problem. We hope that the final WRDA bill is passed into law expeditiously.”
Congress will amend the president’s request through the appropriations process, meaning the funding that becomes law could look quite different. But Tuesday’s move from the administration constituted another delay for a project that was first studied in 1999.
“I don’t think it threatens the project long term,” Isakson said. “But the problem is it costs us a year or more in delays if we don’t get moving.”
About the Author
