The Port of Savannah expansion project could break ground by year’s end, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said Thursday, following a trip with Vice President Joe Biden and Georgia U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson to inspect the Panama Canal.
Work can begin once Congress reconciles competing water-resources bills and the president signs the product. Reed said he’s focused on protecting the Savannah project’s presence in that bill before he can move on to the more daunting challenge of wheedling $400 million from the federal government for the project.
The state has pledged $231 million, and Gov. Nathan Deal will push for $35 million more next year.
“The advice that we have been given is it would be a mistake to start focusing on the appropriation step right now because the appropriation step is going to get harder if we don’t have the full funding allotment” in the water bill, Reed said.
The project is a top statewide priority, as the ports of Savannah and Brunswick support 100,000 metro Atlanta jobs and contribute $39 billion to the state economy, according to a University of Georgia study.
Isakson said he reminded Biden of his recent visit to Savannah and his pledge that the project will get done “come hell or high water.” Isakson has been working the vice president since he had breakfast with him a year-and-a-half ago.
“It’s all a matter of keeping the pressure on,” said Isakson, the only Republican on a trip that also included the mayors of Baltimore and Philadelphia and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the head of the Democratic National Committee.
The delegation got an up-close view of the canal expansion that will allow super-sized ships through starting in 2015. Panama President Ricardo Martinelli “was very forceful in encouraging the vice president and members of our delegation to expedite getting our ports ready,” Reed said.
In Savannah’s case, that means deepening the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet so the giant ships won’t have to wait until high tide to enter.
The project has been in the works since 1999. It has a toehold in the federal budget, but not much of a funding commitment yet. Savannah backers will be pushing for an undetermined starter amount in the president’s budget request early next year.
“Once the federal money starts flowing at the initial start of construction, you’re not going to stop building the Port of Savannah,” Isakson said.
One new piece of information the state’s junior senator learned on the trip is the massive tolls container ships pay to pass through the canal – upwards of $400,000 per boat.
He said the U.S. officials warned their Panamanian brethren not to let that figure soar.
“The toll is a significant amount of cash to the nation of Panama, and we also reinforced with the president [of Panama] that understanding they have a monopoly with the Panama Canal, the cost of shipping and tolling is important to companies in Georgia,” Isakson said. “We always could dock coming from Asia to the Port of Los Angeles and put them on trains if the cost of the canal is going too high.”
Reed said Panama promised a response to the U.S. delegation’s concerns within six months.
Racing to keep up with the canal, 10 ports across the country plan to spend $15 billion in expansion projects over the next decade, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review last year found, with half of the money expected to come from taxpayers.
A bipartisan political alliance led by Reed, Deal and the state’s congressional delegation has pushed the Savannah project for years.
Even though both chambers of Congress backed Savannah by overwhelming margins as part of the water-projects bill, Reed said he was staying on the lookout for any hangups in the conference committee.
“This is politics,” Reed said. “I’m not going to talk about ghosts, but it is smart to remain vigilant. I’m not going to speak to any threats or unreadiness. I’m just going to say this is a political process, and we’re going to keep the eye on the ball. It’s the most important economic development project in the state of Georgia. There’s nothing close to it.”
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