The Army Corps of Engineers’ local office in Savannah ruled that the Obama administration should immediately approve the long-awaited port deepening project there, but the legal opinion was overruled in Washington.
Top corps officials revealed the conflict with their district personnel Wednesday when testifying before a U.S. House panel that included three Georgians eager to press for answers about this month’s snub of the $685 million Savannah Port project in the president’s budget request.
Corps officials maintained their position that Congress must approve a pending water projects bill before dredging can begin. But Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, the corps’ chief of engineers, said a legal opinion from the corps’ Savannah district office said the agency could sign off now based on laws Congress has already passed.
That ruling was cast aside by the corps’ headquarters in Washington based on direction from the White House Office of Management and Budget as it wrote up the president’s spending blueprint for 2015.
“That’s not a legal opinion. That’s a political opinion, would you say?” asked Democratic U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop of Albany, referring to the final decision.
“It’s not a legal opinion,” Bostick replied, after a pause, to laughter.
In jumped Jo-Ellen Darcy, the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. “I believe the administration made a policy decision that this project needs to be authorized before it can get construction dollars,” she said.
The decision surprised and riled Georgia political and business leaders, prompting accusations of White House meddling in Georgia politics, even though leaders from both parties have long been strongly in favor of the project.
Deepening the Savannah River from 42 feet to 47 feet is seen as the state’s biggest economic development priority. The project, first announced in 1996, is designed to allow the port to accommodate larger tanker ships coming through a soon-to-be expanded Panama Canal, keeping Savannah competitive with its East Coast neighbors.
OMB has said it did not want to make a special case for Savannah ahead of the other projects waiting for the water bill to finally go through.
Steve Ellis, vice president of Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, said it is not a surprise that local corps officials are pushing projects while the headquarters balks.
“The local district is, they’re the ones who would be doing the work, they’re ready to go,” said Ellis, who has been critical of the approval process for port deepenings. “They want to get going, and it’s the people who want to look at a bigger picture who are the ones stepping back and saying you have to get all your ducks in a row.”
Bishop and Republican U.S. Reps. Jack Kingston of Savannah and Tom Graves of Ranger repeatedly pressed the corps officials on the Savannah project as they presented the agency budget to a U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee.
The Georgia delegation worked to get language in a January spending bill classifying Savannah as an ongoing construction project and waiving authorization cost caps for all corps projects for two years. The Savannah project must be authorized by Congress again because its cost estimate is much higher than when it was first approved in 1999.
Georgia leaders thought the two-year waiver would allow the project to begin while they waited for the new authorization in the water bill, which has been in limbo for months in a House-Senate conference committee. The bill is expected to move in a month or so, but no timeline is certain.
Darcy said the corps interpreted the spending bill’s language to approve only projects that would be completed within two years, which would not apply to the massive Savannah project.
State leaders are ready to move now with $266 million set aside for the project and wait for the federal money to flow in the coming years, or they could even explore alternative financing. But they need a final agreement with the corps to do so.
The Obama administration has consistently voiced support for deepening the port, including the declaration of Vice President Joe Biden last year that it would be deepened “come hell or high water.”
“If we’re all for this, there has to be somebody who’s not for it, or it would have happened,” Kingston said at Wednesday’s hearing.
Darcy and Bostick continued to heap praise on the project. As soon as the water bill passes, Darcy promised, “I would do everything in my power to sign” a project partnership agreement, the final step before digging can begin.
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