Firm commitment

Inevitably, there wasn’t enough money in the pot for everyone to get the cash to dig deep and as Jaxport celebrated a $3.15m win in President Obama’s 2015 budget, Georgia reeled from the news that there was nothing for its construction and just a paltry $1.52m for ‘further preparation’.

While the lack of financial support is disappointing enough for Georgia, the sting in the tail is that the Obama administration had been talking up the GPA channel deepening project over the past year only to turn its back when the cash got divvied out. Back in September, US Vice President Joe Biden paid a spin-filled visit to GPA’s Garden City Terminal to declare that the project will go ahead, “come hell or high water”.

GPA, not a port to be disheartened – government delays have already made it wait 15 years for start up – is keen to push ahead with the project this year as planned using State funds of $231m already put aside for the job. But even here they face being held up by bureaucracy.

The removal of an archaic spending cap dating from 1999 that limits the project’s expense is tied to the reauthorisation of the Water Resources and Development Act, which is currently stalled between the House of Representatives and the US Senate. There remains some ambiguity on whether the GPA can proceed on the back of amendments made in the spending plan that Congress and the president approved in January, or whether it needs the complete approval of the WRDA.

Job done

It’s a frustrating and, frankly, bordering on the ridiculous that a well-established port in a developed country cannot get on with the job in hand. If GPA had been permitted to start work back in the early 2000s, 8,000+ teu ships could have been calling for the best part of a decade. The impacts of increased throughput on the local and state-wide economy do not need labouring.

There needs to be a change in mindset from regressive to progressive in the US (although other port nations would do well to take note of this as well – you know who you are). In the time it has taken to push this plan through, costs have risen by $193m; by the time the first dredger arrives to start work you can bet that differential will be even greater. It’s a false economy to keep pushing back viable projects as technology moves on, surveys date, and knowledge is lost as those involved in the project move on. The cost of repeating tasks over and over is a complete waste of money.

Commit to a project, see the project through in the timeline you all agree to and then move on to the next. How difficult can it be?