Fourteen years ago, Georgia Port Authority popped the champagne corks to celebrate the official authorisation from Congress for its much-vaunted expansion project. But with the first dredger yet to call, there\u2019s little fizz left.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say the Savannah River Harbor Expansion Project has been quashed or that the GPA\u2019s interest in deepening has waned; the time lag is just a poignant reminder of the lead times necessary for port development in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been too long a journey,\u201d admits Curtis Foltz, executive director at GPA. \u201cThose of us in the industry continue to lobby very hard with the US Government to say that we are losing our competitive edge in the international field by these projects taking longer than they should, and costing more than they should.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took the Federal government an eye-watering thirteen years to study the plan which led to the US Army Corp of Engineers presenting their recommendations to the President and to Congress in October 2012. Those recommendations calculated that to expand and deepen the channel to 47ft at mean low water was going to cost about $652m.<\/p>\n
However, the most important \u201cpunch line\u201d of the recommendations, according to Mr Foltz, was that it is one of, if not the, most important and needed project the Corps has ever studied. \u201cThe benefit to cost ratio is 5.5:1, meaning that for every dollar that the Federal government and the sponsors spend on this project, commerce will benefit to the tune of lower transportation costs by $5.5.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this realisation, the project continues to inch forward at a glacial pace, much to the chagrin of the GPA. The authority is not counting on completion until 2017 and that depends on a \u2018technical component\u2019 that rests on the efficiency or otherwise of slow-moving politicians.<\/p>\n
This potential spanner comes in the form of a Section 902, an archaic spending cap dating from 1999 that limits the project’s expense. The raising or even elimination of the cap is tied to the Water Resources and Development Act, which cleared the Senate in May this year, but still awaits the all-important House of Representatives amendments.<\/p>\n
The GPA is confident that the when the Act is passed the Section 902 issue will be put to bed and is working to be ahead of the game when that time comes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working with USACE to be as prepared as we possibly can be because once that is completed we then have all the authorisation done.\u201d The final stage is to enter into a Project Partnership Agreement with the project sponsor and the Army Corps of Engineers that defines how they are going to proceed with the project which will take 30-45 days once the Section 902 issue is addressed. Then construction can finally begin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working with the Army Corps of Engineers right now and have been laying out a path forward once that PPA is signed. The state of Georgia has already advanced funds of $231m. What that allows with the agreement we have with the Corps is that once that PPA is signed we can start moving the project forward before the Federal funds are there.\u201d
Politics hasn\u2019t been the only thing that the GPA has had to overcome to prove its unrelenting commitment to the expansion project.<\/p>\n
In April, the last environmental conditions for the project to proceed were cleared when the South Carolina Savannah River Maritime Commission approved a settlement of a lawsuit it and three environmental groups had filed to block the development.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed in 2007 by the Maritime Commission, the DHEC and the three environmental groups, the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, Savannah Riverkeeper, and South Carolina Wildlife Federation.<\/p>\n
Under the settlement, Georgia Ports Authority and other state entities have committed to set aside $35.5m to put towards environmental mitigation projects to offset dredging effects and the GPA will donate 2,000 acres of salt marsh to protect aquatic life on the river.<\/p>\n
With these hurdles behind it, the GPA hopes to take advantage of whatever benefits an expanded Panama Canal brings on completion of the project, be that feeder or direct calls.
\u201cAn expanded Panama removes a restrictive speed bump that has existed for a hundred years. There will be a marginal shift to the East Coast. I don\u2019t see it as a massive sea change, but there will be shifts in terms of what we service,\u201d says Mr Foltz.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf freight is transhipped in the Caribbean it\u2019s still got to move to a port. Regardless of what happens it will not take anything away from the East Coast and Gulf and it at least offers marginal gains that are not debatable.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the GPA\u2019s ports are in a good modal position to capitalise on calls. \u201cMost ports have done a decent point in expanding the water side, but if you can\u2019t get it to the customer then you\u2019ve missed the third, very important, leg of the stool. We\u2019re very fortunate that we have two major interstates less than six miles from our terminal and on top of that the state of Georgia has worked on a beltway to bring both of those interstates directly into our container facility. The freight mobility of our ports is unmatched and we are very well suited for long term growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you combine all that it\u2019s no surprise that we are the fastest growing container port in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it is not just about containers. The GPA is \u201cvery fortunate\u201d to have multiple facilities in multiple cities. It counts two deepwater terminals in Savannah, three down in Brunswick and only one of those five terminals services containers. General cargo goes through Savannah, while Brunswick handles automobiles. There is also an agri-bulk terminal and a biofuels terminal in the cargo mix.<\/p>\n
\u201dWe see our mission to provide access to global markets equally important to the \u2018non-container\u2019 pieces of our business and we are fortunate to have the third busiest auto processing port in the country as well as several general cargo facilities to serve customers throughout the Southeast,\u201d concludes Mr Foltz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Georgia Ports Authoritys 14-year deepening wait will take some beating. Carly Fields reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2007"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}