NEWS - Ports & Transportation

SBJ Staff

12/21/2009 - An Army Corps of Engineers draft environmental impact statement on dredging of the Savannah River shipping channel has been delayed from an expected year-end release to a mid-2010 release.

Corps spokesman Billy Birdwell had previously indicated a late 2009 release would occur but now says no release to the public is scheduled for at least another six months. He insisted the delays do not provide a signal on the Corps’ conclusions for the Georgia Ports Authority in its decade-long quest for a permit to dredge the approximately 22-mile-long channel.

“This is a major, major project. It is not unusual to have these sort of delays,” he said Thursday.

“We want to make sure we do a thorough report, that our modeling is correct and that all of our research is correct.”
On Tuesday, Curtis Foltz, designated to take over as director of the GPA on Jan. 1, said he expected to see a draft report within 60 days during an interview with The Savannah Business Journal.

Birdwell would not say whether Foltz’ expectations would be met.

Also awaited are environmental assessments of the dredging by the departments of natural resources in Georgia and South Carolina. Those state reports are expected to be critical to the conclusions and recommendations that will then be drawn by a U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (EPD) review.

The Corps’ draft environmental impact statement report is expected to address whether the dredging should go to the 48-foot depth preferred by the Georgia Ports Authority. The so-called draft Tier 2 Environmental Impact Statement will also detail possible mitigation steps, or measures that will ease any negative environmental impacts of the dredging that will stretch the length of the channel from the river’s opening to the Garden City Terminal.

After release, the impact statement will go through several phases of public review and comment that will take about six months.

After a public review, the report is to go back to the Corps for consideration to be released as a final Tier 2 Environmental Impact Statement, said Foltz.

The next stop after becoming a final impact statement is submission to the four cabinet-level federal agencies that will have signature authority on the dredging: the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Foltz said earlier this week, “We hope to have a record of decision by this time next year authorizing us to move forward on the deepening.”

It’s unclear whether the new delay will push back a final decision.

Meanwhile, the stakes couldn’t be higher for the GPA, according to Foltz.

He called the dredging critical to the Port of Savannah’s growth in market share and its ability to handle the immense cargo traffic that will come through a greatly expanded Panama Canal by the middle of the next decade.

That’s why the Georgia Ports Authority has spent more than a decade and $40 million pursuing the dredging permit.
“There is no single item more important to this city, state and the Southeast,” Foltz said.

The expanded canal will give shippers of consumer goods quicker and more efficient access to markets in the East and Midwest, Foltz noted.

The shippers have long lamented the time and difficulty involved in shipping to the West Coast and transporting their goods by train from there, he said.
The products sent from Asia through the larger, modernized Panama Canal will be aboard a new generation of giant freighters. Savannah – and other East Coast ports – must be ready to accommodate those super-sized ships, he said.
“The (Savannah River) dredging contemplates a deeper Panama Canal and the effects it has on trade. Larger ships demand deeper draft rivers,” Foltz said.
“We hope the entire East Coast gears up because it’s going to be needed. Our growth is going to come from customers currently using the West Coast. They want to be closer to their customers in the East.”

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