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Still a pipe dream?

As the world’s economies continue to founder, Jasper and Beaufort countians have pinned their hopes on a long-debated and politically divisive proposal to build a $500 million deepwater container cargo shipping terminal on the Jasper County side of the Savannah River.

More than 1,500 acres of land just east of the Tal-Madge Bridge and northeast of Savannah’s River Street are targeted to be developed as the Jasper Ocean Terminal. The site, used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for disposal of mud and sand dredged from the Savannah River to maintain the 42-foot depth of the shipping channel, was acquired by the state ports authorities of South Carolina and Georgia from the Georgia department of transportation for $7.6 million in July 2008.

Martin (Marty) Sauls IV, a member of South Carolina’s Savannah River Maritime Commission, which was created by Gov. Mark Sanford to oversee the state’s interests in the development of the Jasper Ocean Terminal, said the facility will be an economic boon for the lowcountry. Proponents have forecasted that annually the marine terminal will generate $2.3 billion in jobs, tax revenues and spin-of businesses.

“The Jasper port project will be the one of the largest job-producing mechanisms South Carolina has ever experienced,” said Sauls, who is also public relations manager for Tradition Hilton Head in Hardeeville. “This project should be set on a strict timetable to expedite needed consulting and environmental testing and engineering. South Carolina also needs to fast-track marketing the Jasper Ocean Terminal on a global scale, to attract those in the shipping industry who are visionaries, companies that are interested in starting on the ground foor of a new world-class shipping terminal.”

Channel deepening controversial

The Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) is seeking to dredge 26 miles of the Savannah RiverChannel from the current depth of 42 feet to 48 feet. The portion of the channel to be dredged leads from the Atlantic Ocean to the GPA’s Garden City Terminal. The deepening is designed to accommodate the next generation of super-freighters, “post-Panamax ships,” which are expected to travel through the Panama Canal by 2014, the year when the Panama Canal expansion is anticipated to be completed.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ draft environmental impact statement was scheduled to be released before the end of 2008, but was delayed until this spring. While critics of the channel deepening say it would have catastrophic effects on the freshwater Savannah Wildlife Refuge and possibly encourage saltwater intrusion into the region’s aquifer, proponents of the Jasper Ocean Terminal like Sauls say the Jasper project’s development will have little or no impact on the environment.

The Coastal Conservation League based in Charleston and Savannah agrees with Sauls, and has argued that further deepening the shipping channel would threaten the Savannah Wildlife Refuge and water tables in the area. The refuge is a freshwater refuge, and digging the channel down another 6 feet, as proposed, would allow more saltwater to migrate upriver.

The Jasper County site is ideal for a container cargo shipping terminal, proponents have argued for decades, closer to the ocean and trade routes than other port facilities upriver. And, the terminal will be able to absorb Savannah’s port growth, when, eventually, the GPA’s terminals upriver will max out.