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River of doubt
Barging the Cooper is possible, but residents and shippers have concerns
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Patrick Barber knows the perils and challenges of maneuvering a barge up the Cooper River, through the Pinopolis Lock and across Lake Moultrie.
Barber, owner of Superior Transportation of Charleston, is among the few in the tri-county region who have first-hand experience plying the length of the Cooper River. In fact, he and David Oswald, of J.E. Oswald & Sons, are about to undertake just such a project at the behest of the Michelin Co. in early November.
“It’s not as easy barging the river as some people make it sound,” Barber said.
While using the river to transport goods is not unheard of, it is also not a common practice. However, CaroLinks, a Charleston-based intermodal startup company, has plans to make it a standard occurrence. The company plans to ship cargo containers on a 50 foot wide, 150 foot long barge up the river which is, in spots, only 75 feet wide.
In spite of Barber’s experience—he has run barges from Charleston to the Santee area twice in the past—he said he still finds the journey
challenging.
To illustrate this, Barber unrolled the navigational maps he used the last time he took a barge up the river to deliver a 360,000-ton cement-mixing cylinder to Holcim Inc. in Holly Hill.
The company took to the river because, given the size of the cylinder alone, a truck transporting it couldn’t fit under highway overpasses.
In such circumstances, the state will issue permits to transport the product by barge to the closest practical area where it can be put back on the road.
Up the river
Starting at the mouth of the river, Barber quickly outlined the location of all the companies that currently barge material in and out of North Charleston’s waterfront industrial area. All of them are within 10 to 12 miles by river of Charleston harbor, distances that would be considerably less if the river were straight, he said.
The Cooper River divides at the Tee, just north of the Nucor Steel facility, with the east branch traveling due north past the Hagan tract and the west branch continuing toward lakes Moultrie and Marion.
Except for occasional operations, no industrial or commercial activity goes beyond the Tee, Barber said. A barge continuing northwestward on the river would soon begin passing vast expanses of conservation easements and privately owned plantation properties. From this point on, the river usually ranges from 75 feet to 100 feet wide.
Shortly thereafter, the barge would reach a wide section of the river at Strawberry Landing and then a cantilever railroad bridge operated by the CSX railroad. Anyone wishing to have the drawbridge opened so they could pass has to call 24 hours in advance, Barber said.
Although the tracks are infrequently used, being traversed by one northbound and one southbound train daily, Barber said the bridge won’t be opened when a train is approaching.
“Nor will it be opened an hour before or an hour after the train is scheduled to arrive at the bridge,” he said.
“The key thing is, you’ve got to get to the bridges when you say you’re going to be there,” he said. “If you miss the opening you’ve requested, they’re not going to just open it back up for you when you finally get there. You have to reschedule an opening, and then just wait.”
The next significant landmark along the river is Mepkin Abbey and then the S.C. Highway 52 bridge, which Barber said is high enough not to pose an obstacle for shipping.
“In this area, however, there’s a lot of shallow water on either side of the navigation channel, and that poses a risk to anyone who ventures out of it,” Barber said. “The thing that makes it treacherous is that the river has a lot of winding curves to it, and from the surface, all the water appears to be the same depth.”
The Cooper River concludes at the Tailrace canal, a relatively straight, man-made waterway connecting the river to Lake Moultrie. This area is characterized by large, steep bluffs formed when the canal was dredged.
However, the biggest obstacle to moving cargo comes last, Barber said, right before the Pinopolis Lock. It’s yet another cantilever railroad bridge, but this one is on CSX’s main line. It is traversed by at least a dozen trains a day, including two Amtrak trains.
“Here, your timing is really going to be critical. There’s little margin for error in terms of when you get there and how quickly you get through,” Barber said.
All told, he said, under the best of circumstance, the journey to the lake is a 24-hour operation.
“But I would say 24 daylight hours,” he said.
Into the lock
Once past the tracks, the lock is next. However, the lock can only be opened from one-half hour after dawn until one-half hour before dusk year-round, and no lock operations are performed during thunderstorms or during rough water conditions.
Based on public statements CaroLinks President Lucy Duncan-Scheman has made over the past 11 months, and bearing in mind that the plan continues to evolve, it now appears likely the company plans to ship between 108 and 120 cargo containers per trip on a barge 50 feet wide and 150 feet long.
Because the Pinopolis Lock is only 58 feet wide and 160 feet long, Barber said a barge that size will make transporting the containers into the lake a two-tugboat operation. One tug will push the barge into the lock and leave it there. The other will retrieve the barge when the lock opens up to the lake and take it the rest of its way.
Barber said it takes less than an hour for the lock to raise or lower a barge the 75-foot difference between the Tailrace Canal and Lake Moultrie.
“The Holcim project was a complicated process that took us eight months to plan,” Barber said. And that’s with at least some of the stars already aligned in the company’s favor. Superior Transportation happens to be a vendor of Santee Cooper, operator of the lock and owner of the lake.
Also, Holcim was Orangeburg County’s largest employer at the time and Santee Cooper’s largest customer in the area.
“So the political and economic will was there to see the task get done,” Barber said. “Also, everyone involved knew that this was something that was only going to happen once every five or six or seven years, so that while there were people that were going to feel an impact, it was only going to be temporary.”
Barber estimates barging the cylinder cost about $40,000 roundtrip at 2004 prices. Today he surmises a similar barge trip up and down the river would cost closer to $52,000.
The economics of barging
But if Barber questions the barge plan in terms of logistics, he’s also dubious of CaroLinks’ plan on economic grounds. For instance, he said businesses that are shipping goods already have enough on their plates dealing with the transportation companies that serve them.
“Logistics is stressful,” Barber said. “They don’t want to introduce yet another mode of transportation into their effort to get a piece of cargo from one place or another.
“The other thing is, as outlined at various events (Duncan-Scheman) has spoke at, their plan doesn’t seem to eliminate any of the fees people have to pay to move their cargo, like port handling fees. I have nothing against the woman, but I’m not seeing the economic incentive to move to barges.”
CaroLinks has always premised the appeal of its operation on removing trucks from local roads and Interstate 26, but Barber said unless the trucking companies agree to use the Orangeburg site exclusively, their trucks are still going to be a presence in the tri-county region.
“The other thing is, we’re talking about big business. Global business. Not that these companies are insensitive, but they don’t care about removing truck traffic from Interstate 26. What they care about is cost and how quickly their cargo can move,” Barber said. “The fact is, trucks making round trips can move just as much cargo up to Orangeburg in the same amount of time at less expense to the shipper.
“Personally, I have a hard time seeing how they can make this thing fly, and we haven’t even touched on the subject of what will happen when the water levels are low; there’s lots of potential problems.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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