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League pushes for Jasper port
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Days before the governors of South Carolina and Georgia are expected to unveil the findings of a commission charged with crafting a bi-state plan for a container terminal in Jasper County, the leadership of the S.C. Coastal Conservation League continues to push for the development of the site as an alternative to a new terminal at the former Charleston Naval base.
“The fact is, we’ve had no hard analysis of the costs and benefits comparing the two sites,” SCCCL Executive Director Dana Beach said. “Of course, there would be a need to widen U.S. Highway 17 South from the site to Interstate 95, but from what I saw and heard on my last visit (to the Jasper County site) five years ago, there is a fairly easy connection that can be made to Interstate 16 in Georgia, and rail extends almost to the site and could be fairly easily connected to a terminal.
“Instead, we’re looking at having $900 million, adding the cost of a new terminal access road to the cost of the terminal itself, invested in a relatively small, truck-only container terminal. The problem is, we don’t have any meaningful numbers on what it would cost to build in Jasper County compared to the Navy base.”
That position is a marked contrast to the one taken by Beach at a recent press conference regarding the S.C. State Ports Authority and its plans to develop the Navy base site.
During that early October press conference, Beach characterized the Jasper County site as having few infrastructure issues and the Navy base site as having a host of them.
To be sure, the SPA, the state of South Carolina and the state of Georgia have all lined up behind the Jasper County site and today characterize it as an essential component in the region’s drive to be the pre-eminent port of entry for goods transported to and from the southeastern United States.
But the SPA and others maintain that the Jasper terminal must supplement, rather than replace, expansion efforts in Charleston and Savannah if those ports are to remain competitive and to continue to provide an economic stimulus to their respective states.
Robert Goethe, who recently retired as deputy executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority after 18 years there, on top of 15 years he spent with the S.C. State Ports Authority, said given current industry projections of trade volumes over the next decade, the Port of Charleston absolutely needs both the Navy base terminal and Jasper.
“And that goes for the Port of Savannah and its ongoing expansion in Garden City, Georgia,” he said. “According to the latest statistics I’ve seen, statistics promulgated by the Shipping lines themselves and the American Association of Port Authorities, between them these two ports are going to have to be able to handle a combined 4 million TEUs by 2016—that’s more than twice their current combined volume.
“And how do you do that? It takes land,” Goethe said. “Land that neither of these ports has in large supply near their current operations.”
He estimated that a new terminal would take about four years to go from conception to completion, and that the cost, in current dollars for the terminal alone, would be about $400 million.
He offered no estimate for how much it would cost to build the necessary connections to the existing infrastructure in Jasper County, but said whatever the costs—and he predicted they would be high—it would be worth it.
“A port is an economic engine that drives the economy of the state,” Goeth said. “A state cannot have industry unless it has a port to serve it. Since retiring I’ve worked with countries that have tried to expand their industrial base before they expanded their ports, and they could not handle it.”
“Just ask yourself, how many jobs in the city of Charleston and how many industries in the state would disappear if there were no port? It’s mind-boggling. It would destroy our entire economy.”
Beach, however, rejects that position, at least based on current estimates that suggest the port has created more than 5,000 jobs directly and more than 83,000 jobs indirectly through its operations.
According to Beach, those numbers are “bogus” and a new economic impact study needs to be completed before work proceeds on a new terminal anywhere in the state. He said such a study must not only look at the overall economic impact of the Port of Charleston, but also must consider the economic benefits of each new terminal site currently under discussion.
“The problem is that the State Ports Authority has long had two conflicting stories they’ve told, depending on the audience—that Jasper is not an alternative to Charleston because it will serve a separate market need, and, going back to the Global Gateway debate, that development of Jasper is a threat to Charleston because it would cut into the Port of Charleston’s market,” Beach said.
“That’s why we need a realistic, independent analysis of this issue, because they’ve settled on a story, story number one, because it services their purposes and story number two is now, politically, a non-starter.”
Byron Miller, SPA spokesman, said the authority has never taken the position that the Jasper County site was not viable.
“We weren’t actively pursing it until a few years ago, but that doesn’t minimize its value. It’s a beautiful site,” he said. “Close to the open ocean, right on the channel. The thing is, as with any potential terminal site, we also recognize that it comes with a host of challenges, challenges that we’re confident we can successfully address. Obviously, we’re already out of the chute in regard to work at the Navy base, but Jasper County is no less important to us.”
But Beach thinks the question of whether to build a fourth terminal at the Navy base, or to build the Jasper terminal, or to build both, should still very much be an open question.
“Any economic analysis that fails to address that question is simply window dressing,” he said. “It is irrelevant how many jobs the port of Charleston supports in the state. No one is proposing to close it down. What is relevant is to what extent public funds are expended, and in what locations, what the environmental and transportation impacts of the options are, and what are the impacts to other economic sectors.
“The question is, what facility or facilities are needed to best accomplish the ports authority’s historical purpose of serving the industrial needs of the state.”
Because the Navy base terminal will be paid for through revenue bonds issued by the SPA, the point of contention all comes back to public funding for infrastructure that would serve the terminals and other uses.
One of those who has looked closely at the issue of infrastructure in Jasper County is the county’s administrator, Andrew Fulghum.
“There is rail access near the site, but in our plan for a terminal here we also foresaw considerable road work on U.S. Highway 17 and also the creation of new interchanges along Interstate 95,” he said.
“There’s no question, when it came to formulating a plan for this site, infrastructure was a primary concern for Jasper County—that’s why we turned to SSA Marine of Seattle as a strategic partner. We felt they had a sufficient revenue stream to off-set some of those costs.”
While the S.C. state Legislature has created a Jasper County Infrastructure Fund on paper, to date it remains unfunded, he said. Fulgham said he had no current estimates regarding how much infrastructure improvements in support of a new terminal would cost.
And while he didn’t venture into the debate promulgated by the Coastal Conservation League, Fulgham did say that his focus has been solely on seeing the Jasper County site developed.
“Our goal has always been to have a terminal developed, and along those lines we’ve been through a heck of a lot,” he said. “Right now, we’re just waiting for the report from the bi-state commission.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@setcommedia.com.
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