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Conservation League sues to stop base terminal
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
The S.C. Coastal Conservation League is ratcheting up its battle against the proposed construction of a new cargo container terminal at the former Charleston Naval Base by suing the Charleston District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in federal court.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Charleston on Nov. 20, alleges that federal permits issued for both the terminal and a road connecting the terminal to Interstate 26 were based on studies that understated the true environmental and traffic-related impacts of the $600 million project and obscured options available for reducing harm to residents.
The Corps issued a permit in April to the S.C. State Ports Authority for the terminal at the same time that it issued a permit to the S.C. Department of Transportation for a port access road intended to keep truck traffic generated by the terminal off local roadways.
Preliminary work on the new three-berth terminal began in May, and the first phase of operations at the facility is expected to begin in 2012.
The 30-page lawsuit alleges that the Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to “analyze the project as a whole, as the law requires … (and instead) piecemealed it into smaller segments.” As a result, the league contends, the Corps didn’t examine potential alternatives to the project, ensured the project’s cumulative environmental impacts were undisclosed and allowed selection of a predetermined outcome.
As a result of these actions, the league charges, the Corps “obscured the fact that pollution from the terminal and connecting road will cause the Charleston region to exceed national maximum air standards for soot and will depress oxygen levels in the Cooper River to below state minima—violations that negatively impact public health and the environment and promise severe hardships for economic development.”
In its suit, the league asks the court to set aside the permits and to issue an order halting all terminal development activity on the site until a “new, complete analysis that looks in earnest at the costs and benefits of—and best alternatives for—meeting the region’s container shipping needs in a way that protects human health and the region’s natural resources.”
Connie Gillette, chief public affairs officer for the Army Corps, said in a written statement that the agency stands by its decision and the process that led up to the issuance of the permits. Nine state and federal agencies have given the permits their blessing, including the Federal Highway Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and the S.C. State Historic Preservation Service.
“Throughout this process, we dedicated a tremendous amount of resources to ensure all interested parties, especially the public, were actively engaged in the National Environmental Policy Act process,” Gillette said in the statement.
The SPA also issued a statement in support of the plan, saying that after four years and $5 million in studies, it’s clear that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took a hard look at the project.
“Port development at the Navy Base is good for the economy, the community and the environment,” the authority said in its statement. “This project not only meets the standards, it exceeds them.”
J. Blanding Holman IV, the Southern Environmental Law Center attorney representing the league, contends that the thousands of tractor-trailers that will visit the new terminal on a daily basis “will cripple Interstate 26.” The league’s complaint said the access road would add about 10,000 vehicles a day to I-26, including about 7,000 truck trips. Holman said a better solution than adding a new terminal would be to move more containers by rail.
Dana Beach, the league’s executive director, said there are flaws in the studies that endorsed port expansion at the former Navy base. Beach said the studies also don’t take into account the plan by the states of South Carolina and Georgia to jointly build a container terminal on the Savannah River in Jasper County.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@setcommedia.com.
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