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DHEC board revisits port access road
Developers: Port access road would exacerbate ‘rat’s nest’
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
You can describe the neck connecting the cities of Charleston and North Charleston in a lot of ways, but a pleasure to drive through is not one of them.
In fact, Jim Lumsden, managing partner of Raleigh, N.C.-based GreenHawk Partners, which is overseeing the Magnolia development there, found it hard to be tactful as he discussed the region he and his investment partners are working hard to transform.
“It’s a rat’s nest of major transportation problems,” Lumsden said. “My fear is that this proposal will make the problems permanent; that there won’t be any way to fix them.”
The proposal Lumsden referred to is the preferred alternative for an access road to the new cargo container terminal being planned for a large portion of the old Navy base in North Charleston.
On Jan. 12, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control board decided to revisit its staff’s decision to permit the access road based on concerns raised about the potential impact the road, as currently conceived, would have on adjacent landowners and the air quality of the region.
However, while the issue of permitting the access road will be back before the DHEC board on Feb. 8, the agency went ahead and ratified the permit for the terminal itself.
The S.C. State Ports Authority had filed its own appeal of the state permit, seeking to bring certain technical issues into line with agreements it had previously reached with other permitting agencies.
An agreement on those issues was reached between the SPA and DHEC staffers before a hearing before the board on Thursday.
But it’s the plan for an access road to the new terminal that promises to be a long-term headache for the SPA.
The alternative, described at length in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ recently issued final environmental impact statement on the $600 million project, consists of a four-lane limited-access roadway extending from the entrance of the proposed terminal to Interstate 26.
Much of the roadway will be elevated to minimize the potential impact to Shipyard Creek and existing road and rail infrastructure. The plan also calls for significant improvements at the Meeting Street interchange and the creation of a new four-lane roadway to connect Stromboli Avenue to the interchange, which will also establish a new connection to Bainbridge Avenue.
This new connection will provide the existing Veterans Terminal and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center more direct access to Interstate 26 via the port access road, according to the S.C. Department of Transportation.
All for the port, but …
The purpose of the access road is to keep truck traffic out of local neighborhoods. In all, the DOT considered six routes.
But if the Army Corps’ report, based on input from the DOT, makes the roadwork sound like a net gain for the community, Lumsden and Winthrop Allen, director of development for Magnolia, said they’re extremely worried about the plan.
According to the two men, the planned infrastructure changes would effectively choke off the region, creating a huge traffic bottleneck near the port and make it more difficult for trucks and employees to access industrial sites the investors own near the planned terminal site.
“We’re all for the port. We want them to get this terminal project done. But we also want there to be smart solutions to the transportation issues confronting the region in the years ahead,” Allen said.
“We know they need to get connected to I-26. But I don’t understand the rush to get something done that’s going to adversely impact Magnolia, Rosemont, Silver Hill and other communities both east and west of the connector road,” Lumsden said.
Situated along two miles of Ashley River waterfront, Magnolia sits in the midsection of Charleston’s “neck.”
To develop the residential neighborhoods they’re planning in the area, Lumsden and his fellow investors, which include North Charleston-based developer Robert Clement, have bought extensive property and are moving industrial companies on the Cooper River side of the neck.
One of those properties, the Macalloy site, lies directly alongside the route of the proposed access road. Until last summer, CaroLinks, the intermodal startup, was under contract to purchase the land, and later, an undisclosed buyer held a contract.
Lumsden said like the CaroLinks deal, the second contract has also been allowed to lapse.
“The access road isn’t what’s affecting the sale of this property. We knew all along that it would have some impact on our activities, and planned accordingly. In fact, we’re still moving companies to the site,” Lumsden said. “It’s a much larger issue than the impact on one developer and their plans for a specific property.”
In its appeal to DHEC, the company said a full transportation study should be completed before the final path is chosen.
The traffic counts used by the state in its analysis on potential terminal impacts to I-26 didn’t take into account “the fact that 150,000 houses are going o be built on either side of that connector in coming years,” Lumsden said.
“Honestly, I don’t have a solution to recommend, but I’d like the new terminal to be temporarily connected to I-26 in some way while we take a good hard look at all the alternatives for easing the traffic crunch in this region.”
Speaking from Columbia, where he was attending the DHEC hearing, SPA spokesman Byron Miller sounded fatigued by the debate, one very similar to those that have stymied port expansion for nearly a decade.
“This project has been through the most thorough environmental study the state has ever seen. The transportation aspect of this project, specifically as it relates to the access road, has been studied to death,” Miller said. “The state has ruled and it’s time to move forward.
“Frankly, I don’t believe you can say that you’re for the port but against the access road. They go together. Without the road, the terminal can’t be done.”
Under a legally binding agreement with North Charleston, the SPA cannot open the terminal before the roadwork, which could cost as much as $300 million, is finished. Beyond the agreement, there’s also a daunting fiscal reality: The SPA can’t approach the Wall Street investors it needs to support the project financially without having a road plan firmly in place.
Environmentalists file appeal
But Magnolia’s principals are just one party whose appeal was heard at the DHEC board hearing. The S.C. Coastal Conservation League has also filed a series of objections with the agency.
Nancy Vincent, director of the league’s water quality program, said she believes the state issued water quality and roadwork permits before the federal analysis of various aspects of the project were complete.
“There’s no question in my mind that the issuance of those permits was premature, and that we still need to consider all of the alternatives fully before we decide that a single plan of action is the way to go,” she said.
Vincent contends that the Army Corps’ 2,000-page report greatly underestimates the impact of the air and water pollution that will be generated by a new port terminal.
“This isn’t an industrial project where you can point to a smokestack and say, ‘There’s the problem and there’s the risk.’ The issue here is going to be mobile emission sources and those aren’t going to stop at the terminal gates,” she said.
“This is probably the most significant permitting situation we’re going to see in the Charleston area in the next two decades,” Vincent continued. “We need to step back and try to determine what our multimodal transportation needs are before this moves forward. What good are all the extra containers the port will be able to handle if they all wind up sitting in gridlock on I-26?”
Miller did not respond to each of Vincent’s assertions, saying only that “those are her opinions and she has a right to them.”
“Again I’d point out that no project in the state’s history has been examined as closely as this one has,” he said.
The SPA itself is also appealing some of the state’s findings in issuing permits for the project.
While Vincent contends the SPA is seeking to lessen some of the environmental mitigation the state is mandating, Miller said the SPA’s appeal is nothing of the kind.
“We’re simply trying to bring our commitments into line with what we’ve agreed to with other agencies and parties,” he said.
Decision can come at any time
The appeal process that is now underway is relatively new, having gone into effect on July 1, 2006.
In the past, parties wishing to appeal a DHEC staff finding would have to go before an administrative law judge to plead their case, appealing to the DHEC board only after being dissatisfied with the judge’s ruling.
The new procedure reverses that process. Now, if the appealing parties are dissatisfied with the conclusions of the agency’s staff, they go to the board and, if not satisfied there, can appeal their case to an administrative law judge.
If that still fails to satisfy them, the next alternative is taking their case to state circuit court.
Miller said he anticipates that the disagreement over the access road could extend well into the year. He also expects the Coastal Conservation Alliance to appeal the DHEC board’s reaffirmation of the terminal permit.
“I can easily see this moving from one venue to the next, the latter being administrative law court,” he said.
Despite the controversy, a federal permit for the construction of the terminal may still be forthcoming in early April.
According to Nathaniel Ball, project manager for the terminal project for the Army Corps’ Charleston District office, the state’s hearing process is viewed as separate and distinct from the federal permitting process, “and it would therefore be premature to comment on that process before it is completed.”
Ball said regardless of what happened in the aftermath of the Jan. 11 hearing in Columbia, “the corps is still on track to make an announcement on the permit in April.”
For his part, Lumsden is philosophical about the potential outcome.
“Ultimately, our appeal might not lead to any change at all. At this point, resistance may be futile,” he said. “But, you know, if you never make the argument, you definitely will not get your way. I’m just hoping we buy some time to allow for some creative talk on the transportation issue.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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