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An update from The Associated Press:
Gov. Nathan Deal says he plans to start deepening the shipping channel to the Port of Savannah without financial help from Washington after the Obama administration's latest proposed budget left out construction funding for the $652 million project.
Deal said Tuesday "we will begin dredging using state funds until the federal government lives up to its obligations." Georgia has already put up $231 million of its 40-percent share.
Savannah and other East Coast ports are scrambling to deepen their harbors to make room for supersized cargo ships that will soon start arriving via the Panama Canal.
Vice President Joe Biden pledged last year the Savannah project will get done "come hell or high water." But the new White House budget seeks just $1.52 million for the project.
From earlier Tuesday:
Georgia's two U.S. senators Tuesday blasted the Obama administration for failing to recommend funding to start the long-sought $652 million deepening of Savannah's busy shipping channel just six months after Vice President Joe Biden stood on the docks and promised the project would get done "come hell or high water."
Like other East Coast ports, Savannah is scrambling to deepen its harbor to make room for supersized cargo ships expected to begin arriving after the Panama Canal finishes a major expansion as early as next year. Georgia officials have been pushing to get construction started this year and were looking to President Barack Obama to seek significant funding for the project after the president touted the need for deeper water at U.S. ports during several public appearances in the last year.
But Republican Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss said in a joint statement that the president's budget contained no funding to start construction.
"We are deeply disappointed and frustrated," said the senators' statement, which blamed the Obama administration for holding up a project that would support thousands of jobs and generate billions of dollars. "...It is now clear they would rather pay lip-service to Georgians than deliver on their promises."
It wasn't immediately clear after Obama unveiled his fiscal 2015 budget proposal Tuesday what, if any, funding had been requested for the Savannah harbor deepening. The Army Corps of Engineers had not yet released its budget breakdown that would show any funds sought for the project. Last year Obama's budget included a small $1.28 million for continued study on the Savannah harbor expansion, which won final approval from the federal government in fall 2012.
Both Obama and Biden have made speeches in the last year in support of improving U.S. ports in order to grow jobs at home and boost exports of U.S. goods. Savannah has the fourth busiest container port in the U.S. and the second busiest on the East Coast, having moved nearly 3 million cargo containers of imports and exports last year.
During an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show" last August, Obama specifically mentioned Savannah as well as Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., as ports that needed deeper harbors to stay competitive as larger ships begin bringing goods through the Panama Canal.
"If we don't do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we'll lose jobs," Obama told host Jay Leno.
It wasn't clear yet whether those port projects got any money.
A month later, on Sept. 16, Biden paid back-to-back visits to the docks at Savannah and Charleston delivering much the same message. The vice president told 500 dockworkers and dignitaries gathered at the Port of Savannah: "We are going to get this done, as my grandfather would say, come hell or high water."
Biden was back in Georgia on Tuesday to attend a fundraiser for Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn that was closed to reporters.
Georgia has already set aside $231 million, and Gov. Nathan Deal has requested another $35 million from state lawmakers this year, for its 40-percent share of the harbor expansion. Deal has said he's willing to start construction using almost entirely state funding as long as the federal government honors its commitment to pay the remaining $391 million on the back end.
Bureaucratic hurdles still held up the project for more than 16 months after it won final federal approval, but Georgia's congressional delegation announced in January those obstacles were eliminated by language inserted in the omnibus spending bill that cleared Congress. Those provisions suspended an outdated spending cap that had kept the Army Corps of Engineers from moving forward. It also essentially reclassified the Savannah harbor expansion from a project considered to still be under study to one that's already under construction.
Georgia lawmakers had hoped those changes would spur the Obama administration to request construction funding for fiscal 2015. And they sounded dumbstruck Tuesday that it didn't happen.
"It is baffling to see this administration choose to ignore a statute passed just six weeks ago that cleared all remaining obstructions to moving forward with the project," Isakson and Chambliss said in their statement.
Georgia officials have been waiting for the Army Corps to sign off on a partnership agreement that would allow construction to start using the state's money. A spokesman for the Corps' Savannah district said Tuesday he could not provide an update on the status of that agreement.