Work on the Project Partnership Agreement between the state of Georgia and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Savannah harbor deepening is still ongoing with no estimated completion date, a Corps spokesman said Thursday.
The two entities must craft an agreement outlining how the costs of the $706 million project will be shared, including approving the accelerated use of Georgia’s portion of the funding.
Originally authorized by Congress in 1999, the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project — one of the most studied civil works projects in U.S. history — finally got the green light last month when President Barack Obama signed the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014. It authorizes the Corps to begin dredging the Savannah River channel to a depth of 47 feet at mean low tide.
The project agreement is the only element left on the Corps checklist before work on the project can begin.
“After we reach agreement on the (agreement) here, it has to go to Atlanta and D.C. for state and federal legal reviews, so we can’t yet predict with any certainty when it will be signed,” said Russell Wicke of the Corps’ Savannah District.
“But when we have the information, we won’t keep it to ourselves,” Wicke said. “It’s important to us.”
Regarding a recent Corps press release detailing the environmental monitoring the Corps will undertake before, during and after construction, Wicke said that element of the project will not impede dredging.
“We have carefully planned out pre-construction monitoring so that we will be ready for construction when we have authorization,” he said.
Wicke has said the earliest the Corps could expect to begin construction is December of this year, as several environmental windows are in place to minimize impacts to different parts of the environment.
“For example, there is a window that prohibits hopper dredges from dredging the entrance channel during much of the year to protect sea turtles,” he said. “The entrance channel is the first place we will begin dredging, and our window for using a Hopper dredge there is limited to Dec. 1 through March 31.”
However, Wicke said, that wouldn’t prevent other kinds of dredges from working to deepen the entrance channel during the rest of the year.
Georgia Ports Authority asserts — and the Corps agrees — the Savannah harbor and shipping channel must be deepened in order to accommodate larger ships, many of which will soon be able to pass through the Panama Canal.
The Port of Savannah is the fourth-busiest and fastest-growing container port in the country, currently moving an average of 3 million 20-foot containers a year.
The deepening project will allow larger ships with deeper drafts to enter and leave the harbor with heavier loads than is currently possible. It will also allow the ships greater time to “ride the tide” into and out of the harbor.
ON THE WEB
To read the Corps’ release on environmental monitoring, go to http://www.dvidshub.net/news/137120/environmental-monitoring-underway-sa....