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Much of the money currently on hand for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project will be gone by the end of the project’s first year, making it imperative to secure funding in the fiscal 2016 and 2017 federal budgets to keep the project on track, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Commander said Thursday.
Lt. Gen Thomas Bostick was in Savannah to get an update on the harbor expansion and confirm the Corps’ commitment to seeing the $700 million project through to completion.
After touring Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City Terminal with GPA executive director Curtis Foltz and Col. Thomas Tickner, commander of the Corps’ Savannah District, Bostick addressed media at the terminal.
Most of the funding already in hand for the project is the local sponsors’ cost-sharing requirement, Bostick said.
The state has ponied up some $266 million.
“So most of that will be used this year and a little next year, and then it will be up to Congress and the American people to fund the future years,” he said, adding that the Corps’ challenge comes in balancing and prioritizing all projects out there.
“But this project is one that is economically beneficial and that makes it a high priority project for the country,” Bostick said.
“We will do everything in our power to get this done as quickly as we can.”
The project, currently in its construction phase, will deepen the Savannah River shipping channel from 42 to 47 feet at mean low tide to allow larger, more efficient container vessels to transit the channel with heavier loads and greater scheduling flexibility.
A number of those larger ships are already calling on the port, coming through the Suez Canal. When the Panama Canal expansion project is completed next year, ships carrying 8,000 to 10,000 containers will be the rule rather than the exception, Bostick said.
“The infrastructure investment now going into the Savannah Harbor Expansion is exactly the kind of investment we need to do to make sure we continue to be the superpower we are now for future generations,” he said.
Foltz detailed three major phases of the project that are underway.
Archaeologists began diving Jan. 29 to recover the remains of the Confederate ironclad CSS Georgia. The historic Civil War ironclad rests 40 feet below the river’s surface on the edge of the navigation channel.
Scuttled by her crew in 1864 to prevent Union capture, the vessel has been at the bottom of the river since. The harbor deepening plan calls for data recovery, removal and conservation of this cultural resource.
On March 4, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock won the contract to deepen the entrance channel. The work for this contract represents about half of the channel deepening, increasing the depth of the channel in the Atlantic Ocean to 49 feet below mean sea level and extending it an additional seven miles.
And bids for a Dissolved Oxygen System contract are currently under evaluation. Awarding of the contract is expected within the next few months. This system will ensure the river maintains necessary dissolved oxygen levels during hot, dry months when levels typically drop.
“The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project has seen major progress in the past few months,” Foltz said. “The Corps of Engineers has been a steadfast partner in the 15-year process leading up to construction, and we look forward to working with the Corps and our Washington delegation to bring this pivotal project to completion.”