Government agencies and environmental groups in Georgia and South Carolina OK’d a tentative settlement Wednesday to allow the Savannah harbor deepening project to move forward while also advancing plans to develop a shared Jasper Ocean Terminal in South Carolina.
The agreement must be approved by all the parties involved in litigation that had sought to stop the Georgia Ports Authority’s $652 million harbor dredging project.
The first step came Wednesday morning, when South Carolina’s Savannah River Maritime Commission approved the proposed settlement agreement.
The Georgia Ports Authority, along with the Southern Environmental Law Center, approved the proposal Wednesday afternoon.
Mediation in the case had been ordered in August by U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in the District of South Carolina Beaufort Division, who’s expected to receive the settlement next week.
The parties cannot comment on the settlement until Gergel approves it.
As part of the $43.5 million agreement, GPA will pay $33.5 million for additional mitigation measures, while the Georgia Department of Transportation will transfer 2,000 acres in Jasper County, S.C., to the maritime commission. The land is valued at $10 million.
Georgia Ports also will study cadmium deposits on the site of the proposed Jasper Ocean Terminal and will provide additional effluent monitoring for cadmium on the disposal site.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will undertake two additional tests for an oxygen-injection system that will provide dissolved oxygen, and Georgia Ports has agreed to establish an annual evergreen fund of $2 million for dissolved-oxygen maintenance for a period of 50 years.
Georgia has been trying for more than a decade to deepen the channel from 42 feet to 47 feet to prepare for larger ships traveling through the expanded Panama canal, beginning in 2015. Those efforts have run into heavy opposition from environmental groups, members of the South Carolina Legislature and the maritime commission.
Of the project cost, nearly half — about $311 million — is allocated for mitigation of environmental changes, with $341 million for construction.
The deal would raise the project’s mitigation allocation 14 percent.
The proposed settlement gives the maritime commission, chaired by Dean Moss, and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control the right to cancel it if certain criteria aren’t met.
The commission and DHEC will issue conditional permits and authorizations for the harbor deepening to proceed.
“The key conditions of the permits and authorizations by DHEC and the commission is that if the Corps cannot demonstrate the dissolved oxygen system will mitigate for the impacts of the project, DHEC and the commission both reserve the right to revoke the permits, terminate the settlement agreement and re-initiate and re-file the litigation,” commission attorney Randy Lowell said.
As for the proposed Jasper terminal, resolution of the litigation will allow its oversight group to conduct navigation studies and channel capacity studies, as well as move forward in getting a Jasper Ocean Terminal constructed, Lowell said.
