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Officials of Jasper County, S.C., are striving to build a new $450 million container terminal under a private-public partnership with SSA Marine, Seattle, on a 2,556-acre tract of land along the Savannah River. But they must overcome a flurry of lawsuits and questions about who owns the property and who has the legal right to build and manage the facility.
"A project that makes this much sense is going to happen, one way or another," said Jake Coakley, regional vice president for SSA Marine, a private container port operator. "It's a good project, and there aren't a lot of other locations like this."
The Jasper County Council began eyeing the property 13 years ago as a possible location for a marine terminal, said Gladys Jones, council vice chairman. The terminal would economically boost Jasper, one of the poorest counties in the state, as well as South Carolina and the region, Jones said.
The proposed site currently is owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation. As the local sponsor for the Savannah District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' dredging project, GDOT uses the site for storing dredging spoils. Since 1972, GDOT has spent about $130 million acquiring properties, building dikes and roads, said David Spear, GDOT spokesman.
SSA Marine's deal with the county was based on the latter's ability to condemn the property. But courts shot down the original plan because "they felt like it was a public taking for private enterprise," Coakley said. "Jasper County came up with a new agreement where we would build it, manage it and finance as a public terminal."
But in January, the South Carolina Ports Authority sued Jasper County in the state Supreme Court, seeking exclusive or predominant authority to develop seaports within the state and on the river.
"For five years, we've been meeting with the [SCPA] and trying to make them partners and they weren't interested," Coakley said. "They became interested when it looked like this agreement would work."
SCPA did not comment, but recently announced it will take proposed concepts for development of such a terminal from 21 of the world's largest shipping and port firms, a move they assert is a necessity in the public bid process. SSA Marine and Jasper County officials feel that the action is a bid to take control over any new port, rather than working with them. "We still believe in this and we think cooler heads will prevail in a compromise," Coakley said.
GDOT has sued both Jasper County and SCPA, challenging their authority to condemn the agency's property, said Spear.
SSA Marine has spent almost $7 million on the project, Coakley said. About 50 percent of that has gone toward legal costs and the remainder for design. Source: Engineering News-Record. By Angelle Bergeron.
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