BY MARK B. SOLOMON, SENIOR EDITOR
MARITIME/PORTS
transportationreport
THE PORTS OF CHARLESTON, S.C., AND SAVANNAH, GA., ARE ONLY 107 MILES APART.
But distance is about the only thing about the two that’s close. In most other ways, they might
as well be at opposite ends of the planet.
The neighboring states, with their ports as proxies, have battled each other over trade and
maritime supremacy for decades. They have taken their fight to the legal system, the free market, and the court of public opinion. In the past, each has refused to attend maritime or trade
events in the other’s state. The contentiousness is as thick as the air on a humid Charleston
summer night. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my 30 years in the business,” said K.C.
Conway, chief U.S. economist for Colliers International, a global real estate concern.
The ports seem to struggle even when they try to collaborate. In 2007, after years of the states
fighting over control of property along the Savannah River in Jasper County, S.C., a bistate
operating team spent $7.5 million, divided between the two, to buy 1,500 acres of land to build
a container terminal approximately eight miles from the entrance to the river’s shipping channel. The project would effectively create a third regional port and allow dredging to a 50-foot
depth, deeper than either Charleston, at 45 feet, or Savannah, at 42 feet.
The deeper water would accommodate the large vessels many expect to be dominating global sea trade, notably through the expanded Panama Canal, over the decades. Today’s canal configuration is capped at ships with 5,100 twenty-foot-equivalent (TEU) container units; when
the widened and deepened canal opens in 2015, it will accommodate so-called post-Panamax
ships with close to 13,000 TEUs. About 83 percent of containerships on order today are 8,000
TEUs or larger, according to U.K. consultancy Drewry.
Progress at Jasper has been agonizingly slow. Beyond the land purchase and several feasibility
studies, little has happened. Fed-up county officials have demanded to take control of the project and pay for the terminal to be built. It is believed the work won’t be done until 2025 or 2030.
NO ZERO SUM GAME
The irony is that Charleston and Savannah need not play a zero sum game. Each can succeed
with its complementary strengths, and greater cooperation could create a monolith that dominates the fast-growing and increasingly export-oriented Southeast region, analysts said.
In theory, Charleston and Savannah could meld into a southeast
Atlantic colossus rivaling the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
That, at least, is the theory.
CHAR-VANNAH?
