State Senate adds muscle to Ga.-S.C. port fight

The fate of two ports on the Savannah River, and the river itself, continues to be South Carolina’s political hot potato.

In Columbia, the state Senate took up a resolution Tuesday to reverse a controversial Department of Health and Environmental Control board decision approving Georgia’s plan to deepen the Savannah River. The resolution sponsored by Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, was co-sponsored by every member of the Senate and would suspend DHEC’s authority over Savannah River dredging and related matters, retroactive to 2007.

“Myself and my staff counsel looked very carefully at the constitution, and we have the right to suspend (DHEC’s authority),” McConnell said.

The Savannah River dredging plan calls for deepening about three-dozen miles of river to a depth of 48 feet, to accommodate larger container ships destined for Georgia’s Garden City Terminal.

Opponents say the plan would destroy rare freshwater marshes, leave the river so oxygen-depleted that machinery would be needed to inject oxygen into the water, and give the Georgia port a competitive edge, while at the same time harming plans to build a second Savannah River port, in Jasper County on the South Carolina side of the river.

“I call it the rape of the river,” McConnell said. “That’s what it is.”

The U.S. Clean Water Act certification needed for the plan was approved by the DHEC board in November — reversing a staff decision to deny the permit — after Gov. Nikki Haley asked her appointees on the board to give Georgia a hearing. Haley has defended the DHEC board, saying the dredging plan would have proceeded regardless, and that the board was able to extract some concessions.

The DHEC board decision is set to face legal challenges from the Southern Environmental Law Center and South Carolina’s Savannah River Maritime Commission. The Senate joint resolution could undo the DHEC decision if the House were to agree and the governor were to sign it.

A spokesman for DHEC said that due to staff being unavailable, he was unable to provide a response to the resolution, which says DHEC “unlawfully usurped” the authority of the Savannah River Maritime Commission and approved a permit that “could present imminent and irreversible public health and environmental concerns.”