On the waterfront

Pillars of steel stretch skyward in the water off the old Navy base, marking the switch from careful preparation to full-bore construction of the Port of Charleston's first new shipping terminal in more than 25 years.

These giant strips of treated metal, deposited into the harbor by a tall crane and threaded together by hand, form the beginnings of a containment wall that will support a 62-acre land mass being created along the Cooper River, over what is now just tide and tideland.

This manufactured waterfront wharf will jut out 1,000 feet from the existing shoreline, and, once filled and paved, it will house a cargo storage area.

The $55 million engineering effort is being handled by Wando-based Cape Romain Contractors and Cashman out of Quincy, Mass. Their task includes dredging 880,000 cubic yards of material from the river, installing the steel piles that will form the wall, and constructing a rock berm.

They have 625 days to finish the job.

The State Ports Authority plans to coincide the opening of its Navy base terminal as closely as possible with the Panama Canal expansion in 2014. The agency's three-berth, 280-acre facility, when completed, will increase its container-handling capacity by about 50 percent.

The SPA expansion should generate 720 local jobs, according to estimates.

It all began with tens of thousands of strategically placed giant straws.

Soaking it up

This future shipping terminal looks like alien terrain now, cleared of shrubbery and pocked with giant worm-shaped tubes extending from the ground.

SPA staff engineer Ben Morgan, steering a sport-utility vehicle across the uneven landscape, said those straw-like pieces of textile go 70 feet into the ground. Their job is critical: Prepare the soil for heavy construction by sucking up as much water as possible and draining it to pipes that take it off site. These so-called wicks pop up every five feet and will, by project's end, extract millions of gallons of moisture from the soil.

Other signs of progress are apparent at the new port site. Workers have built a road and a retention pond to handle stormwater runoff. Crews demolished some holdover military buildings and elevated the soil.

The SPA plans to offset any environmental impacts by creating marsh, helping preserve Morris Island and supporting oyster beds.

A project this large inevitably includes unexpected hurdles. When it came to installing some of the wicks, workers were forced to conduct remote testing because of the possibility that some 1940s-era Navy explosives had not been accounted for in one part of the property.

"Building the terminal is easier than preparing the site," Morgan said.

Now, with wicks cropping up all across the future container hub, a vibrating rod shakes together the loose soil to make the site denser. About 4 million cubic yards of dirt placed on top will accelerate the compression cycle.

As Morgan explains it: "We're trying to get 100 years of consolidation in 18 months."

Having its fill

When you're talking about millions of cubic yards of it, even dirt isn't cheap.

As one of the conditions of its construction permit, the SPA must pluck three-quarters of the more than 6 million total cubic feet of soil it will need from beneath the river.

"From environmental and economic perspectives, we want as much as possible to come from the water," said agency spokesman Byron Miller.

When the SPA made its most recent addition to the Wando Welch last year, diesel-spewing trucks carted in fill material all day, every day, for nine months. It was a costly and environmentally-taxing process.

SPA senior engineer David Smith said some parts of the Navy base terminal will use fill from the Charleston Ocean Dredged Material Disposal Site near Charleston Harbor's entrance. He said the SPA also plans to pull material from the Daniel Island dredge disposal site for other areas.

"We're going to get all we can out of there," Smith said.

Putting up walls

Removing soil is just as important to the port expansion project as packing it on.

Working out in the tideland, and just outside the confines of the containment wall, a small barge from Maryland-based Atlantic Dredging moves like a crab. Shifting its weight from right to left, it plunges one claw-like arm down and lifts the other out, pulling up sand and piping it away from the site.

Just yards away, a crane operator lifts the enormous 90-foot-long steel piles made in Orangeburg and places them in the river, side by side. Another wall, built under-water from a wedge-shaped combination of rock and sand, will reinforce the main metal structure, working like a backwards doorstop.

As on land, a potentially dangerous legacy of the Navy base could lurk beneath the Cooper River. Part of the waterway has been designated an "area of concern," meaning work crews must install fill material remotely because of concerns about unexploded ordnance.

Although military officials could not provide the SPA with evidence that any explosive device remains in the water, they could not prove to the maritime agency that it had been removed.

And so, gingerly, port expansion begins.

Reach Allyson Bird at 937-5594 or abird@postandcourier.com.