Resolve critical conflicts to get the port right this time

For the past three years, the Coastal Conservation League and the Southern Environmental Law Center have pushed for rail access to the proposed Navy Base terminal. Now that everyone agrees that rail is critical, let's recall how that consensus emerged and consider what the next steps should be.

One decade ago this September, the S.C. State Ports Authority revealed plans to build the Global Gateway on Daniel Island. This billion dollar-plus facility would have produced 21,000 truck trips every day, requiring that I-26 be widened to 12 lanes to avoid total gridlock. Rail and truck routes would have destroyed the historic black community in Cainhoy.

In spite of these impacts, the local and state chambers of commerce embraced the project, as did the city of Charleston, the S.C. Department of Commerce and many state legislators. For the next three years, with no permits in hand, the SPA spent millions of dollars on land condemnation, site preparation, engineering, planning, legal services and advertising.

Although the opponents had no prospect of outspending the SPA, the cold facts persuaded key legislators that the project was fatally flawed. In 2002 Sens. Glenn McConnell and the late Bill Mescher passed legislation directing the SPA to abandon the Global Gateway and evaluate the Navy Base as an alternative site for a new terminal. The base had two important advantages. It had been used for shipping for decades, and it had extensive rail lines in place.

When the SPA released the plan for the Navy Base terminal in 2006 we were stunned and disappointed to see that unlike virtually every new terminal in the nation, including our competitors in Savannah and in Portsmouth, Va., the facility had no rail access. Every container would be carried on a truck, clogging I-26 with an additional 7,000 truck trips daily, causing gridlock on sections of the interstate that would otherwise not have failed for more than a decade.

The additional traffic would cause the terminal to exceed federal air quality standards for particulate pollution.

Over the course of two years we met with port officials and legislators, we presented the case to the Legislative Delegation's port committee, we contacted the Chamber of Commerce, wrote op-eds, held press conferences and did virtually everything we could think of to convince the SPA to reconstitute the project with rail. Their response was consistent, "Our customers don't want or care about rail. We are not in the rail business. It will slow down the project." Our complaints were dismissed as anti-business.

That was the gospel on the terminal until last year when port performance began to plummet. A few lines have shifted to Savannah and the SPA's largest customer, Maersk, has threatened to pull out of Charleston completely unless they get large price concessions. As a result, port CEO Bernie Groseclose is being replaced and the Legislature has passed a "port reform" bill. There is also now broad agreement that rail should be part of the new terminal.

If the terminal is to be served by two rail lines, CSX and Norfolk Southern, it appears one will have to come in from the north. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey has vigorously objected to the northern route because of potential conflicts with existing residential neighborhoods and the planned Noisette development. His concerns are legitimate. North Charleston already bears a disproportionate burden of freight traffic, both rail and truck, primarily because the region's transportation system is a dysfunctional patchwork of 19th and early 20th century pieces that do not serve today's needs. For years the state has benefited from the port, but we have refused to make the public investment necessary for it to co-exist with its neighbors in North Charleston.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the ill-fated Global Gateway, we have an opportunity to get things right. The pressing need for new port capacity, if it ever existed, has vanished. A recent Commerce study concluded that Charleston's existing port capacity will not be reached until after 2023. We've got time to step back and decide exactly how to make the port fit more harmoniously into this growing region.

That will require a new approach by the SPA, which is spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on the terminal with no resolution of the traffic problem. That should end now.

And instead of trying to ram a new rail plan down North Charleston's throat, the SPA should work with the city to analyze and resolve every potential point of conflict, not only with trains but with trucks. Even without a new Navy Base terminal, North Charleston is already plagued by a variety of problems ranging from at-grade rail crossings to truck traffic on residential streets.

What is needed is an honest and sustained effort from the SPA, the business community and elected leaders to solve today's port conflicts and to prepare the region for the future. That would be a 10th anniversary we could all celebrate.

Dana Beach is executive director of the Coastal Conservation League.