Cameron presents new twist to plans

COLUMBIA -- The former top Coast Guard officer in Charleston introduced state lawmakers Wednesday to a new bend in the winding road toward building a marine terminal near the South Carolina-Georgia border.

Now working with the local harbor pilots group, John Cameron said the Georgia Ports Authority's plans for deepening the Savannah River while extending its shipping channel will require much more work than the agency has suggested.

And that could raise South Carolina's costs exponentially.

At issue is a container terminal proposed for the Jasper County side of the river for use by both states.

The Georgia maritime agency has suggested extending the shipping channel by about four miles into the Atlantic Ocean to accommodate larger vessels that might one day call in Jasper. Cameron, who retired in 2007 as the Coast Guard's Charleston-based sector commander, instead says a "safer" extension for navigational purposes would reach 13 to 20 miles into the sea.

Cameron told lawmakers and representatives on the Port Oversight Commission on Wednesday that ports must dredge deeper to accommodate the huge ships that will be able to traverse the Panama Canal after the famous short cut is expanded in 2014.

The most attractive ports for those vessels will boast extended shipping channels with room to spare to ensure safe passage for heavy container haulers. But gaining even a few feet is enormously expensive because it requires moving a considerable amount of material.

Extending the channel in the Savannah River would mean South Carolina and Georgia will share the cost of a much more extensive project, though dollar amounts are not yet available.

"No one has ever talked about this until today," said Sen. Larry Grooms, chairman of the oversight commission and a candidate for governor. "They always talked about the project but not dredging into the ocean."

Grooms, R-Bonneau, suggested Cameron make his report again before the Savannah River Maritime Commission, which represents South Carolina's interests along waterways.

The presentation further underscored the growing tension between longtime port rivals South Carolina and Georgia -- that a shared terminal could provide an advantage to one at the expense of the other.

Grooms has expressed publicly his concern that South Carolina's help deepening the river could improve Georgia's Garden City Terminal to an extent that the Jasper project becomes unnecessary.

Considering Wednesday's revelation, Grooms said, "We'd be paying for the demise of our shipping industry."

Prior to Cameron's presentation Wednesday, the Port Oversight Commission received an update from Savannah River Maritime Commission Chairman Dean Moss.

Moss told the group about an editorial in the Savannah Morning News entitled "Carolina Crackpots" that criticized his organization for paying a consultant to study the economic and environmental impacts of Savannah River deepening.