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The once-acrimonious Jasper Ocean Terminal project is moving forward with speed and a spirit of cooperation.
"If everything goes right ... we should dump a permit this fiscal year for the actual construction of the Jasper terminal," David Posek, chairman of the Jasper Ocean Terminal Joint Project board of directors, said during the group’s meeting last month. "It’s been a long time coming."
Now that arguments between South Carolina and Georgia ports officials over dredging at the Port of Savannah have subsided, Posek said the bi-state board’s most recent gathering was "a watershed meeting."
The board is waiting until after the Army Corps of Engineers announces its final decision on deepening Charleston Harbor, expected in September, to submit its permit application for channel deepening and widening and construction of the Jasper terminal. The 1,500-acre site is in Jasper County near the Georgia border, about 15 miles from the Port of Savannah on the Savannah River.
While engineering and geotechnical studies have been ongoing, initial work on the $3.3 billion project will begin in the coming months when tons of
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material dredged as part of the Port of Savannah deepening project is dumped on the Jasper terminal site.
A study completed this year shows the dredging and the large container ships that will be attracted to Georgia’s port won’t clog the Savannah River, leaving enough room for the Jasper terminal to succeed. Moffatt & Nichol has updated the terminal’s design plan to reflect the need for more efficiency.
The plan calls for cargo boxes to be offloaded horizontally from ships and then stacked horizontal to the waterside wharf wall. Keeping the cargo boxes parallel to the wharf wall will cut back on the amount of equipment needed on the ground to move cargo, which will cost less money and increase the number of moves that can be made during a given time.
The new configuration will let up to five cranes offload each ship carrying 18,000 or more cargo boxes. Ships that large won’t fit under the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston or the Talmadge Bridge in Savannah, leaving Jasper as the only site in the fast-growing South Carolina-Georgia sea trade corridor.
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