Two agencies this week will get a look at a contract that would see the shuttered Port Royal Railroad turned over to a local water utility.

Service along the 25-mile stretch of rail line that runs from Port Royal to Yemassee ended in 2003, and both the S.C. State Ports Authority and the Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority are considering a deal to turn the line over to the utility.

The Ports Authority’s board of directors will look at the contract Wednesday, and the utility’s board will see it Thursday. Control of the rail line has been up in the air since service stopped five years ago.

Ideas that would turn the line into tourist or recreational attraction have been batted around, and the utility has said it would use the rail’s right of way to run its lines.

Dean Moss, executive director of the water utility, said Monday that he doesn’t expect the contract will be approved until May.

“There’s still a little bit of work to do on the contract,” he said, “but I wanted the board to have the ability to look at it and discuss it.”

Moss said the big issue — the price — has been agreed upon, though it won’t be released until the contract is signed.

Byron Miller, spokesman for the Ports Authority, wouldn’t comment on the contract other than to say it’s a deal with the utility.

Once the deal is completed, Moss said the utility would consider additional uses for the property.

“(The utility) plans to buy that right of way … for use as a pipeline right of way,” he said. “We assume that local governments or other citizen groups would want to make other uses of that right of way, and we will, at the appropriate time, be willing to sit down and discuss all of those things.”

A recent decision by the Surface Transportation Board cleared the way for the rail line’s sale.

The board in February decided that the line had not been abandoned, which means its right of way shouldn’t revert to the previous landowners.

Landowners with property near the line filed a petition in December 2006 asking that the panel declare the railroad abandoned.

http://www.beaufortgazette.com/local/story/414533.html

What’s next? At the announcement for the new SCHP leader, will the Gubner state, “he can’t walk on water, but he can get through it pretty darn fast?”

We couldn’t agree with you more.