Eames: Savannah Port Expansion’s Harmful Impact

Steve Eames

By Steve Eames || The Savannah Harbor Deepening Project (SHEP) has been debated by representatives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) and South Carolina officials for more than a decade. The S.C. Coastal Conservation League filed the first legal action against SHEP in 2000. There is a reason why this project has consumed more than a decade of study and debate: SHEP is fundamentally flawed, and the flaws have not changed no matter how many times they have been purportedly examined.

The project, which involves the dredging of an approximately 38-mile channel in the ocean and up the Savannah River,would harm these waters in many ways. Most notably, SHEP will degrade the adjacent Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and will negatively impact about 1,200 acres of freshwater tidal marsh – a highly unique type of wetland. The Savannah River once had 12,000 acres of these wetlands, but about two thirds have been destroyed over the past century by earlier deepening projects. And, SHEP threatens to destroy one quarter of what remains.

In addition, perhaps the most telling aspect of SHEP is this: The Lower Savannah River is already in danger due to unnaturally low levels of oxygen in the river caused by prior deepenings and discharges of water pollution, and the Corps and GPA have acknowledged that SHEP will make this problem even worse.

To mitigate this damage, the Corps and GPA propose to use speece cones, also known as bubblers, to re-inject oxygen into this highly complex estuary. The future damage to the river will be so great that these “iron lungs” will be in place indefinitely.

Further, the speece cone technology is not proven. The speece cones have never been used in a complex aquatic environment.Typically, speece cones are installed in lakes or reservoirs where the aquatic environment is quite simple. In contrast, there is no aquatic environment more complex than our estuaries, where varying flows of freshwater mix every day with varying tide heights, at different temperatures, with a wide variety of plants and fish that depend on this intricate system for breeding, spawning, migrating,and feeding. In fact, a test run to demonstrate the efficacy of the bubblers in the Savannah river was deemed “inconclusive” by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. So, we know the SHEP project will de-oxygenate a major river, but we have no evidence the technical fix will revive it.

Deepening the Savannah River also threatens to contaminate groundwater supplies by increasing salinity and reducing the thickness of the confining layer between the river bottom and the Upper Floridian aquifer, posing a significant threat of contamination to groundwater supplies for this area of the coastal zone.

SHEP will have an adverse impact to fish populations, including species such as the shortnosed sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon and striped bass. Fisheries exerts have already identified dredging as a contributor to declining numbers of these species. In order to mitigate for impacts to shortnose sturgeon, a federally endangered fish, the Corps proposes to construct a fish passage facility at a location near Augusta, Georgia to allow sturgeon to migrate upstream. This mitigation approach is flawed. Not only is this proposed passage far less effective than simply removing the dam, but with this proposal the Corps is proposing to trade one type of habitat in the estuary for a completely different type of habitat about 150 miles upriver. Such a trade will harm this already endangered species.

Understandably then, the staff of DHEC concluded that the bubblers would not protect water quality. Then the permit process started to get less scientific. The Corps of Engineers threatened DHEC by saying the project was exempt from DHEC review altogether. Not so. The SHEP project occurs in South Carolina waters and must meet South Carolina standards unless Congress exempts the project – which it hasn’t done.

When the DHEC Board reviewed the proposal, they approved a decision to reverse the initial staff denial and failed to obtain any assurance that the bubblers would actually work. Instead, South Carolina received an undefined commitment for public money to pay for the operation and maintenance of the bubblers – even if, and when they fail.

Is it really worth it?This project has been touted as critical to the economic well-being of the region and the nation. Yet, according to Corps own economic analysis, deepening the river will not increase the container through put for the Port of Savannah even with the anticipated opening of the widened Panama Canal. According to the Corps, the SHEP will allow larger ships to transport the same goods that will marginally reduce shipping costs. But the Corps studies do not show that these alleged cost savings will be passed to US consumers instead of just going to international shipping companies or foreign manufacturers themselves. More important, the Corps did not see if bigger ships might be more cheaply – and less devastatingly – handled in Charleston or Jasper County.

This begs the question: Why spend $650 million of US taxpayer’s money and threaten a complex aquatic ecosystem to deepen the Savannah River?

We are all left to seek an answer. We oppose the Corps and GPA’s proposal to put the Savannah on unproven respirators, and we have appealed the DHEC board’s decision to certify the project.

This will be a long and expensive battle, but the Savannah is one of the most important, most historic and most threatened rivers on the East Coast. There is really no other option.

Steve Eames is the director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League’s Beaufort Office.

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