THE CASE FOR COMPROMISE:
DEEPENING THE CHARLESTON HARBOR The Coastal Conservation League, Lowcountry Open Land Trust, and the Southern Environmental Law Center announce an historic compromise with the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SCSPA) regarding the deepening the Charleston Harbor. The agreement includes a $5.1 million investment in the conservation of the Cooper River Corridor by the SCSPA and ensures the timely progress forward of harbor deepening. The compromise was approved by the Joint Bond Review Committee in
South Carolina Ports Authority
February.
(L-R) South Carolina Ports Authority President Jim Newsome, DHEC Director Catherine Templeton, and Conservation League Executive Director Dana Beach announce agreement to deepen the Charleston Harbor.
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he deepening of Charleston Harbor represents an important economic opportunity for South Carolina. A wider Panama Canal will mean larger ships with deeper drafts calling on Charleston in a few years. Even now, large ships traversing the Suez Canal from Asia are calling on East Coast ports in greater numbers. These larger ships require a deeper channel. At the same time, Charleston Harbor is a resource of unparalleled importance to our community – historically, culturally and environmentally. We agree that the deepening must not compromise this irreplaceable asset. Gaining approval for the project requires obtaining a variety of federal and state environmental permits and certifications. When the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SPA) initiated the permitting process in 2011, the estimated completion date was not until 2024. Although the Coastal Conservation League agrees that the project analysis should be comprehensive and scrupulously rigorous, we felt that the time frame was longer than necessary. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for the federal permitting, worked with the SPA and in 2012 agreed to a streamlined procedure, shortening the process by approximately five years. This flexibility by the Corps is admirable. We are confident that the review will not be compromised by the accelerated schedule. The expedited process is still quite demanding. One central requirement is mitigation for negative impacts to water quality and wetlands. This is often a sticking point for large projects like the deepening. It is difficult to identify and gain agreement for mitigation strategies that truly reduce project impacts in a meaningful way. Further, there are other critical and potentially controversial issues to address and resolve, such as the suspension of toxic contaminants in the water column. After extensive discussion among our conservation partners, we believed that it would be best to identify these concerns as soon as possible, and that the Conservation League and the Southern Environmental Law Center should develop a set of recommendations that could move the project forward. The alternative would have been to follow the timeline of the permitting process, delaying this analysis for a couple of years. This would have reduced the time available to come to agreement on permit conditions, potentially setting the stage
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