PORTS, LOGISTICS & DISTRIBUTION
Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor has said the increased cost of fuel and freight has made rail king. (Photo/Molly Parker)
lines, but only when it is mutually beneficial. The only viable option, the study says, is to build an intermodal facility on the former Navy base that could service Norfolk Southern and CSX — or only Norfolk Southern, should CSX wish to carry out its plans for an intermodal facility to the south of the terminal. John Koch, CSX’s director of international sales and marketing, says the company has done its part, working “diligently over the past several years with the Ports Authority and other entities to “meet rail needs of the port in the future.
Seven-year-old promises Summey isn’t just angry; he’s also the keeper of a memorandum of understanding that the city of North Charleston and the SPA penned in 2002, in which the state agency promised that any rail access serving the terminal would remain exclusively to the south end. When the SPA signed that agreement, it had not put together a plan for the exact terminal location or made any decisions on rail service. By that point, the SPA had become the ball in a legislative pingpong game — directed back and forth between Daniel Island and
North Charleston several times. In May 2002, the General Assembly passed a law dictating that the new terminal go to the “west bank of the Cooper River” — which effectively meant the defunct North Charleston Navy base. Later that same month, state leaders brokered a compromise with the city, giving North Charleston the entire northern section of the base free of charge. The city then sold that land to Noisette for $9.6 million. Meanwhile, the SPA sought from the Army Corps of Engineers a permit for the new terminal, which called for moving all cargo by truck, either for the long haul or on short trips to Norfolk Southern and CSX’s intermodal facilities in North Charleston, located off Meeting Street and Goer Drive, respectively. The corps issued approval of the project in April 2007 after an arduous, five-year process — and the permit did not include on-dock rail service. At the time, the SPA said that plan suited its shipping customers just fine. It suited the State Ports Authority, too. The agency had spent years and millions of dollars planning a massive container terminal on Daniel Island meant to secure Charleston’s place in the global shipping world — only to have those plans shattered in a political up-
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