A few weeks ago, when the news was coming fast and furious, I made a number of posts about the proposed dredging of the Savannah River.
But now the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project seems destined for many months of continued study and discussion, especially among the other federal agencies that have to sign off on the Corps of Engineers’ plan: the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Mary Landers has an excellent piece in today’s Savannah Morning News that details concerns of those three agencies.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the local discussion of the economic analysis — including my column and blog post regarding the projection that the port will move the same number of containers each year through 2032 with or without dredging — has gotten little traction statewide. The state’s leaders continue to say they strongly favor the project, with pretty much no acknowledgement that the Corps’ study says that the economic benefits will be through increased efficiency, not through increased cargo.
I suspect that, eventually, some statewide news organizations — or perhaps a national one — is going to cover this issue.