Savannah River deepening study a ‘priority’ for U.S. House lawmakers

As a representative of a landlocked state in America’s heartland, Graves said he has a deep appreciation for the value of coastal ports.

“We heavily depend on states like Georgia with ports like Savannah,” Graves said. “It’s vitally important to keep ports open and shipping moving.”

The Georgia Ports Authority requested authorization for the study last fall as its long-range growth plans call for increased shipping traffic from the largest cargo ships being built today. These bigger ships, known as “Suezmax” vessels, need at least 50 feet of depth below the waterline when fully loaded with cargo.

At the Savannah River’s current depth, these behemoths would only be able to access the Georgia Ports Authority facilities at certain tides or with lighter loads.

Savannah’s container business has nearly doubled over the last decade as shippers have come to rely more heavily on East Coast ports than West Coast terminals. Additionally, Savannah is a popular destination for ships traveling between Southwest Asian countries, such as India, and the U.S. via a westbound route through the Suez Canal. In the last fiscal year, 37% of Savannah-bound goods came along this shipping route, well ahead of the East Coast average of 18%.

The port activity is an economic driver for the state, supporting 561,000 jobs and contributing $59 billion annually to the state’s gross domestic product in fiscal year 2022, a study showed. Kemp cited higher numbers for fiscal year 2023 during his remarks.

The Georgia Ports Authority is expanding its container capacity, converting its existing Ocean Terminal multi-modal facility along the Savannah River to handle only cargo boxes. At the same time, the authority has begun site preparations for a third container port to be located on the riverbank opposite Ocean Terminal.

Both facilities should be open by 2030, prompting the push to begin the river deepening process. Authorization of the study through renewal of the WRDA should come prior to Sept. 30, Graves said, and would clear the way for the study to receive funding in the next federal budget cycle.

Graves and the other elected officials who spoke at the port Monday shared a sense of relative urgency. The last Savannah port deepening wrapped in March 2022, more than 25 years after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a similar deepening study. Port authority officials have voiced hope that the next deepening would take approximately a decade.

Kemp noted the frustration state officials felt during the last dig and called for action to avoid a repeat.

“In government, we need to move at the speed of our economy,” Kemp said.

Also during the news conference, Kemp, Carter and Collins joined together to call for blocking a federal government proposal to limit speeds of large vessels traveling through North Atlantic right whale calving grounds off the Georgia coast. The whales are an endangered species, with less than 360 specimens left, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is moving to impose a 10 knot speed limit.

The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs began final review of the proposed rule earlier this month.

Kemp, Carter and Collins argued mandating the slower speeds would put human lives in danger, specifically those of the river pilots who assist cargo ships traveling in and out of the Georgia Ports Authority facilities.

Collins vowed Monday that Congress would “kill that rule.”