Editor’s note: This article has been updated with additional details.
SAVANNAH ― The next deepening of the Savannah River shipping channel is at least six years and one exhaustive study away. Federal lawmakers have now blessed the initial step in the harbor expansion process by authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dig in on the planning and research.
The Savannah deepening is among the study projects listed in the Water Resources Development Act of 2024 passed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the measure into law in the coming days.
Georgia lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties supported the deepening study’s inclusion in the Water Resources Development Act. The U.S. House passed the measure last week.
The study will determine the feasibility of dredging additional soil from the 47-foot-deep channel that serves the Georgia Ports Authority’s two marine terminals located upriver from Savannah’s downtown. The nation’s third-busiest port for cargo containers, the facilities are 22 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and the dredged shipping lane stretches another 18 miles into the sea.
Authority officials launched a public call for the deepening in late 2023, about 18 months after the completion of a previous deepening that dug 5 feet of sand and clay from the riverbed. That project, known as the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, or SHEP, took more than 25 years from study phase to completion.
During that time, container ships more than doubled in size and world trade evolved, with trans-Atlantic routes between Asia and the U.S. East Coast gaining in popularity. Vessels using those itineraries don’t have to pass through narrow locks of the Panama Canal and are wider to accommodate more cargo.
Larger freighters also have deeper drafts. The Savannah terminals handle more than 1 million containers annually — about 20% of the total — from trans-Atlantic ships. That business continues to climb as goods manufacturing shifts from China to trading partners located farther west, such as India and Vietnam.
According to Ports Authority officials, the Savannah channel needs to be deepened to “at least” 50 feet for the terminals to remain competitive with others along the coast. Rivers leading to ports facilities in New York; Norfolk, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Miami all measure 50 feet or deeper.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
Georgia’s ports are huge economic drivers. The Port of Savannah and other ports authority facilities support 561,000 jobs and contribute $59 billion annually to the state’s gross domestic product, a 2021 study showed. The ports’ business has nearly doubled over the last decade, and officials have announced expansion projects that will significantly boost container capacity by 2030.
Authorization of the study is the first step in the deepening process. Lawmakers next must fund the study for what is meant to be a three-year review. If the project is deemed feasible, the following three years would be spent planning and permitting for the dig ahead of three years of dredging.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers adopted this so-called “three-three-three” approach to avoid major infrastructure projects taking more than a decade to complete, as the last Savannah River deepening did.
“Every day of delay costs American companies and slows U.S. economic development,” Georgia Ports Authority officials wrote in a statement.
Credit: GPA Photo/Stephen B. Morton
Credit: GPA Photo/Stephen B. Morton
The study will explore beyond the business and trade impacts of a deepening, however. Port officials called for a depth of 49 feet in the last harbor expansion, but environmental considerations led to a recommendation to dredge to only 47 feet. That study found deepening impacted Savannah River fisheries as well as the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge located adjacent to one of the port terminals.
Another issue is saltwater intrusion into the Floridan aquifer, a 100,000-square-mile freshwater reservoir located underground and a source of drinking water for 10 million residents of the Southeast. The port terminals are near where the strata between the riverbed and the aquifer is thin, known as a cone of depression, and where river water can seep into the aquifer.
The deeper the river, the farther upstream seawater is carried by incoming tides, increasing the chances of saltwater intrusion into the aquifer and the fouling of drinking water.
The last deepening, completed in early 2022, included several environmental mitigation measures, such as a system to inject dissolved oxygen into the river to counter the effects of more seawater coming upstream and the construction of a 100-million-gallon storage reservoir designed to make city of Savannah water customers less reliant on the Floridan aquifer as a water source.
Georgia environmental watchdogs anticipate the upcoming study will uncover similar drawbacks to deepening the river to 50 feet or more. And they argue it’s too early to gauge the effectiveness of some mitigation measures, such as the dissolved oxygen injection system.
“The last round of deepening included a slew of negative impacts to the Savannah River, Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, and federally protected wildlife like sturgeon and sea turtles,” said Chris DeScherer of the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the conservation groups that challenged the last deepening in the courts. “This mitigation must be successfully completed before the agencies consider another deepening.”
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