South Atlantic ports must clear many hurdles before they can build new terminals


In China, massive construction projects can be done seemingly overnight. Beijing was transformed in just a few years for the Olympics. The first phase of the mammoth Yangshan container terminal off the coast of Shanghai was built in less than four years. Before it could open, the Chinese had to build a 20-mile bridge linking the port with the mainland.

The Chinese can move quickly because the government, whether it’s at the central, provincial or local level, can go ahead with a project with little regard for public opinion or environmental considerations. 

In the U.S., nearly any major project these days takes many years, especially if public funds are involved. Before construction can begin, there have to be feasibility studies, environmental impact studies and public hearings. Quite likely, there has to be approval
by legislative bodies, as well as funding authorizations and appropriations, often by government at multiple levels. As a result, it may take 10 or more years from conception to completion, and that’s often just for the first phase of a project.

So it is with container terminals at U.S. South Atlantic ports. Take the proposed North Carolina International Terminal. Plans for the facility were first announced in March 2006. The first phase of the terminal, however, is not expected to open until 2017.

And then there’s the new terminal at the former Charleston Navy Base in South Carolina. In January 2003, the South Carolina State Ports Authority submitted a permit application to the Army Corps of Engineers. Port officials hoped the first phase of the terminal could open in 2010 or 2011. That was predicated on getting a permit in two years. But the corps didn’t issue the permit until April 2007. Now the opening has been pushed back to 2013.

That’s no surprise. According to the port authority, the agencies involved in the permitting process included the Federal Highway Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management and Bureau of Environmental Quality Control, the state’s Department of Natural Resources and the State Historic Preservation Office. Getting the permit at all was “frankly a miracle,” said Byron Miller, a spokesman for the port authority. “The corps drives our process. It extended the comment period.

As protracted as the Charleston permit process took, it was relatively fast, according to Aaron Ellis, a spokesman for the American Association of Port Authorities. Ellis said it often takes seven to 10 years.

Even with the U.S. Maritime Administration interceding to fast-track the process, it took four years for the Anchorage Port Authority to obtain
a permit for a federally mandated  $136 million project, he said. “Four (years) is pretty darn fast,” Ellis said.

Once it got the permit, the South Carolina port authority got to work immediately. Bulldozers were out the next day to begin work on test embankments to start determining soil settlement. Demolition of buildings and utilities at the site has been completed. The engineering firm PB was hired to oversee the site consolidation and preparation phase.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Transportation has begun soil analysis of the land where a 1.5-mile road to connect the terminal with Interstate 26 will be built. The state is expected to begin acquiring right-of-way property later this year. Thus far, $182.5 million has been allocated by the state and federal governments. The port authority hopes that money, along with earned interest, will be sufficient to cover the cost, Miller said. Bidding for road construction has not yet begun. The agency has presented some design and other measures to the DOT that it believes will reduce the cost considerably, he said.

The port authority has received  a lot of bids for construction of the  terminal itself. “All have come in  under budget. Now is a good time to build,” he said, because the economic slowdown has construction companies hungry for work.

According to Miller, the cost of the terminal is expected to be about $450 million, with another $100 million for equipment such as cranes.

The port agency has not disclosed its estimates of capacity when Phase 1 will be completed, but the terminal will have a capacity of 1.4 million TEUs when it is complete. The first phase will occupy 171 of the property’s 280 acres and 2,400 of the 3,510 feet of berth space.

Meanwhile, plans to build a container terminal in Jasper County, S.C., are much less advanced. The Corps of Engineers uses the proposed site, which was owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation, to deposit dredged material from the Savannah River. In late July, the 1,518-acre site was sold for $7.5 million to the Georgia and South Carolina port authorities. Under the plan, the two agencies would create a bistate authority to build the Jasper Ocean Terminal. Both state legislatures and Congress would have to approve the compact. And before any construction could begin, there would have to be feasibility studies, business planning, environmental assessments and the release of federal easements on the property.

Estimates for completion of the terminal range from 2017 to 2020, Miller said.

The agreement between the two states followed a long, protracted battle that also involved the Jasper County government, which wanted to build a terminal on the property without any involvement by the state.
In North Carolina, the port authority signed a “predevelopment” agreement for the terminal in June with CenterPoint Properties. The real estate firm will review the existing site, its development and operational needs, and examine potential impacts the project could have. It will also focus on public safety, rail and highway capacity.

The deal makes CenterPoint the lead contender to win a contract to oversee the project, designed to give the state a major container terminal. Wilmington is 26 miles up river, hampering its ability to attract liner services. Currently, it has only two container services, both operated by an alliance of four Asian carriers — Cosco, “K” Line, Yang Ming and Hanjin. As a result, most of the state’s traffic moves through Norfolk, Charleston and other East Coast ports.

Karen Fox, a spokesman for the port authority, said it may take three years to even get to the permit stage. Among other things, the corps first has to do an environmental reconnaissance, she said. The new terminal would have an annual capacity of 960,000 TEUs.

The Georgia Ports Authority was able to move relatively quickly to build two additional berths at the Garden City Terminal in Savannah. Planning began in 2002, and the berths were completed in 2007, expanding its capacity to
3.5 million TEUs. However, it had a couple of advantages that the other projects do not have. First, it already owned the land. Second, it did not have to build any new roads.

In the meantime, the GPA is moving ahead with a project that will increase capacity at the terminal to  6.5 million TEUs by 2015. That expansion will not require the acquisition of any new land; rather, it will be accomplished by making better use of the existing property, said Robert Morris, a GPA spokesman. The expansion program has three main components: the construction of a new intermodal container transfer station; rebuilding and strengthening berths; and the purchase of new ship-to-shore cranes and rubber-tired gantry cranes for moving containers around the terminal.

In contrast to most other port projects, APM Terminals, a sister company of Maersk Line, moved with lightning speed in building a state-of-the-art terminal in Portsmouth, Va. The facility opened in September 2007, less than 2 1/2 years after APM announced plans for the terminal. APM had an advantage because it needed no public funds. The $450 million terminal is the third-largest terminal in the U.S. and the biggest privately owned facility. The terminal can handle 1 million TEUs a year and can be expanded to handle 2 million TEUs.

The Virginia Port Authority is investing in improvements that will increase the efficiency of its operating company’s terminal in Norfolk. The VPA also is proceeding with environmental-mitigation plans that will enable it to build a new terminal on landfill at Craney Island in Hampton Roads. However, that terminal is not likely to open until 2017 or 2018.

In Jacksonville, construction of the 158-acre TraPac Container Terminal began in 2006 and is expected to be concluded by the end of this year. The 800,000-TEU terminal will double the port’s container capacity.

The terminal was built to accommodate the port’s first all-water service from Asia. The MOL Vision, the first vessel in that service, made its maiden call in Jacksonville in late July, stopping at the Blount Island Marine Terminal.

Hanjin Shipping also plans to build a new terminal in Jacksonville, but the Korean carrier is redesigning the original plan, which may result in a smaller terminal. Jaxport officials visited Seoul in mid-August to negotiate a 30-year lease with Hanjin.

Plans to expand Port Everglades
so that it can accommodate 5,500-TEU container ships stalled when the Broward County Commission declined to approve a key part of the port’s
new master plan because of environmental objections to a provision that would require the removal of 8.7 acres of mangrove trees along the shore
line.