S.C. ports approves $82 million in spending

S.C. ports approves $82 million in spending    The South Carolina State Ports Authority Board approved a 2012 budget on Tuesday that calls for $81.7 million in capital projects.
   In the fiscal year beginning July 1, the largest areas of planned spending are terminal infrastructure improvements and Charleston's new cruise terminal. Also included is nearly $17 million related to the new terminal operating system, which consolidates all current information systems at the SCSPA and will be implemented in 2012.
   SCSPA projects a 6.6 percent increase in containerized cargo and a 7.4 percent increase in breakbulk and non-containerized cargo at the terminals it operates in Charleston and Georgetown.
   In other business, the SCSPA board approved $6.5 million in other projects: a $2.09 million contract to Landmark Construction Co. of North Charleston for security improvements at North Charleston Terminal, and $4.4 million related to crane relocation and realignment.
   Since consolidating container operations at two terminals earlier this year, the SCSPA will relocate two super-post-Panamax cranes from Columbus Street Terminal to the Wando Welch Terminal, reposition cranes along the Wando dock and remove one obsolete crane. The crane relocation involves three contracts for electrical work, structural work, as well as the transportation of the cranes.
   On Monday, the SCSPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed a cost-sharing agreement for a feasibility study of deepening the harbor beyond 45 feet.
   The Corps said “the feasibility phase will determine if deepening the harbor is both economically beneficial and environmentally acceptable to the nation.” It has created a new Web site on the project.

Newsome

   'Charleston deepening will open the port to all classes of the world's most modern vessels under any tidal condition,' said Jim Newsome, SCSPA's president and chief executive officer. 'While Charleston today has the region's deepest channels and handles ships actually drawing up to 48 feet, this project will remove the tidal restrictions associated with the larger ships serving world trade.'
   A reconnaissance phase study by the Corps completed in July 2010 found there was federal interest in deepening the port’s channels beyond 45 feet.
   SCSPA said the project was estimated to deliver $106 million in annual national benefits.
   SCSPA and the federal government will each contribute half of the $19 million that it is estimated it will take to complete the study, said Glenn Jeffries, a public affairs spokesperson for the Corps of Engineers' Charleston office.
   Jeffries said such studies normally take five to eight years to complete, but that the parties are planning an aggressive effort to accelerate the study and complete it in four years. Earlier this year, the federal government provided $150,000 to begin the study in the current fiscal year and that money was matched by the state.