LEVY -- Officials with the S.C. State Ports Authority, Jasper County and its private port partner on Friday toured the site on the Savannah River eyed for a $450 million shipping terminal that is at the center of a legal battle between the county and the state.

Tom Davis, the newest member of the Ports Authority's board of directors; county administrator Andy Fulghum; Rudy Smith, the county's public works director; and Jake Coakley, SSA Marine's regional vice president, walked the rain-sodden ground flanked by the Savannah and Wright rivers.

Jasper County and SSA Marine, one of the world's largest port developers, struck a deal in January to develop a port on 1,863 acres owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

But the State Ports Authority -- which operates marine terminals in Charleston, Georgetown and Port Royal -- responded by filing a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court. It seeks a ruling that it is the sole port builder in the state.

"It's pretty impressive," Davis said looking out from the sport utility vehicle the group used to tour the site. "I've looked at it on plates and maps, but there's nothing like getting out and kicking the dirt."

More than 50 years ago, the Georgia Department of Transportation purchased about 6,000 acres on the South Carolina side of the river. After some legal infighting, Georgia was allowed to pull sand from the site for road projects, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, supported by a federal easement, started using the site for dredge spoil.

"We were in helicopters, john boats and four-wheel drives, up and down the East Coast," Coakley, who works out of Savannah, said of SSA Marine's search for a private port site. "Little did we know this was in our backyard."

SSA Marine handles about 35 percent of the stevedoring services at the ports of Savannah and Charleston.

Coakley said that while the 1,863 acres is roughly one-third of the Georgia-owned land, it only constitutes about a 7 percent loss of usable land.

"They don't dump near the terminal site," he said. "They can dump forever upriver."

The spoil site is a 40-foot-high plateau of hard-caked earth near the bridge on U.S. 17 that crosses from Georgia to South Carolina, but the site where the county and SSA Marine want their terminal is only nine feet high.

Of the 1,863 acres, 600 acres are on Jones Island, 130 acres would be for an access road running along the northern boundary of the property, and 800 acres would be used for the terminal development proper. The remaining land, almost 300 acres, would constitute a bird island and a spoil site for localized dredging.

"Once you see this, I think you get it," Fulghum said, standing on the bank of the river. "I'm hopeful we won't go to court. We don't want to see an extended legal battle. We want to seize the opportunity in front of us for the state of South Carolina."

Davis would not comment on the lawsuit or a possible settlement, citing pending litigation.

"I haven't spoken to Gov. Sanford about it," said Davis, who served as the governor's chief of staff until last year. "Now that the session is out, I think he'll have more time to focus on it."