State House of Representatives Speaker Bobby Harrell will be asking the S.C. State Ports Authority and Jasper County to drop their legal fight so that one party can pursue the condemnation of Georgia-owned land on the Savannah River being eyed for a new port.

Harrell, R-Charleston, met with two Ports Authority board members and Jasper County port proponents in separate meetings Tuesday in an attempt to broker a port-building agreement between two parties that are dissatisfied with the pace and procedure each is taking to build a port in the county.

The Ports Authority and county have been involved in a legal battle over which group has the right to build the port and with both groups filing condemnation requests for 1,800 acres across from the Port of Savannah owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Harrell said Wednesday that the party with the stronger condemnation case should pursue the land, though he said he was not ready to say publicly which party he thought that was.

"It is very frustrating to me that so much of this is playing out in the courts," he said. "Ideally I'd like one of them to stand down and we can move ahead with the condemnation."

Jasper County Administrator Andrew Fulghum said he and County Chairman George Hood spent three days this week in Columbia meeting with Harrell, Gov. Mark Sanford's director of cabinet affairs and the S.C. Policy Council.

During the meetings, Fulghum said he was asked to provide details to Harrell and the governor's office concerning the approximately $600 million agreement Jasper County signed in 2005 with port-builder SSA Marine of Seattle to build, finance and operate a Jasper County port.

The governor's office, for example, wanted to see an agreement "that shows no exposure to South Carolina taxpayers and is fully funded and that shows (Jasper County) is prepared to proceed upon control of the property."

Such requests are part of a recent effort by state leaders to size up the seriousness and soundness of the port-building strategies held by Jasper County and the Ports Authority.

State Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, who attended the Tuesday meetings, said he and other members of the House's Ways and Means subcommittee were not satisfied with responses given by Ports Authority President and CEO Bernard Groseclose during an April meeting concerning financing the Jasper County port.

"We weren't getting the complete truth ... we weren't getting all the answers," Herbkersman said. "Some of them have to understand we're working on the same team."

In contrast, Herbkersman said SSA Marine has offered to disclose its plans to insure Jasper's bonds for the port construction.

Herbkersman also pointed to an April state Supreme Court ruling granting Jasper County port-building rights and costs as reasons to let the county build the port. The ruling also said the state has the supreme right to condemn the land.

Charleston-based Ports Authority spokesman Byron Miller wouldn't comment about the Tuesday meeting with Harrell but did say it occurred.

Authority Chairman Bill Stern also declined to comment on the meeting but said that the authority is interested in expanding state port operations at a former Navy base in Charleston and in Jasper County.

"We're ready to proceed. This is not a situation where we are trying to obtain the land and wait," Stern said.

Glenn McConnell of Charleston, Republican speaker pro tempore of the state Senate, said he would support a joint solution to the issue, one in which the state benefits from the capital of a private partner but that does not yield too much economic influence to a single company.

"We have to be very careful how we diminish the port authority's role," McConnell said, referring to the SSA Marine agreement. "There is concern among the Senate that no one company owns 60 percent of the shipping space in South Carolina."

McConnell said he plans to meet with Stern within two weeks and after hearing his concerns would meet with Jasper County officials.