Jasper County claims the S.C. State Ports Authority has no plans to build a Savannah River port and is blocking local efforts to develop a 1,800-acre site to prevent competition, county attorneys wrote in a state Supreme Court filing Friday.

The Ports Authority filed a request with the court last week demanding that the county abandon its efforts to bring a $450 million shipping terminal to the South Carolina side of the Savannah River. It was the latest back-and-forth legal action since the county made its $8.5 million condemnation request for the land in January 2005.

The site is owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation and used for dredge spoil from the Savannah River shipping channels.

Responding to a previous suit from the Ports Authority, the court ruled this month that the state did not have exclusive rights to develop a port on the Savannah River, but it did state that the Ports Authority could have preference to a particular site.

The authority quickly introduced its own $9.3 million condemnation request for the site and, last week, called on the court to recognize the Ports Authority's superseding right to the land.

County Administrator Andrew Fulghum said Friday that the county remains concerned that the state is condemning the site strictly to prevent the county's development plan.

"If the (Ports Authority) is condemning in bad faith simply to prevent Jasper County from operating a competing terminal, the (Ports Authority's) rights would not trump Jasper County's rights to the land," the filing states.

Ports Authority officials did not return calls for comment Friday; however, in a letter to the editor to be published in Sunday's Beaufort Gazette, J. Colden Battey, a Ports Authority board member, writes that the authority is "...committed to building a port facility in Jasper County and will dedicate the resources necessary to make it a reality."

In the letter, he adds "...the state's involvement ensures that we will acquire the site and will develop the terminal, providing jobs and related businesses in Jasper County, across the Lowcountry and throughout the state."