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We need the new port; time for feuding to end

Prolonged three-way fight going nowhere fast

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The leader of the S.C. House of Representatives has a novel idea about how to get a new port for the state -- get all the parties on the same page.

Unfortunately, House Speaker Bobby Harrell may be discovering what Jasper County officials have known for a long time. The S.C. Ports Authority wants to march to its own drummer and at its own cadence.

Harrell, R-Charleston, met this week with Jasper County and State Ports Authority officials to try to broker an agreement so that the state can have a port in Jasper County sooner as opposed to later. Harrell says he's frustrated that so much of the decades-long quest for a Jasper port is playing out in the courts.

Why rush to broker an agreement? Because other ports in the South Atlantic region are capitalizing on the expanding Asian shipping business, and South Carolina risks losing huge amounts of business. Instead of sitting on the dock and watching the business float into another port in another state, it's time to give the ships a berth in Jasper County. It is time to put this port on the fast track.

As long as there is disagreement and distrust, nothing is likely to move forward without a stern move by the state's leaders.

Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, who accompanied Harrell in Tuesday's meetings, said he was dissatisfied with answers on financing a Jasper port given by Ports Authority President and CEO Bernard Groseclose at an April meeting of a House Ways and Means subcommittee.

"We weren't getting the complete truth ... we weren't getting all the answers," Herbkersman told a reporter from The Beaufort Gazette. "Some of them have to understand that we're working on the same team."

Important issues remain to be worked out. In theory, it ought to be easy, but it has resulted in a pitched battle for years. The port can be a huge economic engine not only for Jasper County but for all of South Carolina.

A compromise among South Carolina officials makes a lot more sense than a three-way fight among officials from Jasper County, the Ports Authority and the legislature. It doesn't make sense for people who want the same thing to fight each other when the battle with a competing state will be difficult enough.