Moss serves as a private consultant to the world's largest port developer, SSA Marine, which is negotiating with Jasper County on how to turn land on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River into a $450 million, 1,776 acre deep-water port.
"Someone's going to build that port down there," said Moss, a former Jasper County administrator. "There's too much economic benefit down there not to build it."
He said the first phase of the port would take roughly three years to finish and predicted it would bring 300 dock jobs and 1,800 to 3,000 spin-off jobs.
Moss said the area economy is too dependent on retirement and tourism services and the port is a way to create new high-paying jobs in the Lowcountry.
The land eyed for the port is owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation and is used as a dumping ground for dredge spoil from the Savannah River. An attempt to condemn the land
for public use was turned down by the state Supreme Court in September of 2003 on the grounds there was not enough public interest.
"We have been told that we couldn't do it the way we wanted but there is a way for it to be done," Moss said Wednesday. "We are rassling around with some of the finer legal minds in South Carolina."
"There is a team of lawyers working on it," he added, though reluctant to estimate when a new condemnation plan would be filed.
Moss talked of those pushing for the port being "rebuffed politically" by different groups on both sides of the Savannah River.
"I went to the South Carolina Ports Authority and got kicked out; I went to the Georgia Ports Authority and got kicked out; I went to them together and got kicked out," said Moss.
But he said "strange bedfellows get made when things get imminent," and political backing could arrive sooner than later.
"We've got two state governments that have financial hardships and you've got one private company with commitments of up to $400 million dollars," said Moss. "Now, how they team up, I don't know. That remains to be seen."
Remembering standing on the Eugene Talmadge Bridge over the Savannah River a few years back, Moss spoke of seeing on one bank an "economic engine" in the Port of Savannah and "on the other side they were pumping mud."
But the Jasper port has no downside, Moss said, as he related that SSA Marine is offering full funding for road and sewer costs and there would be no environmental drawbacks.