Jasper County wants to partner with private port developer SSA Marine to build a $450 million terminal on 1,863 acres owned by the Georgia. The land, used to store dredge spoil from the Port of Savannah, in Jasper County.
Georgia last week rejected a Jasper County offer to buy the land for $8.63 million. Jasper last week filed to condemn the property. Earlier last week, the S.C. State Port Authority stepped into the picture with a plan to take control and build a port.
Complicating the issue further is authority claimed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it alone controls the fate of the property, not Georgia, South Carolina or Jasper County.
As if to throw mud in the eye of everyone, Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, this week excoriated the S.C. Ports Authority for thinking of expansion anywhere except in the Charleston area.
McConnell, Senate president pro tem, said Tuesday at a meeting of 200 members of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce, that "not a nickel" of state money should go to the Jasper Port until the $500 million North Charleston port expansion is complete.
Some obfuscation may be in the works here. As a Charleston senator, McConnell has to take a parochial position. But opposition to a port in Jasper County may have more to do with transportation issues than with port expansion. Expansion of the port to North Charleston would bring investment in roads, which the Charleston area needs.
However, substantially fewer dollars would be required to build four-lane roads from U.S. 17 and I-95 to the proposed Jasper port site, according to Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head.
Richardson also contends that it would be totally irresponsible for South Carolina to allow Georgia to build a port in or near Jasper County. It would be taking business away from the Palmetto State.
But a South Carolina economist thinks room for compromise may exist. Doug Woodward, a University of South Carolina research economist, told The Associated Press last week that double-digit world trade expansion offer opportunity. Maybe that opportunity could be for cooperation between the two states -- and Jasper County.
Cooperation also must come from the Corps of Engineers, which may require pressure by the congressional delegation of both states.
Such unprecedented cooperation, indeed, would create strange bedfellows. But stranger things have happened.