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Web posted Thursday, May
22, 2003
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Jasper
port gets Sanford blessing
RIDGELAND: Officials ecstatic over
governor's comments.
By Mark Kreuzwieser
Carolina Morning News
Word
travels fast in Jasper County when it's about the
proposed port.
County Administrator Henry
Moss said he heard that Gov. Mark Sanford had
spoken glowingly of the county's hopes for a
privately built deep-water seaport south of
Hardeeville just moments after the governor
delivered a state of the state address on Hilton
Head Island on Wednesday.
Jimmy Baker and
Parks Moss, the administrator's son, attended the
luncheon featuring Sanford's speech, and they
called Moss from their car as they were
leaving.
"They said after the governor
spoke he accepted a few questions, and one he took
was theirs, about the port," Moss said. "They were
pretty excited about it."
Baker and Parks
Moss work for Palmetto Electric
Cooperative.
"The governor said he had time
for three questions, and we submitted one," Baker
said as he drove back to Jasper County from Hilton
Head. "I hate to try to report what the governor
said, but we asked him how he felt about the
Jasper port project now, and basically he said he
initially he was opposed to it, but he has since
been convinced otherwise."
Sanford said "he
has no problem with" a port in southern Jasper
County on the Savannah River, since it will not
cost taxpayers an arm and a leg or threaten the
competitiveness of Charleston, the state's biggest
port.
Jasper County is working closely with
Stevedoring Services of America, a private
Seattle-based company, to develop a $450 million
deepwater port terminal on a portion of 1,776
acres of land that the county is trying to
condemn.
The governor also is considering
supporting a proposed commission in cooperation
with the state of Georgia to study the creation of
a South Carolina-Georgia authority to "oversee and
control" deepwater shipping activities on the
Savannah River.
Sanford said that South
Carolina has to do more to attract industry,
manufacturing and jobs, and a port that will be
built with private money is too good a deal to
pass up.
South Carolina needs to do more to
provide an atmosphere of economic growth, he said.
He touted his support for "economic clusters," and
noted that the south Beaufort County, Jasper
County and Savannah areas are in one. That cluster
can feed off an abundant, willing workforce, a
transportation network that includes interstate
highways and railroads, the Savannah River and the
Atlantic Ocean and its unique natural
environment.
Reporter Mark Kreuzwieser can
be reached at 305-0004 and
markk@lowcountrynow.com
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