RIDGELAND -- The State Ports Authority filed its final argument against Jasper County in the pending state Supreme Court lawsuit over who can build a cargo-container terminal on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River.

The five-member Supreme Court is expected to hear opening arguments in the case during the third week in September, a court official said Wednesday. The court is on summer recess and does not hear cases in July and August.

After Jasper County reached an exclusive development agreement with port builder SSA Marine in January to build a $450 million port, the State Ports Authority launched a declaratory judgment suit to define which governmental body has the superior right to build a port on the Savannah River. Jasper County has pursued a port project for more than 15 years. In September 2003, it lost its bid to condemn the 1,863 acres, which is owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

"This is the best thing for all the people of South Carolina, to get this thing behind us so we can condemn the land from Georgia and put a port there," said Harry Butler, chairman of the State Ports Authority's board of directors. "I'm glad to see the court has agreed to hear this in September. Hopefully there will be a ruling shortly after that."

The State Ports Authority controls the fourth-largest cargo container system in the country through marine ports in Charleston, George-town and Port Royal. After filing suit against Jasper County in January, the agency launched its plan for a cargo-container terminal on the site.

In the legal brief filed Monday in the Supreme Court, the State Ports Authority contends that its 1932 enabling legislation provides it exclusive powers to "promote, develop, construct, equip, maintain and operate a harbor or harbors within this state on the Savannah River."

In Jasper County's final brief, filed July 14 by the Columbia firm of Lewis, Babcock & Hawkins, the county claims the enabling legislation is neither superior nor exclusive. Its attorneys point to home rule -- a state law designed to move local government issues out of Columbia -- and the Revenue Bond Act for Utilities as statutes that allow for a county port development.

But the authority's lawyers disagree.

"There is nothing in the Home Rule Act about water-borne commerce, the operation of seaports and harbors, or any of the great littoral and maritime enterprises of ocean trade," according to the brief filed by State Ports attorneys C. Mitchell Brown and Kevin A. Hall of Columbia-based Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough.