The Coastal Conservation League wants to sit down with State Ports
Authority officials and review what it says are highly flawed analyses of
how a new North Charleston port would affect traffic on Interstate 26 and
the air quality in the surrounding North Charleston neighborhoods.
If the port refuses to talk, then the nonprofit environmental group
will probably fight the port's federal permit in court, league project
director Nancy Vinson said Thursday.
"We're challenging them publicly to sit down and work out these
problems rather than going down this legal track that won't be productive
for anyone," she said.
The State Ports Authority currently is seeking state and federal
permits for a new $600 million terminal that could handle three container
ships at once, and its spokesman said it would be willing to meet with the
league.
"We've not received any contact from the Coastal Conservation League,"
spokesman Byron Miller said Thursday. "If they wish to sit down, I'm sure
we'd entertain that. But at the end of the day, the permits are issued by
regulatory bodies, and if they're asserting that these bodies are inept
and incapable of issuing a permit, then that's bigger than what we can
satisfy by sitting around a table."
Vinson and league executive director Dana Beach said their concerns
focus on two points: They fear the new terminal will increase traffic more
dramatically than predicted in the port's environmental impact study, and
they say the study fails to properly assess resulting air pollution.
On the traffic issue, they said I-26 will get choked with traffic - to
the point of having a failing grade - if the port were built, and the
port's impact study should consider the need to widen about a 5-mile
stretch of the interstate. That could cost more than $100 million.
Beach said the container terminal isn't the only thing increasing the
interstate's traffic, but it does play a role.
"The port has the not enviable position of being able to force this
issue in the public arena," he added. "This is the most important
industrial, commuter corridor in the Lowcountry, if not the state. The
corridor will be gridlocked earlier than 2012. You're not going to be able
to get from Point A to Point B."
Vinson noted the study predicts container growth would be only 3.6
percent a year, but the SPA averaged about 7 percent growth a year during
the past decade.
Miller said the study estimates growth of 4.3 percent a year, which the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers believes is reasonable.
The league hired its own consultant, Smart Mobility Inc. of Norwich,
Vt., to review the port study, and they concluded, "The traffic generated
by the container terminal will cause I-26 failure."
Miller said the authority supports I-26 improvements, but that studies
show that less than 7 percent of its afternoon peak traffic would be
related to the port.
"Commercial shipments already aim to avoid peak-hour congestion," he
said.
Vinson also said the study's air quality modeling is "very flawed" but
that the port could help solve that problem by taking several steps, such
as requiring ships to switch to cleaner-burning fuels when they reach 25
miles from the port, using electric rather than diesel container cranes
and yard handling equipment, and plugging ships into the electric grid
while in port so they don't have to burn diesel for power.
"There are a lot of things that could be done that they aren't even
considering," she said.
Miller noted the Ports Authority is spending $33 million to buy four
new electric cranes from China and will install them along Charleston's
waterfront next month.
He also said the authority's $9.6 million mitigation plan was done in
cooperation with ecological agencies and environmental interest groups.
That effort includes $1 million to preserve Morris Island, another $1
million to protect other lands and several community projects.
The Corps of Engineers, which is coordinating work on the federal port
permit, is expected to make its decision in April.
Reach Robert Behre at rbehre@postandcourier.com or
937-5771.
