South Carolina Port Authority gets free access to dredge dispoal site

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

31 Jul 2008

The Daily Journal newspaper says the US Department of the Interior has agreed to give the South Carolina Ports Authority free access to a dredge disposal site off Charleston Harbour.  The SPA plans to use the material as fill for about 57 acres in construction of a container terminal in North Charleston. The SPA estimates access to fill material from the federally controlled site will save on construction costs and reduce the project’s environmental footprint because the site is nearby - seven miles off the coast.
Purchasing fill material from a commercial source and having it delivered from afar would have cost an additional US$40 million, the authority estimated.
The terminal project is slated to cost a total of $550 million for construction and equipment, but SPA spokesman Byron Miller said many of the jobs have come in under budget. The savings from the fill access was not factored into initial estimates, he said, because securing federal approval to utilize the Ocean Dredged Material Disposal Site took months.

Source: Dredging News