Army Corps: State Not Quite Ready To Break Ground On Savannah Port
After clearing a crucial legislative hurdle earlier this week, the state is still not quite ready to break ground on the Port of Savannah deepening.As heard on the radio
President Barack Obama Tuesday signed the Water Resources Development Act, a step the administration said was necessary in order to authorize hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for the project.
Many local and state lawmakers cheered his final signature, saying it was the last in a long list of hurdles to green light the project more than a decade in the making.
“Well, we wouldn’t consider that by itself a green light,” said Russell Wicke, a spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineer’s Savannah District, which will oversee the entire project.
Wicke said the local Corps office is still waiting for the go ahead from the national Corps and the office of management and budget.
“Once we get approval for them, that is the green light for us to advance into negotiations,” he said.
Wicke said that approval would allow the Army Corps and the state to start negotiations for a Project Partnership Agreement, which would set out how the cost of the proposed $706 million project would be divided between the two.
Calls to the national headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers as to when and if approval might come did not receive a response before airtime.
Wicke, however, said if all goes to plan, the Corps could break ground in December.
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