Trains, boats and disagreement in SC over rail access to $525 million port terminal

By Bruce Smith, AP
Thursday, September 9, 2010

Lawmakers wrestle with rail access to new SC port

CHARLESTON, S.C. — South Carolina lawmakers began wrestling Thursday with providing rail access to a new $525 million port terminal as the state works to regain its competitive position among other East Coast ports.

Lawmakers were urged to develop a plan that doesn’t jeopardize a $1 billion North Charleston urban renewal project or harm a predominantly black community nearby.

South Carolina has a “a unique, one-time opportunity” with larger ships that will call after the Panama Canal is widened in 2014, said State Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau, and chairman of the Review and Oversight Commission on the South Carolina Ports Authority.

He said the state needs to be prepared or business will flow to other ports. Charleston, once the second-largest container port on the East Coast, has in recent years fallen behind. Now it’s fourth, behind New York-New Jersey, southeast Virginia and Savannah, Ga.

North Charleston and CSX Corp. have proposed a rail terminal on land near the new port that is being built at the old Charleston Naval Base.

“You can truly make a difference but you have to fix this rail infrastructure,” said Frederik Eliasson, vice president for emerging markets for CSX Transportation.

But competitor Norfolk Southern’s trains could only reach that terminal over CSX tracks.

“The proposal would place the port, not just Norfolk Southern, at a tremendous competitive disadvantage,” said Robert Martinez, vice president for business development for Norfolk Southern. “Every major new terminal on the East Coast has provided for equivalent major rail access.”

Norfolk Southern supports a terminal on another piece of old base land where both lines would have access.

But Norfolk Southern trains would reach the site from the north, rumbling by North Charleston’s Noisette Project — a $1 billion environmentally sensitive redevelopment of the city’s core.

Ray Anderson, an assistant to North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, said the city and the State Ports Authority signed an agreement years ago dividing up the base land and keeping the port activities at the south end.

“We have what we think was an agreement. We have invested vast amounts of money” in the Noisette area, he said.

But Grooms questioned whether that agreement between the city and the authority binds the state. “There is no agreement with the state of South Carolina,” he said.

Eliasson, of CSX, said the proposed rail terminal “is the only plan that truly lives up to the promise the state and the Ports Authority made to North Charleston.”

But city councilman Michael Brown, representing the Union Heights community, said the CSX plan would mean more trains through the predominantly black enclave.

“It seems your plan is to enhance the quality of life in North Charleston at the expense of Union Heights in the south,” state Sen. Hugh Leatherman. R-Florence, told Eliasson.

State Sen. Robert Ford urged the rail lines to work together, as they have in other cities, to reach a solution.

“We need a state port and we need it now,” he said. “We need it yesterday.”

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