Feds want suit over SC pollution permit dismissed
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Attorneys for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say conservation groups suing over a $650 million deepening of the Savannah River shipping channel lack the standing to bring the lawsuit because they have not been harmed and that the case itself is premature.
In a court filing Monday, the corps asked U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel to dismiss the suit that contends a South Carolina pollution permit is needed for the project.
The lawsuit argues the permit is needed because deepening the 38-mile shipping channel will dredge up toxic cadmium in the river silt. It contends the material will be dumped on the South Carolina side of the river that divides the two states.
The Georgia ports want the channel deepened to handle larger ships that will call when the Panama Canal is widened in two years. Last week, the corps issued a final environmental impact statement on the project.
The lawsuit was filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center, brought on behalf of the Savannah Riverkeeper based in Augusta, Ga., the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.
In the response, an attorney for the corps wrote the case is premature and the plaintiffs have not been harmed. The plaintiffs' claims are speculative not fit for judicial review," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney James Leventis Jr.
"The final nature of the discharges is particularly speculative" because the deepening still must be approved by the secretaries of interior and commerce and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"There is no hardship to the plaintiffs in deferring review," he wrote. "Discharges into South Carolina lands and waters from the project will not begin for at least another year and thus none of the harms alleged by the plaintiffs will occur before that time."
He also noted the state Department of Health and Environmental Control has reviewed the project and issued a water quality permit for the deepening.
"Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that a ruling from the court requiring the corps to get some additional unspecified permit form DHEC would do anything to address the environmental harms alleged by the plaintiffs," he wrote.
The filing noted DHEC has ordered mitigation including machines to replenish oxygen in the water and the use of rock and other clean fill to block off brackish channels and increase the flow of fresh water into the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.
That clean water permit has been the source of controversy that the South Carolina Supreme Court will have to sort out.
A state lawsuit brought by the same plaintiffs as well as the Conservation Voters of South Carolina contends the permit approved by the DHEC board last year is illegal because state lawmakers six years ago gave authority over river dredging decisions to the state Savannah River Maritime Commission.
South Carolina lawmakers have also said the permit gives an advantage to the Georgia ports that are in fierce competition for business with Charleston, where a study of deepening the Charleston Harbor shipping channel is also under way.
Lawmakers this year passed a law retroactively suspending DHEC's ability to make dredging decisions involving the river. Gov. Nikki Haley vetoed the law, only to be overridden by the General Assembly.
Last fall, Haley asked the DHEC board to hear Georgia's appeal of the water permit after the staff of the environmental agency initially denied it.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal flew to Columbia to request the review. Haley said Deal made a reasonable request and she did not pressure the board for a specific outcome.
Minutes before the appeal was to be heard, the agency reached a settlement with the Georgia Ports Authority and corps and the DHEC board quickly approved it.
