Lawmakers push Biden for federal money to help Virginia avoid delays as it digs deeper shipping channels

Talks about the Port of Virginia deepening and widening its shipping channels to make room for larger cargo vessels have spanned several years.

It was welcome news, then, when dredges hit the Chesapeake Bay in December 2019 to start digging, the first step in a project that aims to make Hampton Roads’ port the deepest on the East Coast.

The work hasn’t stopped. Go to the west side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and you’ll find a dredging ship suctioning up mud and sand. Workers have been ahead of schedule, and expect the west section to be completed by early summer.

But while the project hasn’t hit any snags on the water, the same can’t be said for what’s been playing out on land.

Despite Virginia starting dredging work and completing required environmental sampling for future sections, the state hasn’t gotten a key designation needed to free up federal funds. Virginia and the federal government agreed to split the cost, and the money the state has set aside so far won’t cover the rest of the project, risking a delay and increased costs.

In March, Virginia’s entire Congressional delegation wrote a bipartisan letter to President Joe Biden urging him to include at least $83.7 million in funding for the project in his fiscal 2022 budget.

“The Port of Virginia is one of the Commonwealth’s most powerful economic engines,” the delegation wrote in the letter. “The deepening and widening of Norfolk Harbor will ensure the continued safe and timely passage of larger commercial and military vessels through Norfolk Harbor. The rapid growth of larger vessels entering maritime trade makes it essential that this project proceed as quickly as possible.”

Adding to the project’s uncertain timeline: In February, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner called out the just-departed Trump administration for politicizing a normally bipartisan review of these sorts of capital projects, and urged Biden’s pick for the Office of Budget and Management to ensure a nonpartisan review.

“We’ve seen a project … the Norfolk Harbor … clearly been qualified as the top project to get funded under any kind of objective analysis. But at the eleventh and a half hour, that objective analysis was thrown out the door by the previous administration’s OMB, and a political process took over,” Warner said Feb. 10 during a Senate hearing to confirm Neera Tanden as OMB director. Tanden later withdrew for unrelated reasons.

The OMB and the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works make recommendations to the White House on which projects get a so-called “new start” designation, which means the federal government has given the green light to move forward and start construction. In the navigation world, the designation is much sought after since the federal government only tends to issue one or two each year.

The Port of Houston got the one and only new start designation at the start of the year along with $19.5 million in federal funds roughly a month after it received Congressional authorization to dig up its shipping channels. Virginia, meanwhile, has had congressional authorization to dredge to 55 feet since 1986, permission that lawmakers renewed with slight changes in 2018, according to the Army Corps.

Aiming for 2024

Two years ago, Virginia paid $78 million when it awarded a contract to Weeks Marine, a dredging company out of New Jersey. The company started with the west side of the Thimble Shoal Channel, one of the main shipping arteries that leads into and out of Hampton Roads. The company is ahead of schedule and expects to be done with that section by June.

The port doesn’t need federal funds to start digging on the channel’s east side — as there’s about $105 million left in state funds to continue work, said Cathie Vick, Virginia Port Authority’s chief development and government affairs officer.

They expect to put a bid out for that section in May.

The $350 million project is broken up into segments, starting with Thimble Shoal, which will be dug down to about 56 feet and widened to 1,400 feet in certain areas, then the Atlantic Ocean Channel, where ships first enter Hampton Roads, which will be dug to 59 feet, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

If the port had received the new start designation this year, the Army Corps would have started work on the inner harbor on the Elizabeth River. That will now have to wait until later segments of the project are underway, Vick said.

“We just need the federal government to give the new start and some funding so those other pieces don’t slip behind and keep us from being able to complete the whole project in 2024,” Vick said.

There are ways for the state to put up more money, but Vick said it would “be very hesitant to do that.”

“If we exceed the non-federal portion then we put the state at a huge risk of not ever getting that reimbursed,” she said. The federal government is reimbursing Virginia because a significant portion, around 40%, of the port’s cargo goes to the midwest, either by truck or rail.

Vick hopes Biden will include Virginia in the upcoming budget, which is expected to be released in May.

Bipartisan push

The port and elected officials had high hopes to get the designation in each of the past two years. Virginia is one of many ports across the country racing to deepen and widen their shipping channels to accommodate the larger container ships at sea.

In Hampton Roads, the Thimble Shoal Channel is neither deep nor wide enough to allow for two-way ship traffic. That means when ultra-large ships arrive or leave, others have to wait for them to pass.

With that need, Warner and Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman tried lobbying for Norfolk to get the new start designation in 2019. They didn’t get it, but tried again in 2020, feeling Virginia was a “superior” proposal that brought value to not only the commonwealth but beyond, Warner said.

Warner said he was “shocked and angry” when in the waning days of the Trump administration, Houston got the designation despite Virginia’s completion of many necessary steps.

“It was kind of one of the more blatant examples of an administration blatantly doing politics,” Warner said in an interview.

But Warner and port officials said they are not trying to dwell on the past.

If Biden includes the Norfolk project in his budget request, it still needs Congressional approval. The next step is for Congress to pass an appropriations bill, which starts a 60-day clock for the Army Corps to publish a work plan. That lets Congress know how it intends to spend money on such projects as harbor deepening. That work plan names new starts for the year.

While it’s unclear what the president will do, a regional spokesperson for the White House pointed a reporter to Biden’s recent words on his American Jobs Plan. He said there doesn’t have to be partisan divisions around an issue such as infrastructure.

“These aren’t Republican bridges, Democratic airports, Republican hospitals, or a Democratic power grid,” Biden said, according to remarks provided by the White House. “Think of the transcontinental railroad, Interstate Highway System, or the Space Race. We’re one nation, united and connected.”

Gordon Rago, 757-446-2601, gordon.rago@pilotonline.com