Mon, Jul 30, 2007

By HANK ROWLAND

The Brunswick News

Sen. Jeff Chapman envisions a day when the hustle and bustle of the maritime shipping industry in Georgia will be more than the coastal ports can handle.

Since the state has only two deepwater harbors capable of facilitating the huge ocean-going vessels, it will, sooner or later, have to look elsewhere to accommodate imports.

Chapman, R-Brunswick, and other members of the Senate Study Committee on Increasing Cargo Capacity already have a certain area in mind, but it's not anywhere near the ocean.

They want to look inland.

The car carrier ship Tampere of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen line heads out to sea, passing by the St. Simons Island pier after unloading its cargo at Colonel's Island. (Bobby Haven/The Brunswick News)
The concept is simple: Load cargo containers arriving by ship onto train cars and rail to an inland staging site, where they can be loaded onto trucks and transported to their final destinations.

Chapman, who formerly served on the Jasper Ports Committee, was appointed to the Senate Study Committee on Increasing Cargo Capacity by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. He is one of seven senators who will discuss and study options between now and the start of the 2008 session of the Georgia General Assembly in January.

The committee will meet as many as five times by that point.

"The primary goal is to think ahead before it becomes an issue and do what we can to maximize our ports and increase efficiency – get cargo in and get it out as quickly as we can," Chapman said.

There are other advantages as well, he said.

"This allows jobs to develop in outlying rural communities where these containers would be off-loaded to trucks," he said.

"In addition, by quickly moving cargo out of the port area, this will decrease port congestion and allow other ships to move in more quickly. It is far too expensive for ship owners to sit idle waiting for entrance to our ports. That wastes expensive fuel and valuable time."

Chapman said Savannah is almost to that point now.

"We have two (deepwater) ports and we will be studying both," he said.

Other members of the committee are Sens. Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, Michael Meyer von Bremen, D-Albany, George Hooks, D-Americus, Jeff Mullis, R- Chickamauga, Ronnie Chance, R-Tyrone and Joseph Carter, R-Tifton.