SAVANNAH ― To deepen Georgia’s robust world trade route, the Savannah River, the state Ports Authority will dig deep into its own coffers.
The operator of the third-busiest cargo port in the United States has agreed to invest $8 million or more for a feasibility study into deepening and widening the 33-mile-long shipping channel. Typically, the federal government, through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, funds harbor expansion studies. The agency is now encouraging ports to pay for the initial step in a process that includes studying, obtaining permits and dredging trade waterways.
The Ports Authority, which recorded a $200 million profit in the most recently concluded fiscal year, has already signed on engineering firms and other consultants to conduct the study, CEO Griff Lynch said Tuesday. The goal is to complete the study and get it reviewed in time for the project to be included in a late-2028 federal funding bill. If that timeline is met, the deepening could be completed in the early 2030s.
“We don’t want to be slowed up; we want this on the fast track,” said Alec Poitevint, chairman of the Ports Authority’s board of directors. “So we’re taking all the action to make sure that we can be on that fast track.”
Ports Authority officials are familiar with how long expansion projects can take. The last deepening, completed in 2022, stretched on for more than 25 years from study phase to completion as the project met delays due both to funding and legal challenges related to environmental concerns.
In calling for the river to be dredged again to 50 feet or deeper, Ports Authority officials had voiced hopes that the next deepening could be completed in a decade once the U.S. Congress approved and funded the feasibility study.
Lawmakers ordered the report in late 2024 and seeded the study in January of this year with a $500,000 appropriation. Weeks later, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers leadership notified Ports Authority officials that their investing in the study would better position Savannah to get funding for the deepening.
Determining feasibility focuses largely on two areas: the economic benefit to the nation in investing in a project at one port over another; and determining the scale — appropriate depth and width of the expanded channel — that will be least harmful environmentally.
Ports Authority funding of the study could pose a conflict of interest. Leaders of environmental groups who have previously voiced concerns about the next deepening had not returned requests for comment as of Tuesday afternoon.
The study’s findings will be closely scrutinized given the challenges of the 2022 deepening. The Ports Authority advocated to deepen the river to 49 feet but environmental considerations led to a recommendation to dredge to only 47 feet. That study found further deepening would impact Savannah River fisheries as well as the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge adjacent to one of the port terminals.
Another issue was saltwater intrusion into the Floridan aquifer, a 100,000-square-mile freshwater underground reservoir and a source of drinking water for 10 million residents of the Southeast. The deeper the river, the farther upstream seawater is carried by incoming tides, increasing the chances of saltwater intrusion into the aquifer and the fouling of drinking water.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
The feasibility study will move forward at the same time the Ports Authority launches the first phase of a new cargo terminal along the Savannah River. The U.S. Maritime Administration, a federal government agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation, recently awarded the Ports Authority a $53 million grant to construct a 1,500-foot dock for a lay berth on Hutchinson Island, on the shipping channel’s north bank near the city’s historic downtown.
The Ports Authority previously announced plans to build a 395-acre cargo container terminal on the site and has begun the permit application process for the lay berth. Construction could begin later this year or early next year, Lynch said.
The berth will be used as a layover point for vessels waiting to offload cargo at the Ports Authority’s other two terminals along the river. Lay berths cut the time between ship visits from 12 hours to three hours as freighters don’t have to wait for departing ships to clear the 33-mile-long channel before coming upriver to the docks.
The river deepening and Hutchinson Island port terminal are centerpieces in the Ports Authority’s long-term plan to double its cargo handling capacity. Savannah is the nation’s fastest-growing port and is forecast to see a 54% rise in business over the next decade as countries in southwest Asia, particularly India, expand manufacturing bases.
Ocean carriers move cargo between southwest Asia and the U.S. by crossing the Atlantic, meaning the East Coast will see increased volumes. Trade with China, the world’s manufacturing leader, comes to America via the Pacific Ocean with the majority imported through West Coast terminals. Savannah and East Coast ports also see business from China as ships traverse the Panama Canal.
Trade remains relatively slow in the short term for the Ports Authority. Container volumes were off 14% in April from the same month last year and are 2.5% down through the first 10 months of the fiscal year, which runs from July to June.
The Ports Authority is seeing increased business so far in May, Lynch said, and June is projected to be strong as well, but below last year’s volumes when shippers rushed to move excess inventory into the U.S. as President Donald Trump’s tariffs began to take effect.
“Our customers are managing through a softer market with higher operating costs,” Lynch said. “The Georgia Ports Authority remains focused on delivering capacity for the longer term so when the market changes we are ready to seamlessly absorb their growth.”
Georgia’s port facilities support 651,000 jobs and contribute $174 billion in sales activity annually in the state, according to a 2025 University of Georgia study.
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