Getting Charleston ready for the world’s largest vessels

Charleston, South Carolina, will soon have the deepest port on the east coast – ready for some of the world’s largest vessels.

When the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) initially started dredging Charleston Harbor in the mid-nineteenth century, principal entry channels were as shallow as 12 feet deep at low tide, forcing approaching ships into treacherous entry procedures and, over time, closing the harbor off from larger, more modern vessels and an ever-globalizing trade network.

At the time, the dredging work was believed so vital to the regional economy that in 1878 the News & Courier – now Post and Courier – wrote: “[The] commercial effect will undoubtedly be great. There will no longer be any doubt … Charleston will soon become the receiving and distributing point for a vast section of the country now supplied by longer lines and at greater cost by Baltimore and New York. The field is open to Charleston.”

Today, in addition to maintenance dredging, Charleston District is deepening the harbor from 45 feet – a federally-authorized depth it achieved in its most recent deepening project which completed in 2004 – to 52 feet.

This work is anything but simple.

Stretching across roughly 40 miles of open ocean and inner channels, the dredging project is broken up into five separate contracts and has required a historic number of dredgers to work around-the-clock to complete the deepening work by the end of next year.

At one point in the project’s five-year timeline, nine dredgers worked simultaneously, excavating and pumping millions of cubic yards of silt and sand from the ocean floor, across various points in the harbor, the most ever seen at one time in Charleston District’s 150-year history.

In fall 2017, the USACE Charleston District awarded the first two construction contracts of $47 million and $214 million to Great Lakes Dredging Co. (GLDD) to deepen the Entrance Channel to 54 feet.

Dredging work began in February 2018.

In August 2019, the District awarded the third dredging construction contract of $124 million to Norfolk Dredging Co. This will create a 52-foot depth from the Lower Harbor up Wando River to Wando Welch Terminal.

Work also involves widening the turning basin of the Wando River from 1,400 feet to 1,650 feet, allowing two 14,000-TEU-and-above ships to easily pass one another and turn around near the Wando Welch Terminal without restrictions.

In September 2020, the USACE Charleston District awarded the fourth and fifth dredging construction contracts.

The fourth contract of $53 million was awarded to GLDD.

This will create a 52-foot depth from the Lower Harbor up the Cooper River to the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston, enabling 20,000-TEU vessels to access SC Ports’state-of-the-art container terminal.

The fifth and final contract of $32 million was awarded to Marinex Construction Inc. This will create a 48-foot depth from the Leatherman Terminal up the Cooper River to the North Charleston Terminal, which is slated for completion in 2022.

In May 2021, project partners achieved a major milestone when a 52-foot depth was reached in front of Wando Welch Terminal.

Charleston Harbor has been a key economic driver for more than 300 years, and the ongoing work to deepen the harbor will ensure South Carolina’s economic success for generations to come.

The $565 million deepening project is fully funded through state and federal dollars.

The Charleston Harbor Deepening Project began in 2011 with a study from USACE, which determined a federal interest in the deepening of Charleston Harbor and cited the project as the best value for scarce public infrastructure dollars.

It has since progressed more quickly than any federal deepening project to date, with tremendous support by elected officials on local, state and federal levels, as well as from business leaders and the community.

In 2012, the SC General Assembly set aside $300 million, the full estimated state share of the deepening construction costs. This decision to designate dollars for the project was invaluable in showing the federal government that South Carolina is fully invested in the project; the deepening project was named one of President Obama’s We Can’t Wait initiatives.

The project received its Chiefs Report from USACE in September 2015, greenlighting it to move forward. The deepening initiative secured Congressional authorization in December 2016 and received the critical “new start” designation in May 2017.

The project secured the first round of federal appropriations in fiscal year 2017 with $17.5 million in the USACE’s work plan.

USACE then allocated $49 million in fiscal year 2018 and $41.4 million in fiscal year 2019 for a total of $108 million of the federal share thus far. The S.C. Legislature also allocated an additional $50 million loan for the project.