SOUTH Ashley Corporate Center 4280 Executive Place North Suite 300 Charleston, S.C. 29405 (803) 744-5838 Telex (803) 744-5847 John C. Hayes, lil H. Wayne Beam, Ph.D. This letter is written in regard to our certification of this project under the provisions of 15 CFR 930 and the provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Program. As an overview of recent events, in a letter dated February 26, 1988, our staff requested additional information regarding spoil management; a short range dredging management plan prepared by the Georgia Department of Transportation and some additional information updating the dredging disposal estimates of the Comprehensive Plan for the Harbor. We also requested a thirty-day extension of time to allow for review and analysis of this information. Furthermore, our letter stated that should an extension not be able to be granted we had no option other than to find the project inconsistent with the provisions of our management program. On March 25, 1988, having not heard from the Savannah District regarding this project we sent another letter reconfirming our finding that this project was inconsistent with our Coastal Zone Management Program. On April 27, 1988, staff members of the Coastal Council and the Department of Health and Environmental Control met with staff members of the Savannah District to discuss this project, coordination of our certification procedures, and development of a long term spoil disposal plan for the Savannah Harbor. It is our feeling that this meeting was beneficial, resolving many of our concerns regarding this project and assisting in establishing a good working arrangement between our agencies. Therefore, we are prepared to certify that this project is consistent with South Carolina's Coastal Zone Management Program provided the following provisions are incorporated into the project: 1. The one million cubic yards of material to be dredging from the river channel slated to be deposited within spoil Area 12 will be used only to raise dike heights or it will not be deposited within Area 12. Any material that is not suitable for use in raising dike heights will be removed to Area 2A or another spoil area outside of South Carolina boundaries. All weir outfalls from Area 12 will be rerouted to flow into the Savannah River and not the Wright River. The Corps will prepare and submit to the Coastal Council a map showing the 2. 3. 4. sections of the spoil area where dikes will be raised and the anticipated schedule when dredging and dike construction will be underway. The Corps will insure that the staff of the Council has access to the site during the periods when the dredging operations are underway in order to monitor the progress of the project. The Long term Spoil Management Plan for the Harbor will be initiated and proceed as indicated in our meeting. (We look forward to participating in this important project). A monitoring program will be established to monitor effluent discharged from the disposal area. The parameters and sampling periods will be approved by the Department of Health and Environmental Control 401 water quality section and Coastal Council staff's biologist. Reports of the monitoring program will be submitted to both agencies. The Corps will require that the dredging contractor utilize best management practices to minimize downstream impacts of turbidity resulting from the project. I hope that these conditions are agreeable to you and can be incorporated into this project. We look forward to working with you and dealing with these and other issues facing the Savannah Harbor in coming years. Please contact me or Rob Mikell of my staff should you have any questions in regard to this project. Dist POC Attn: CEWRC-WLR-E (IP) This letter is written in response to your public notice of The State of South Carolina continues to find one element of the feasibility study and Final EIS inconsistent with the South Carolina Coastal Zone Management Program in accordance with Federal Regulations 15 CFR 930. (Reference our most recent letter of August 30, 1991, enclosed, which was not published in the EIS.) This element involves the disposal of dredged material into diked spail areas that discharge into sensitive coastal waters of South Carolina. Recent documentation reveals the presence of metals in the sediments located at the outfalls. The S.C. Coastal Council has asked the Savannah District Corps of Engineers to develop a plan to remove the discharges from the Wright River and to discharge into the Savannah River and Back River. The Coastal Council realizes that the implementation of such a plan may take several years; we are now asking only for a firm commitment to develop and implement such a plan in a reasonable time frame. The Corps made such a commitment in 1988 but did not proceed with the development of the plan and is now indicating an unwillingness to address this issue to our satisfaction. As background, over the past ten years the South Carolina Coastal Council has been actively involved with the developments that have taken place within the Savannah Harbor. Our agency has made difficult Coastal Zone Federal Consistency and Permitting decisions to protect our sensitive coastal waters in the Savannah river area, including the requirement to construct diked spoil disposal areas and to address concerns related to the tide gate. Staff members from the Coastal Council and other South Carolina resource agencies have participated in the Salinity Study to address complicated issues regarding the correction of problems created by past federal actions. Because of our involvement with the Savannah District, I feel that decisions have been made, by both the Coastal Council and the Corps, to maintain and improve coastal water quality in the Savannah Harbor area. The State of South Carolina has been cooperative with the State of Georgia in the past in allowing the wetlands of our State to be used for spoil disposal areas with proper safeguards in place. We have attempted to work with the Corps staff to meet the engineering and design requirements to operate a dredge spoil maintenance facility. However, the issue of relocating the outfall pipes from the disposal areas away from the Wright River and into the Back and Savannah Rivers is of long-standing concem to the Coastal Council. Our concerns over the locations of these discharge pipes date from October 1985 when the problem was first identified through research by the Marine Resources Division of the S.C. Wildlife and Marine Resources Department and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control following a large fish kill. The Corps committed to study the feasibility of relocating the pipes away from the Wright River in 1988. The Long Term Management Strategy for the Harbor was identified by Corps staff as being the most appropriate vehicle to address this issue; it was scheduled to begin in 1988 and has not yet been started. The Coastal Council feels that this is a problem capable of being resolved through planning and engineering design, but we do not feel that there is a willingness on the part of the Corps to seriously address this problem. Two of our letters to the Corps on this project are contained in the EIS, pages 10-67 through 10-69 and pages 10-72 through 10-79. Our most recent letter of August 30, 1991 was transmitted to the Corps after publication date and is not found in the EIS (copy attached). This letter addresses which of our initial concerns have been resolved through negotiations and discussions with the staff of the Savannah District and other involved agencies. However, these meetings have failed to reach a resolution on the one issue remaining of concern to South Carolina -- the relocation of the discharge pipes. We have no other choice but to disagree with the Federal consistency determination in the EIS and continue to find the project inconsistent with the South Carolina Coastal Zone Management Program. Our formal consistency determination is on file with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District. The S.C. Coastal Council is available to discuss a resolution in this matter. August 30, 1991 This letter is written in response to your letter of July 18, 1991. Thank you for sending the sampling results from the weir out falls and other information pertaining to water quality associated with the spoil disposal areas along the lower Savannah River. Your sampling results address dissolved oxygen, turbidity, suspended solids, and other factors, but do not address the presence of metals and other contaminents. We agree that the diked disposal areas offer the best method to contain pollutants from dredged material and for that reason have consistently maintained that all disposal areas be diked. As you are no doubt aware, our agencies have a long history of dealing with this issue. Our concern, however, is not with the spoil area, but the location of the outfall pipes. Simply put, we have long-standing concerns that metal and other pollutants (Chromimum, Lead, Copper, and Barium) have been accumulating in the Wright River adjacent to the outfall structures from the diked disposal areas. I refer you to the information from the South Carolina Wildlife and Marine Resources Department we sent to Mr. Bobby Gladden of your agency (see enclosed monitoring results, it appears you did not receive this information until after your letter of July 18, 1991). This area of the Wright River is extremely remote and is an unlikely area for such high metals to occur. There has also been at least one major fishkill and several cases of illegal ditching of wetland critical area to facilitate drainage from these spoil areas. We continue to have concerns about the location of these discharge points and feel very strongly that this is an issue which needs to be addressed by the Corps. In a March 23, 1988 letter to I.B. Johnson from Paul Metz Jr., Chief of Environmental Resource Branch (enclosed), the Corps agreed to study the feasibility of changing the direction of flow from the spoil areas away from the Wright River and into the Savannah. This has not yet been done. |