Barge delivers first cargo up Savannah River in 40 years

When a massive piece of equipment moved up the Savannah River to Augusta from Georgia Ports Authority's Ocean Terminal recently, it marked the first time since the Carter Administration that cargo has been barged from Savannah to its old-time trading partner some 200 miles upriver.

A 700,000 pound syngas converter, used to produce anhydrous ammonia, arrived at Ocean Terminal last month on the vessel BBC Vesuvius bound for PCS Nitrogen in Augusta. It was offloaded from the ship with the help of Stevens Towing and the Vesuvius' onboard crane.

"This demonstrates Savannah's ability to move super-sized cargo inland via river barge," said incoming GPA executive director Griff Lynch. "It's a useful option when a cargo's size and weight complicate overland transit.

"The GPA and our partners in the Savannah market have the right equipment and expertise to handle these specialized moves safely and efficiently."

Larry Walker, project manager for PCS Nitrogen, agreed.

"I was onsite at the port for the move," Walker said. "There was very good communication on the port's part. They worked very well with us to accommodate our needs on this move."

Once off the ship, the huge converter was loaded onto a Stevens Towing barge for the trip upriver.

"We were responsible for moving the vessel up the river and off the barge," said Ross Miller, sales and marketing manager for Stevens Towing. "As a whole, it went very well."

Thinking out of the box

The converter left the barge at the New River Lock and Dam boat ramp, near the Augusta Airport. From there, Guy M. Turner Trucking company took over delivery to the PCS Nitrogen plant in Augusta.

"It became very evident that with the weight and dimensions of the piece, it was not going to be possible to truck it all the way from the port in Savannah, so we had to come up with an alternative plan," said Marvin Gross, regional manager for Guy M. Turner Trucking.

It was a plan that required more than a little creativity.

"We had to bring in a portable bridge to jump Butler Creek," Gross said. "In conjunction with the PCS Nitrogen folks, we obtained permission to use the levee to take it to the back entrance to the nitrogen plant."

The city of Augusta owns and maintains the levee in that area. The city's main requirement was that the project couldn't cut into the levee.

In preparation for the move, the Barnett Construction company used 250 loads of dirt to build a 200-foot long ramp with an easy 5-percent slope to get the truck atop the levee. Upon arrival at the PCS plant, Southway Crane used two 800-ton capacity cranes to lift the converter to its vertical position.

"This was all done by Georgia companies," Gross said. "It was a cool project."

Stevens Towing's Miller noted that there has been little barge traffic moving north of Savannah for several years, adding the CSX railroad bridge at Clyo had not been opened since 2007.

"There has been a little bit of barge traffic up the Savannah River, but nothing as far as Augusta for a long time," he said.

Miller said his company is interested in barging more cargo up to Augusta and has bids on other projects.

"Now that we've done it and we know how to do it, we would be willing to do it again," he said, adding that such moves require early preparation.

"This move was planned more than a year in advance based on the best time to do it on the river," he said. "The water levels are key - you can't do it during drought, during the summer."

Gross said his trucking company would also be interested in moving super-sized cargo in this fashion.

A nostalgic move

While it wasn't necessarily oversized, cargo regularly moved along the river between Savannah and Augusta in the mid-20th century.

With the 1937 completion of the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam, some 13 miles south of Augusta, and such upstream reservoirs like Lake Hartwell, the river was navigable by freight barges between Augusta and the Atlantic Ocean.

Charles Anderson has been president and CEO of RBW Logistics in Augusta for more than 30 years. He's worked for the company, founded on the river as Richmond Bonded Warehouse, for more than four decades.

"Around 1960, the Augusta Port Authority was formed at what came to be known as the Augusta State Dock," he said.

"One of its first customers was a company known as Chilean Nitrate, which shipped fertilizer from South America into the Port of Savannah in the early 1960s, where it was put on bulk barges and brought up the river to the State Dock, bagged and sold to farmers."

Another early company that used the river, Anderson said, was Merry Brick - now Boral Brick.

"They would load barges with pallets of red brick bound eventually for Florida."

Cox Newsprint, later called Augusta Newsprint bloaded huge rolls of newsprint on barges heading to south Florida and the Miami Herald.

"In 1972, I helped load the last newsprint to go down the river," he said.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a company that moved barrels of oil on barges and also a company in Augusta that shredded cars and loaded them onto barges for the steel mill in Georgetown, S.C., Anderson said.

"But the river wasn't being dredged and that didn't last long," he said. "It's been a good 30 years now since the last load of shredded steel was sent downriver."

Indeed, records indicate the maintenance of the channel for commercial shipping ended in 1979.