The Project

     The North Carolina State Ports Authority has purchased a 600-acre tract of land on the Cape Fear River approximately one mile north of the City of Southport, and plans to construct a marine container terminal to handle 3,000,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) annually.  The terminal would be called the North Carolina International Terminal.

     Project Overview  The container terminal and its function.
     The North Carolina State Ports Authority  What it is.


The Site

     The  600-acre tract, currently undeveloped, is bordered on the west and north by the property of Progress Energy, where two nuclear electric generating plants are located.  Immediately to the north of that is the Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point.

     The Terminal Site  A description of the terminal site.
     The Brunswick Nuclear Plant A description of the nuclear plant and its cooling water canals

     Sunny Point The Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point
     The Industrial Zone  A large area of Brunswick County between Southport and Boiling Spring Lakes zoned for heavy industrial use.


Vessels and the Channel

     The terminal would accommodate container ships with an overall length of 1.263 feet and a beam of 185 feet.  Such vessels, such as the Emma Maersk, are the largest ships in service today, larger than any tanker in service, larger than the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the largest naval vessel in the world.
 

     The Container Ships

     The State Ports Authority plans require the dredging of a new channel,  600 feet wide and 52 feet deep, from the port location approximately 17 miles out to sea at the Cape Fear.  Such a channel cannot follow the existing channel to  the river mouth, but must be cut through shallow water, islands and marshland to the east of the existing channel.

     The Channel  The route of the new channel
     The Aquifer  How the channel would affect the groundwater supply


Railroad

     The State Ports Authority proposes to ship half of the containers received by rail, over the tracks currently passing through Boiling Spring Lakes.  Ten to 14 trains a day, most 10,000 feet (almost two miles) long, will be required.

     The Railroad


Roads

     The containers not carried by rail will move by truck. 900,000 movements annually, 4400 each day, 275 per hour, on average, with peaks of 5700 per day and 414 per hour.   A new four-lane highway and new connecting roads through the northern part of the Southport area will be required to reach interstate highways.

     Highway Plans  Overview of the proposals of the State Ports Authority's consultants for new roads to connect with the proposed container terminal


Cost

     Consultants to the State Ports Authority, CH2M Hill, Inc. estimate that the cost of the proposed terminal would be approximately $2.5 billion.  Of that, the consultants designate the cost of dredging and highway improvements, approximately $1,100,000,000, to be paid from public funds, not to be recovered in revenues.  Based on recent experience in dredging the Cape Fear River, costs may exceed the estimate of the consultants by $700 million.

     Estimated Costs  Costs estimates of State Ports Authority's consultants. 

     Benefit/Cost Analysis Analysis of the benefits and costs of the terminal project and related infrastructure

     Business Plan Review  Analysis of the business plan for the container terminal

     Cost Sharing  Formulae for Federal and State shares of dredging cost

Click on the underscored items for brief  reports in .pdf format.  For more complete information, go to the section on State Ports Authority Reports.