SAVANNAH, GA - President George Bush's fiscal year 2009 Civil Works budget, released February 4, 2008, contains $61,021,000 for projects, studies and operations and maintenance in the Savannah District. The President included the...
ELBERTON, GA - President George Bush's fiscal year 2009 Civil Works budget, released February 4, 2008, contains $61,021,000 for projects, studies and operations and maintenance in the Savannah District. The President included the funds for the Savannah District in a total civil works request of $10.502 billion he sent to Congress.
The budget contains $700,000 for continuing studies on the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project to cover the completion of the General Revaluation Report (GRR) and Tier II Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by the middle of 2009. This money will allow the Savannah District to provide funding for the oversight of the GRR study and the completion of Tier II EIS for public and agency reviews. The US Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Commerce and Interior, and the Department of the Army, must approve the project and its mitigation plan before construction can begin.
In addition, the budget contains $57.1 million for the continued operations and maintenance of our three Multipurpose Projects along the upper Savannah River Basin and the on-going maintenance of the Brunswick and Savannah deep-water ports. The President’s budget request for the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway again contained funding for hydrographic surveys only. The Richard B. Russell Dam and Lake project near Elberton, GA, was included in the budget request for an additional $1.45 million for the continuation of environmental monitoring and the oversight of one remaining hydropower contract for the installation of the static start system to operate the pump back units inside the dam.
The President proposed increasing the operations and maintenance dredging and related actions for the Savannah Harbor and the Brunswick Harbor. Both are federal harbor projects.
Final amounts of funding for these projects in the Savannah District will depend on the appropriations actions taken by the U.S. Congress over the remainder of this Federal fiscal year.