Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware has long sought to build a new port on the Delaware River at Edgemoor to better handle modern ship traffic and create hundreds of new blue-collar jobs. The project has been stymied for years by lawsuits and permitting issues though, and now a major advocate is signaling that he may be ready to walk away from it.
A fed-up Port of Wilmington labor leader, who has maintained an icy relationship with Delaware’s governor, told state officials on Tuesday that he will petition New Jersey to build a new container terminal on its side of the Delaware River.
Making the comments during a meeting of a Delaware state board that oversees the Port of Wilmington, union leader Bill Ashe Jr. said he is turning to New Jersey after Delaware’s plan to expand its port through construction of a new container terminal in Edgemoor had suffered years of delays.
“I talked to some of my bosses in New Jersey and New York, and my plans are to try and make them go to Salem (New Jersey) and open up a terminal,” Ashe said during the public meeting of the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation.
A spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declined to comment for this story.
Ashe holds considerable sway in organized labor, as he serves in a dual role for the International Longshoremen’s Association, as president of Local 1694 at the Port of Wilmington, and as a vice president of the national labor union, which represents port workers on the East and Gulf coasts.
He also has been an ally to Delaware’s Democratic establishment in recent years, having used his influence to become a key advocate for the plan to build a port terminal in Edgemoor, which backers say could bring thousands of jobs to the state.
Last year, then-Gov. John Carney announced that he would pull $195 million out of a little-known pot of money to fund about one third of the construction cost for the port terminal.
But, just months later, a federal judge declared that permits the state needed to build the facility were invalid.
Over the subsequent year, Delaware officials said they have been working to get the approvals reissued. The permits would allow Delaware to dredge a channel deep enough to accommodate modern container ships from the Delaware River’s center shipping lane to the proposed Edgemoor site, north of Wilmington.
It is not immediately clear whether Ashe’s comments Tuesday were meant as a true overture to New Jersey, or as political nudge toward Delaware officials to speed up their reacquisition of port construction permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
What is apparent is that his comments sparked a reaction. Following the meeting, the chair of the state port board, Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, immediately went into a private meeting with Ashe.
Raised voices were heard during the subsequent conversation, which lasted about 10 minutes. After it ended, the two walked out with Patibanda-Sanchez declining to comment on what was said.
She did answer questions about the state’s progress of reacquiring the federal permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Patibanda-Sanchez said the state will soon submit a technical analysis to federal officials that shows that a newly dredged channel would be a safe addition to the Delaware River waterway.
A lack of such an analysis in Delaware’s original permit application, submitted under Carney, prompted the federal judge last fall to rule that the Army Corps of Engineers had approved the project in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner.
“I believe we will address all of the concerns in the (federal) district court opinion about navigation and safety-related issues,” Patibanda-Sanchez said, adding that she hopes to secure final permit approvals by the end of this year.
A spokesman for Gov. Matt Meyer’s office declined to comment on Ashe’s comments.
