Why Should Delaware Care?
The Port of Wilmington is one of the last anchors of good-paying blue-collar jobs in Delaware. It also has suffered a string of financial blows over a dramatic six-year-period. Now state officials says its future is bright after they obtained federal permits that will accommodate the construction of a new port terminal in Edgemoor.
After more than a year in limbo, Delaware officials announced Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has re-issued permits for their long-delayed plan to build a new container port along the Delaware River in Edgemoor.
The announcement marks the latest chapter in Delaware’s quest to build a sister facility to the existing Port of Wilmington that state officials have said would unleash rapid economic growth and create thousands of new jobs in New Castle County.
On Wednesday, those officials widely celebrated the reissuance of the federal approvals.
Gov. Matt Meyer said “the permits needed to make that [Edgemoor] dream a reality have finally been granted.”
Sen. Darius Brown (D-Wilmington) and Rep. Frank Cooke (D-New Castle) said in a joint statement that the project is now shovel ready.
But left unsaid in the officials’ prepared remarks were the other permits needed for the contested project that are still under legal dispute. Additionally, the newly reissued federal permits could be subject to further challenges brought by competing port facilities along the Delaware River.
GET INVOLVED: The Delaware Environmental Appeals Board is scheduled to hold a hearing on April 28 to hear an appeal of a state-issued permit for the Edgemoor project. Click here for information about virtual attendance.
Wednesday’s announcement comes a year and a half after U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney halted the ambitious project, planned at the site of a former DuPont chemical plant, by invalidating federal permits to build a seawall, and to dredge the waters of the Delaware River between the proposed facility and the main shipping lane.
In his sharply worded opinion in late 2024, Kearney said the Army Corps of Engineers had disregarded maritime safety hazards when issuing the approvals.
At the time, then-Gov. John Carney’s office expressed frustration with obstacles it attributed to the Port of Wilmington’s regional competitors along the Delaware River.
“Quite frankly, we’re frustrated with the impediments that have been put in place by our competitors in Philadelphia,” Carney’s spokesperson Emily Hershman said in a statement then.
The federal case had been brought by the Port of Philadelphia and by subsidiaries of Holt Logistics Corp., which owns key port terminals in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Their chief complaint was that cargo ships leaving Edgemoor would cause a dangerous marine bottleneck when turning into the river’s main channel.
Highlighting the intense competition among Delaware River ports, the Port of Philadelphia entities also claimed that the marine congestion would impact their ability to see a return on a $140 million investment made into deepening the Delaware River’s main channel.
Kearney’s decision came five months after Carney had committed nearly $200 million to the construction of the proposed Edgemoor port — which would be built to handle the world’s biggest container ships that needed the deeper Delaware River.
Asked Wednesday whether his company may challenge the reissued permits, Holt Logistics President Leo Holt said he would need to examine the new documents and consult with his attorneys.
“Certainly, the door is wide open for us to do that,” Holt said.
He further claimed that Delaware’s advancement of its port expansion plans has been marred by problems of transparency and unfairness. He said will consider his forthcoming decisions “through that lens once all the dust settles.”
“I don’t think that barometer of fairness has come up at all,” he said.
In a statement Wednesday, Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez said Kearney’s opinion provided a framework for the state to reapply and ultimately regain its federal permits. She also noted that her team had worked with Jacobs Engineering Group — a global contracting firm — to offer an independent analysis in response to the questions around maritime safety.
“This marks a definitive turning point for the [Diamond State Port Corporation’s] expansion project,” Patibanda-Sanchez said in a statement.
As secretary of state, Patibanda-Sanchez also serves as chair of the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation — the state entity that directs the Edgemoor expansion and oversees the publicly owned and privately run Port of Wilmington at its existing Christina River facility.
A spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment for this story.
