This poses a substantial risk that no permit could ever be obtained for such a project, but these permitting obstacles would exist with or without a stakeholder process. These hurdles did not confront the competing ports. Just like the stakeholders, the EDC would have had to gather the data necessary to support an application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would have taken the agency months to evaluate. This reconsideration should include a hard look at how best to use existing port facilities at Davisville, rather than building a new port from scratch at Quonset Point. A container port at Quonset will boost the state's economy for years to come.
Container ports depend on global trade to be robust and to make money.
This may put us at the mercy of the volatile economies of the newly industrialized countries. Right now, containers shipped out of Long Beach, California are empty because of the financial mess in Asia. The California economy is large enough, however, to absorb this impact. That may not be the case here. The port can be developed with private dollars and the state will not have to spend additional public money on servicing the port since the state has already passed a bond referendum to build the third rail.