Dear Director Mulvaney and Acting Director Vought,

As you continue to prepare the President’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget, I would like to call to your
attention a top priority for my home state of Georgia. As you know, the Savannah Harbor
Expansion Project (SHEP) to deepen the harbor channel from 42 feet to 47 feet is recognized as
the essential deep draft navigation project currently underway in the United States based on its
national economic impact and its remarkable high benefit-to-cost ratio.

Completion of SHEP will deliver $282 million in annual transportation savings to the nation.
Furthermore, the projected benefit-to-cost ratio of total projects costs for SHEP is 7.3 to 1, and
the benefit-to-cost ratio of the construction of the remaining segments of the project is a
remarkable 10.7 to 1. You and your staff have been incredibly helpful in recent years in working
to understand the necessity of this project as well as the need for consistent funding. In
particular, we appreciate that SHEP received $130.28 million in Fiscal Year 2020.

With SHEP in the final stages of completion, I write to ask you to build upon this progress by
including $93.6 million in the President’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal. This amount will
put SHEP on track for completion in the next four fiscal years, with an estimated total of $147.6
million needed to complete the project by Fiscal Year 2024.

The state of Georgia continues to be fully invested in seeing this project through to completion.
As you know, Georgia has contributed approximately $301 million for its share of SHEP costs.
Furthermore, the State has announced its intent to spend an additional $2.5 billion over the next
decade for land-side development to enhance the efficiencies that will come with completion of
SHEP.

Thank you again for past support and consideration for this vital effort. With your ongoing
support, we expect to complete this project in a timely manner to continue providing jobs,
economic development, and commerce in Georgia and throughout the Southeast.