L.A. harbor commission OKs terminal expansion

The Los Angeles Harbor Commission on Thursday approved a controversial proposal to increase ship calls by 30% at one of the West Coast’s largest shipping terminals and add 1,800 daily truck trips to an area already struggling to cope with some of Southern California’s most polluted air.

About 200 people attended the commission hearing at Banning’s Landing Community Center in Wilmington. The panel voted 4 to 0 to certify the environmental impact report for the $1.5-billion upgrade at the TraPac Terminal. Public testimony on the matter stretched more than six hours.

“This is the best thing that’s happened here in two years,” said Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. “We’re on our way. We’re going to do it. We’re going to clean it up,” she said with a broad grin.

Andy Mardesich, president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, was not impressed.

“This EIR continues to conduct port business in the very same manner that it always has,” he testified, “and that, my friends, is with a resolute dedication to conduct commerce without conscience.”

The commission’s action elated business leaders led by Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce President Gary Toebben, who had strongly endorsed the project.

He predicted that the expanded terminal would create as many as 6,000 new jobs, generate $200 million a year in tax revenue and provide a template for green-lighting at least 15 port expansion projects long delayed by other environmental challenges.

“If it fails,” Toebben said before the vote, “it will be a dramatic failure for the concept of green growth at the ports.”

The proposal would require various measures aimed at combating pollution in the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex, the largest fixed source of air pollution in Southern California. For example, diesel-powered cranes would have to be replaced with less-polluting electrical cranes.

Some port projects have been held up since 2001, when the Los Angeles City Council approved plans for a 174-acre terminal for China Shipping Container Lines Co., prompting lawsuits by environmental groups that wanted assurances that environmental reviews would be thorough.

That suit ended in 2003 with the port and city announcing an unusual $60-million settlement with the environmental groups. Most of the money will go to a wide array of projects to reduce air pollution.

In an effort to avoid confrontations over the TraPac project, port authorities spent more than four years developing its environmental impact report.

In her comments before the board Thursday, Knatz said: “Last January, port management and staff agreed on five important things this organization had to achieve in 2007. No. 1 on our list was ‘deliver an EIR to the board that you could feel good about certifying.’ We believe we have done that.”

But attorneys representing the National Resources Defense Council and concerned local residents said the report tucked potentially damaging information about the project’s environmental impacts into its back pages.

For example, the report acknowledges in Appendix D that air pollution will increase in the short term while the project is under construction.

“No one has ever agreed to an increase in emissions in the short term,” said Janet Schaaf-Gunter of the homeowners coalition. “Increasing emissions is not growing green.”

Over time, however, the project will generate significantly less in dangerous air particulates and other emissions than there would have been without the “green” mitigation measures.

But port authorities surprised environmentalists in attendance by announcing that they have no means of curbing anticipated increases of greenhouse gases from the project, including carbon dioxide.

Environmentalists were also distressed that the board had approved a massive expansion before the port’s Clean Air Action Plan is fully implemented.

Although the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach agreed in November to scrap old diesel rigs and replace them with newer, cleaner trucks, they have yet to develop a means of enforcing the ban, intended to help slash port-related pollution linked to 2,400 premature deaths in the region a year.

“They put the cart before the horse,” said Adrian Martinez, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, one of eight groups represented in a letter of concern delivered Wednesday to Ralph G. Appy, the Port of Los Angeles’ director of environmental management.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes the port, urged the board to advance the TraPac project but “to be bold” and amend the EIR to require extra environmental protections.

She wants a more aggressive timeline to require use of low-sulfur fuel in diesel-powered vessels and on-dock electrical power to eliminate idling in port.

“Certify this EIR today for the community of Wilmington,” she said, “but also amend it to protect the health of the community of Wilmington and all of Los Angeles.”

In Knatz’s argument for approval, she said the particulars could be worked out later.

Schaaf-Gunter compared Knatz’s promise to “the check is in the mail.”

However, Knatz said a lawsuit challenging TraPac’s environmental impacts would only delay realization of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s call for “green growth” at the nation’s busiest port.

“That would be a darn shame,” she said.

In a related matter, Villaraigosa and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown Jr. were expected to announce today an agreement to ease future terminal expansions by constructing solar panels to provide a clean source of energy for the ports and thus reduce harmful emission.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com