PORT IN A STORM : Harbor Profits Are Rising, but So Are Neighbors’ Complaints

Gertrude Schwab, a lifetime Wilmington resident, is well acquainted with the problems of living in the shadow of the Port of Los Angeles.

“Every area that we could have visited the water is now fenced off,” Schwab told the Board of Harbor Commissioners at a recent meeting. “We are the only waterfront community . . . where properties have little value, as we have no access to the water and (the area is) glutted with trucks.”

Schwab and a handful of other Wilmington homeowners had come to the meeting to oppose a proposed waterfront cement importing plant that they fear would crowd residential streets in the port-side community with up to 100 trucks a day.

Familiar Quandary

The harbor commissioners, who oversee operations at the richest port in the United States, were caught in what has become an increasingly familiar quandary: How to nourish the thriving $128-million port while also attempting to be a good neighbor to the residents of Wilmington and neighboring San Pedro and the thousands of boaters and tourists from throughout Los Angeles who visit the harbor each year.

“We are committed to bringing people into this port--and not just in ships,” Commissioner Ira Distenfield said in an interview. “Our job is to try to come up with a balance. The Port of Los Angeles is an industrial port, but on the other hand, we need to remind ourselves that one of our reasons for existence is to make sure the citizens of this city have a port that they can visit and enjoy. . . . You don’t make every decision with a slide rule and calculator.”

In recent years, the port has experienced extraordinary growth, with profits last year reaching a record $67.2 million, up nearly 16% from the year before. Capitalizing on a worldwide boom in Pacific Rim trade, the port has expanded its container cargo and automobile handling facilities and has joined the neighboring Port of Long Beach in drafting a massive expansion plan that would add 2,400 acres of landfill to San Pedro Bay during the next 35 years.

The port provides more than 20,000 jobs in the harbor, including 750 in the Harbor Department itself, and it is estimated that an additional 130,000 jobs and 20,000 businesses in Southern California are indirectly related to port activities.

With the growth, however, have come unprecedented demands from the surrounding communities. Increasingly vocal Wilmington residents have called on port police to cite truckers that use residential streets and to force port tenants to stop storing large truck-size shipping containers in residential neighborhoods. They have also demanded recreational and commercial access to the heavily industrial Wilmington waterfront, and have even suggested that the port help pay to revitalize its depressed downtown.

In San Pedro, where the port and private developers are building a $100-million waterfront marina and recreational complex largely because of community demands for more public facilities, residents complain about pollution from nearby industrial facilities and the storage of oil and chemicals near the new recreational areas.

Indeed, some San Pedrans, emboldened by their new-found stake in the port, now challenge port officials in areas of planning and policy. A group of pleasure boat owners, angry about black dust on their boats, recently asked regional air quality officials to curtail activities at the port’s largest exporter of coal and petroleum coke. Although the air quality officials eventually sided with the exporter, port officials were clearly shaken by the extraordinary insurrection.

Shielded From Accountability

“There are situations caused by the fast growth of the port that are not being mitigated by the port,” Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the harbor area and who sided with the boat owners, said in an interview. “The community tends to have the view that because they have to put up with most of the inconveniences of the port, that the port should give something back.”

But the port, unlike most city departments, enjoys an unusual status in the city bureaucracy that in many ways shields it from traditional forms of public accountability. It functions more like a large corporation than a traditional service-oriented city department.

The Harbor Department is one of three so-called proprietary departments in the city, the others being the departments of airports and water and power. The department is not tax supported, but generates its revenues from leases, tariffs and other port operations. As a result, it in some ways resembles an independent agency, neither dependent on the city for funds nor required to give any of its profits to the city.

The department gained its unusual autonomy by virtue of its relationship with the state of California. Under the City Charter, the department is charged with operating the tidelands in San Pedro Bay granted to the city by the state in 1911. The tidelands trust requires that the land and revenues generated from it be used “for the promotion and accommodation of commerce, navigation and fishery.” Those restrictions, enforced by the State Lands Commission, bar the city from using money earned by the port on such non-harbor-related items as low-income housing, services for the homeless or, port officials argue, port police to control truck traffic in Wilmington.

$5,000 for Maritime Books

The port does contribute money to charitable and other groups, however, usually finding a maritime connection to justify it. The port, for example, recently donated $5,000 to the Wilmington library to buy maritime books. It has donated nearly $300,000 to various organizations during the past 14 months.

The city does have ultimate--if indirect--control over the department through the five-member board of commissioners and the department’s executive director. The board, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council, sets policy and governs day-to-day operations at the port, while the executive director, also appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council, serves as the port’s general manager.

Also, under the city’s charter, certain decisions by the commissioners must receive City Council approval, and Mayor Tom Bradley has required that major leases and agreements also receive his concurrence, which means they are scrutinized by the Office of the City Administrative Officer.

“It provides for a system of checks and balances,” said port spokeswoman Julia Nagano. “There are problems that they sometimes see or questions they bring up that must be resolved” before items can receive final approval.

Difficult Balancing Act

The port’s emerging status as a giant business with greater financial and civic responsibilities has brought it new challenges. Port officials have found themselves in a difficult balancing act--one that is largely unfamiliar to many of its bureaucrats, who for years concentrated on day-to-day operations with little notice of the surrounding communities.

Some Harbor Department officials say privately that it has been difficult to re-educate some staff members, with projects geared toward non-commercial aspects of the port often meeting bureaucratic resistance. But the port’s top executives say such problems are temporary.

“Once in awhile I hear people say that the staff is unresponsive to this or to that,” said Commissioner Distenfield, who has been on the board less than one year but is already its vice president and one of its most visible and outspoken members. “. . . I do think that maybe out of habit our staff is always thinking, ‘commercial, commercial.’ But I do think they are trying to change. They will change.”

As an example of the port’s willingness to break away from exclusively business-oriented goals, Distenfield and the other board members approved the cement importing factory opposed by Schwab and her Wilmington neighbors, but required the company to adhere to a route that keeps the trucks out of residential neighborhoods. The compromise did not satisfy everyone, but port officials and community leaders said it at least struck a balance between often incompatible residential and industrial interests.

“We operate like a private business, and we are looking at those numbers constantly,” Ezunial Burts, the port’s executive director, said in an interview. “But we see our mission as being broader than just making money. We see it as providing a service to this community and the greater Los Angeles community.”

Peter Mendoza, president of the largest homeowners organization in Wilmington and an outspoken critic of the port, said any concession by the port is viewed as progress. For years, Mendoza said, Wilmington residents were unable to get the Harbor Department to take their concerns seriously.

“We are subsidizing the existence of the harbor with our city streets and the air we breathe,” Mendoza said. “Nobody is saying shut down the Harbor Department, we are saying, ‘Good, we are glad you are trying to make a profit and create jobs, but at the same time let’s not be so damned greedy.’ You just can’t go out and make big bucks off the back of the community. You need to have some social consciousness.”

Special Problems

Port officials acknowledge that Wilmington--where the port owns more land than it does in San Pedro and where city zoning has allowed more intensive industrial development--presents special problems. Aside from several remote marinas leased to private operators there, the Harbor Department has placed all of its recreational and non-industrial commercial facilities in San Pedro, which is enjoying an economic boom of sorts as a result.

In San Pedro, the Harbor Department is building a cruise-ship terminal with a hotel and shops--the port’s cruise business is second only to Miami’s--just north of Ports O’ Call Village, a specialty shopping center that has been a tourist attraction on the harbor’s Main Channel since the 1960s. Nearby, the former ferry terminal at the foot of 6th Street has been converted to a maritime museum.

On the West Channel, at the southern end of San Pedro, Cabrillo Beach is being upgraded, the city has moved the Cabrillo Marine Museum into a modern building, and the port has set aside 370 acres of land and water for a marina and recreational complex. When completed in the next few years, the new development will provide slips for more than 3,000 private boats and will include a hotel, a youth aquatics camp, restaurants, shops, offices, parks, a salt marsh and bicycle paths.

By contrast, Wilmington, which extends about 2 1/2 miles along the waterfront between San Pedro and Long Beach, does not even have a public beach. The Harbor Department has set aside about 40 acres of land and water along the Cerritos Channel, where several private marinas operate, and it has promised that another 40 acres will be designated for recreational use after oil wells there have been depleted. But the marinas are far removed from residential areas, and port officials acknowledge that it could be decades before the oil wells run dry.

For several years, Wilmington residents have blamed many of the community’s problems--from unsightly oil wells to occasional spills of toxic materials--on the Harbor Department and city officials, who they feel have clout with the department. Residents have accused Mayor Bradley, who proudly points to the port’s growth as one of his greatest accomplishments, and Councilwoman Flores, who lives in San Pedro, of forcing Wilmington to bear the brunt of the port’s success while shielding San Pedro.

Burts, the port’s executive director and a close associate of Bradley, denies that the Harbor Department has played favorites.

Land-Use Problem

“There has never been, nor is there today, a conscious decision to develop one area versus another area,” Burts said. “What we have is a land-use problem that the port faces. We cannot build any kind of facility that we want anywhere in the port. Our basic business is commercial and industrial activities. We have set aside certain areas for recreational functions, but it has not been based on whether the area of the port is Wilmington, San Pedro or Terminal Island.”

A report on conflicts between recreational and shipping interests prepared by a maritime consultant traces the Port of Los Angeles’ recreational development in San Pedro to two trends. The report, written by Don Walsh of International Maritime Inc. and presented at a recent conference for port officials, said land became available in San Pedro because older terminals there grew obsolete as the port moved toward more modern, container-cargo operations.

Port officials said they constructed new container terminals deeper into the port to take advantage of calmer seas. The West Channel, where the recreational complex is being built, is the oldest part of the harbor and is closest to the breakwater.

Walsh also said the state Coastal Act of 1976, which gave the state authority to monitor development along the entire coast, gave marine recreation “a bigger voice and more rights to use of the seaports” throughout the state.

The port’s decision to establish recreational and other non-industrial facilities along the West Channel in San Pedro was also dependent upon the cooperation of the federal government and historic land-use patterns and zoning in San Pedro and Wilmington, port officials said.

Much of the West Channel/Cabrillo Beach recreational complex has been carved out of federal land at Fort MacArthur that the port bought after the land was declared surplus in the late 1970s. Without that land, port officials say, the complex, talked about for two decades, never would have been approved.

And the lack of so-called “backland” properties in San Pedro--non-waterfront land used for storage and to provide other support for port operations--made the West Channel and the west bank of the Main Channel ideal for non-industrial uses, port officials said. The West Channel backs up against Fort MacArthur, and the Main Channel borders residential areas and San Pedro’s downtown. In Wilmington, large areas zoned for manufacturing and industrial uses abut port-owned property.

Burts and other port officials say they are sensitive to the inequities--real and perceived--between San Pedro and Wilmington. (Terminal Island, the third city district in the harbor area, has no residential housing aside from that at the U.S. Coast Guard base and the federal prison.) Last year, in a significant departure from previous policy, the port agreed to help pay for a consultant to study ways to create waterfront access at the foot of Avalon Boulevard in Wilmington. Previously, the port maintained that hazardous cargo facilities and rail lines make the area unsuitable for recreational or commercial uses.

The study, being conducted by former city planning chief Calvin Hamilton, is expected to be released next month. Flores, who pushed for the review, has seen Hamilton’s final report but declined to discuss it in detail. She predicted, however, that it could be a watershed for both Wilmington and the port.

“Some of it may not be so hot, some of it not do-able, and some of it expensive,” she said. “But there are some very good suggestions about mitigating some of the problems that have been created by the heavy industrial uses. A lot of it will be good for the port as well. Not just in that they will make some money with some of the things, but because they will feel better about themselves.”

Commissioner Distenfield, who characterized Wilmington as the weak link in the port’s relations with its neighbors, also pointed to Hamilton’s study as a sign of change.

“It has been very easy for the port to be a good neighbor in San Pedro,” Distenfield said. The port’s administrative offices are there “and the San Pedro people are constantly reminding us of our shortfalls. We have to remind ourselves that we are also in Wilmington. And we need to be a better neighbor in Wilmington than we have been.”

But residents in San Pedro, while recognizing that they have it better than those in Wilmington, are also critical of the port. They say the port could be a better neighbor in San Pedro, too.

Out of Touch

“There are many fine individuals within the Harbor Department that have worked for the department and served on the commission, but as a matter of policy, the relationship between the port and the community is lacking,” said John Barbieri, a San Pedro business leader. “It is a misperception that they should operate like a private business. They are a public trust. They are located on public land. . . . Even a major corporation of that size would have a more direct and more focused effort to work with the community and contribute to the community.”

Noah Modisett, president of a coalition of 20 San Pedro homeowner groups and chairman of a task force that studied complaints about air pollution in the West Channel, said the port has grown so large that it is often out of touch with the community. Modisett said even a modest effort by the port to engage residents in issues that affect them would reap large benefits for the port.

“They are so big, and in some cases, they just don’t know that when they shrug their shoulders they knock somebody down,” Modisett said. “The public is mostly aware of the port’s fringe activities that directly affect the public. These things have very little to do with the profit of the port, and if the port would deal directly with them, the payoff would be so much higher than the cost.”

Nothing better illustrates the strained relations between the port and some of its San Pedro neighbors than the recent struggle over Kaiser International, the port’s largest exporter of bulk commodities. Kaiser International operates the port’s $26-million bulk loader, a facility on the eastern bank of the West Channel that serves as an industrial backdrop to the area’s new recreational and commercial character.

A group of San Pedro residents and boat owners, convinced that coal and petroleum coke from the bulk loader was landing on their boats and front porches, led an effort to force the company to install new pollution equipment or cease operations.

Based on the complaints from the group, regional air quality officials last April refused to issue Kaiser International two crucial operating permits. The decision sent shock waves through the Harbor Department, which viewed the decision as a signal that its good-neighbor policy in the West Channel was beginning to backfire.

“We can’t live with having another administrative agency say that industrial facilities can’t be here because the recreational users complain,” Jonathan P. Nave, deputy city attorney for the port, said at the time. “It would allow the tail to wag the dog.”

Port officials warned that action by the South Coast Air Quality Management District against Kaiser International, which pays the port about $2 million a year in rent, “would impact planning for all future facilities in the West Channel area of the port.”

Decision Overruled

It took a hearing before the district’s appeals panel to overrule the decision, and even then, the boat owners pledged to continue filing complaints against Kaiser International. Under pressure from Councilwoman Flores and the City Council, the port eventually promised to move the bulk loader away from the recreational part of the harbor.

Flores said the drawn-out battle over the bulk loader illustrates how clumsy the port can be when confronted with issues important to the community.

“It is the responsibility of the (Harbor Department) staff to see a situation, and not need to wait for complaints,” Flores said. “I would like to see more initiative on the part of the port. It shouldn’t have to come from the community, and it shouldn’t have to come from the political arena. How long have we been asking them to do something about Kaiser? It took an action of the City Council for them to do anything.”

Port officials attribute the battle over Kaiser International to “transitional problems” associated with converting the West Channel into a recreational playground. At worst, they said, the port can be faulted for trying to be too good of a neighbor--that is, going ahead with the recreational development before moving Kaiser International and other industrial facilities.

“By attempting to accelerate our recreational development, we have in fact put ourselves in this difficult situation,” said Burts, the port’s executive director. “But this is transitional, and the long-term benefits to the community are worth it.”

Commissioner Distenfield said the port’s willingness to relocate the bulk loader and nearby oil and chemical storage tanks--at a cost of millions of dollars--is the clearest signal the Harbor Department can send to the community about the sincerity of its good-neighbor policy.

“I hope people recognize that this is a commitment that we care about more than commercial usages,” Distenfield said.

Skeptical of Motives

Critics of the harbor in both Wilmington and San Pedro say they welcome the Harbor Department’s gestures of good will, but they remain skeptical about its motives. The new Cabrillo Marina, for example, provides needed slips for private boats, but it also is a source of revenue for the department. “They didn’t build that marina out of the goodness of their hearts,” one San Pedro resident said.

But even the port’s harshest critics say the port has made progress, and both port officials and local residents say they look forward to better relations.

“I think they now recognize the problems,” said Kim Burgher, a West Channel boat owner and businesswoman who was a leader in the battle against Kaiser International. “I think they see the need for buffer zones between industrial and residential or recreational areas. Now we just can’t let them forget.”