Harbor Expansion Plans Face Sea of Opposition : Environment: The project could prove devastating to air quality, marine life, recreational boating and the coastline, state and U.S. agencies say.

The proposed $4.8-billion expansion of the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors over the next 30 years has been strongly criticized by several federal and state agencies, which describe the dredging and landfill needed for the project as environmentally hazardous.

With an important California Coastal Commission vote on the project coming up next week, the commission staff, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game have recommended that the commission reject a $141-million dredging and landfill project pivotal to the proposed expansion.

The project, to be undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers, would dredge 76 million cubic yards of material in the harbors to deepen the channels, and use the material to add 846 acres of landfill in the ports for new terminals and other facilities.

But the project could prove devastating to air quality, marine life, recreational boating and the coastline, the federal and state agencies concluded in letters and reports on the project, set to begin in 1994.

The Corps of Engineers has endorsed the plan after nearly four years of study.

“The (Fish and Wildlife) Service considers the proposed landfill project to have the potential to be the most significantly damaging of any project to fish and wildlife resources on the Pacific Coast,” Brooks Harper of the federal agency said in a Dec. 14 letter to the Corps of Engineers. That conclusion, she wrote, was based on several factors, including the threat to the harbors’ diverse and, in some cases, endangered marine life.

Further, Harper said, the concern of the Fish and Wildlife Service was significant enough that it pledged to “pursue every opportunity” to challenge the Corps of Engineers project.

State Fish and Game officials said they could not endorse the dredging and landfill project, as now envisioned, because of its expected impact on fish and wildlife. Describing the project’s environmental review as inadequate, the state agency said it would oppose “construction, dredging or fill” in the ports until “acceptable” solutions are identified.

The comments, coupled with the Coastal Commission staff’s concerns, clearly represent a setback to the ports after years of pushing the so-called 2020 Project--a blueprint for developing the harbors through the year 2020.

Officials with the Corps of Engineers could not be reached for comment late Thursday. A Port of Los Angeles spokesman said the opposition to the project was a blow to port officials.

“It’s significant. It’s a setback, of course, but this is a large project and we anticipated there would be some concerns with it,” said Chuck Ellis. But officials with other agencies were doubtful that questions could be easily resolved, particularly because the ports and Corps of Engineers have spent years producing an 8,000-page environmental report now described by critics as inadequate.

“This is a major project and there are major questions about the project,” Larry Simon, the Coastal Commission’s ports coordinator, said late Thursday. Those questions, he said, result from what the commission staff judged were “inadequate details and inconsistent information” about the project’s environmental effects.

Over the years, Simon said, the commission has approved almost every request for landfill expansion at the port.

“Our problem is that the ports have not demonstrated to the commission it should approve a 30-year construction plan in one single action,” he said.

The commission will consider the project at a meeting Wednesday in Marina del Rey.