Safe Harbor : Ports Have Good Track Record, but They Still Lack High-Tech System to Keep Ships Off Collision Course

Every year, thousands of large ships enter or leave the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, many of them laden with oil, chemicals or other environmentally dangerous cargoes. Although the vast majority of them don’t bump into one another, or into anything else, there have been some exceptions--and some close calls--in the waters off Los Angeles County.

In 1990, the tanker American Trader tangled with its own anchor, resulting in a well-publicized oil spill off Huntington Beach. Also in 1990, a northbound cruise ship, the Azure Seas, narrowly averted a collision with an eastbound merchant ship three miles outside the breakwater. And in 1989 a Navy submarine fouled a tugboat towline 10 miles offshore, causing the tug to sink and its pilot to drown.

Despite those incidents, most people involved in port operations consider Los Angeles and Long Beach relatively safe harbors for the ships of the world. Although the two ports constitute the nation’s busiest shipping center--with a combined total of almost 8,000 ship calls last year--experts say the chances of a serious ship collision, resulting in heavy loss of life or a major oil spill or other environmental disaster, are relatively low.

But everyone also agrees that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could be even safer if, like other major U.S. ports, they had a mandatory “vessel traffic service,” or VTS, to track and help direct ships entering and departing local waters. A VTS uses sophisticated radar and communications equipment to monitor ship movements in somewhat the same way an air traffic control system monitors aircraft.

But 1 1/2 years after Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation authorizing a VTS system for Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, the two ports still do not have a formal ship tracking system. And Coast Guard officials say it will be at least another two years before a VTS system gets off the drawing board and into operation.

Environmentalists, port officials and others hope there will not be a disaster in the interim.

“Although the Port of L.A. prides itself on its safety record, we’re certainly not immune from a major oil spill,” said Lisa Weil, policy director for American Oceans Campaign, a Santa Monica-based environmental group. “We don’t need to wait for a disaster to happen.”

“Even without the (VTS) system, it’s still pretty safe here,” said Capt. John Guest of the Marine Exchange, a private, nonprofit group that operates a voluntary ship tracking system from San Pedro. “Los Angeles is a pretty simple port to navigate. In fact, it’s one of the simpler ports on the West Coast. And our voluntary system is working well. But if we don’t have a mandatory vessel traffic management system and one of these days there’s a bad collision, somebody’s going to be in serious trouble politically.”

“We’ve been pretty lucky,” said Cmdr. Mike Haucke of the 11th Coast Guard District in Long Beach. “The port has a great history of a low rate of accidents. But the potential (for a serious accident) is always there.”

Haucke, who is in charge of planning the Coast Guard’s proposed VTS system for the Los Angeles area, said he is aware that frustrations are building over the slow pace of the project. But, he said, “the Coast Guard is moving as fast as it can.”

The push for a system that could accurately track and direct large vessel traffic near Los Angeles and Long Beach began in earnest soon after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Although many major U.S. ports already had electronic ship-tracking systems, Los Angeles did not.

What Los Angeles Harbor did have was a private ship-tracking service operated by the Marine Exchange, which since 1923 has monitored ship traffic in local waters. In 1983 the Marine Exchange, which is funded by a fee paid by ships berthing in the ports, set up a radar system that tracks ships passing through a four-mile by eight-mile “precautionary zone” outside the harbor breakwater.

The major drawback to the Marine Exchange system, however, is that it is purely voluntary. A captain of a vessel moving into the zone can contact the Marine Exchange facility, located on a hilltop at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro (now Angels Gate Park), and ask if any other vessels are heading his way; if so, he can contact the other vessel by radio and make arrangements for a safe passing.

However, ship captains are not obligated to use the Marine Exchange service. Although 95% of large commercial vessels do check with the Marine Exchange before entering the precautionary zone, Guest says, 5% do not. It is those 5% that pose the biggest threat of a collision.

“Some of these shipmasters speak only to God,” said Guest, a retired Coast Guard captain who is now executive director of the Marine Exchange. “They won’t take information or advice from mere mortals”--that is, the mere mortals who operate the Marine Exchange ship tracking system.

Under a formal VTS system, however, a shipmaster would be required to radio the VTS center and receive general instructions on the safest way to proceed.

In 1991 the California Legislature passed--and Gov. Wilson signed--legislation that would have allowed the Marine Exchange to operate an expanded, mandatory VTS system in Los Angeles to replace the current voluntary system.

More sophisticated radar equipment and a bigger staff were planned, to be paid for by a fee on shipping. Under the system, ships within 20 nautical miles of Point Fermin would have been required to radio the Marine Exchange, identify themselves, give their course and speed and receive navigational advice.

Experts say such a system might have prevented two of the incidents mentioned above--the tugboat sinking and the near-miss of the cruise ship and the freighter. But just as the Marine Exchange was about to buy new equipment to set up the VTS system, the U.S. Coast Guard stepped in and took over the project.

“The Coast Guard came to us and said, ‘Hold it, boys, we’re going to do it ourselves,’ ” said Hal Hilliard, president of the Marine Exchange board of directors.

That was 1 1/2 years ago. And although at the time most people involved with the VTS system planning were pleased that the Coast Guard had taken over the project--on the grounds that the Coast Guard system would be more sophisticated and its operators would have more authority to issue navigational commands--those same people now are chafing at the delay in getting the Coast Guard VTS system in place.

“We’re very distressed by it,” said Weil of American Oceans Campaign. “This should be given the highest priority.”

Although the Coast Guard last year requested $4.5 million to set up the VTS system in L.A., that funding later got lost in the congressional budget shuffle. Haucke said the Coast Guard now is developing a national network of VTS systems for all U.S. ports, including L.A.-Long Beach. He said that when the local system is finally installed, most likely in the federal building in Long Beach, it will be top-of-the-line.

“We want to do it right,” Haucke said. “We want to make sure it’s a world-class system.”

The Coast Guard expects its VTS system to be in operation for Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors sometime after mid-1995, but Haucke said, “With the current (federal) budget situation, anything at any time can be subject to change.”

So until the Coast Guard takes over, the Marine Exchange’s voluntary service will continue as the only ship tracking system for Los Angeles and Long Beach. And despite the port’s relatively good safety record so far, people will be keeping their fingers crossed.