Waves Pose a Problem at Newest Cargo Dock in Long Beach Harbor : Shipping: Delays have been minimal so far at the state-of-the-art Maersk terminal, but the solution could be expensive.

At a cost of $142 million, the new terminal on Pier J of Long Beach Harbor was to be the paradigm of the modern dock, with convenient cranes and railroad tracks to move cargo efficiently from ship to warehouse.

But nature put one over on the engineers with their fancy computer models. Waves, apparently coming from the south, have been moving ships around, making it difficult to unload and presenting a potential risk to longshoremen.

Harbor officials are studying the problem, which could cost the city’s Harbor Department hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct.

“It is one of those unfortunate things,” Harbor Commissioner David L. Hauser said. “It’s the newest and probably the most modern port facility in the United States.”

Long Beach’s Harbor Department built the terminal on landfill at the southwestern tip of the port. It leases the 107-acre facility to a Danish shipping firm, Maersk Pacific Ltd., for $11.8 million a year.

Maersk officials are polite about the blemish that has taken some of the sheen off their new state-of-the-art dock. So far, the delays in unloading have been minimal and no one has figured out the cost, said William A. Trok, president of Maersk Pacific Ltd.

But it could be costly in the future if there are lengthy delays of Maersk’s huge cargo ships, he said.

“We expect (the Harbor Department) will find a permanent solution to minimize the effect on our ship operations,” Trok said. “The vessels are always on schedules. It’s important that we work them in a most efficient manner.”

Maersk moved into the new terminal when it opened in April and the problems with the waves surfaced in July.

A ship waiting to be unloaded started moving around, breaking its tie lines. Maersk used a tugboat to steady the ship and replaced the lines so it could be unloaded, Trok said. A tugboat also was used to steady a ship in September, the other instance when the waves were especially bad.

Estimates of ship movement range from about 3 feet to as much as 12 feet, officials said.

Although no one has been injured, the situation has caused concern among the longshoremen who unload Maersk’s ships.

A broken tie line could whip into a worker, or ship movement could cause workers to fall from their spots atop stacked cargo containers, said Joe Cortez, president of Local 13 of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union.

“We’re asking Maersk and the port to work on it,” Cortez said.

But mostly, the waves represent an inconvenience, slowing down the workers who unload Maersk ships.

“It rocks and rolls the ship . . . in a corkscrew-type motion,” said longshoreman Jack Stenehjem, who operates one of the huge “hammerhead” cranes that pluck cargo containers from ships. “We just work with it and do what we can do.”

Port officials did not think they would have a significant problem with waves when they designed the landfill that would become the Maersk terminal.

They took their plan to the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Miss., for testing. The station cranked up the wave generator in its one-acre model of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

“It pointed out there were problems,” said hydraulic engineer Dennis Markle in a telephone interview. The new dock would actually amplify the energy of waves, he said.

A private consulting firm hired by the port took it from there, running the information through a computer model to determine if the waves would jostle moored ships.

The model indicated there would be waves but that they would not be powerful enough to cause problems, said oceanographic engineer David Dykstra, who oversaw the testing.

Now Dykstra is conducting a $170,000 study to find a solution to the problem.

He has placed wave gauges in the water in and around Pier J to pin down the type of waves that are creating problems.

Dykstra suspects the culprits are waves generated from winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere. As a result, the Maersk terminal should have most of its problems in the summer, he said.

Dykstra thinks the main offender is a type of wave that is hardly visible from the surface, a long wave. Such a wave can pass through the breakwater surrounding the port and disturb ships that range in length from 780 to nearly 1,000 feet.

“It is my suspicion that the summer is going to be the worst, but the final results aren’t in,” said Dykstra, who expects to complete his study in March or April.

Other Long Beach piers have been bothered by waves in the past, but none to the extent of Pier J, officials said. In the most serious case, the installation of a relatively inexpensive bulkhead took care of the problem, Dykstra said.

That could be the solution for Pier J. Other measures could include changing the shape of Maersk’s slip or the harbor bottom, or--probably the most costly solution--adding another breakwater. The costs could range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million.

Problem Terminal Waves from the south have hampered the unloading of ships at the new Maersk terminal at the Port of Long Beach.