Long Beach Cuts Back on Exotic Wood for Project

Long Beach will cut back on the amount of hardwood from Brazilian rain forests used in its Queensway Bay waterfront project, but environmentalists said Friday that the action is coming too late to offset the damage already done.

City Manager James C. Hankla, in making what he called a good faith effort to environmental groups, said the city will reject 23% of the wood being used to build piers and boardwalks for the project and take steps to avoid a repetition of the problem.

But Hankla, in a written statement, said the city will accept most of the wood already ordered because it has been cut and sized. Returning the entire shipment would require spending “substantial additional taxpayer dollars,” he said.

Kim Mizrahi, a spokeswoman for the Venice-based Action Resource Center, called Hankla’s move “a step in the right direction,” but added that she was distressed because the city should not use any rare rain forest wood for the development.

Long Beach is particularly sensitive to criticism from environmentalists because the crown jewel of the Queensway Bay project is the Aquarium of the Pacific, which is heading toward a June opening and promoting itself as a conservationist institution.

Taking direct aim at those sensitivities, Mizrahi said: “You will have an aquarium that is going to be surrounded, basically, by a rain forest graveyard.”

Later in the day, Mizrahi complained in a five-page letter to Robert J. Paternoster, director of the Queensway Bay project, that the city was using Pau Lope, or ipe trees that are in the largest class of rain forest canopy trees, each of which can support 400 species of plants and animals under its broad leafy branches.

“We estimate at least 2,000 trees felled for 78,000 feet of clear heart ipe,” she said. “Thousands of different species are adversely impacted, all for a ‘nautical feel.’ ”

Mike Roddy, who owns a steel framing business and has been an ardent opponent of the city, said the entire shipment should have been returned.

“The lumber brokers should pay a penalty for using a product coming from a primeval rain forest,” he said.

Aquarium management was doing damage control Friday, spreading the word that they were not involved in any way in designing the Queensway Bay project or choosing its construction materials.

“Hopefully, we won’t be blamed,” said Warren Iliff, the aquarium’s chief executive officer.

Hankla and Paternoster said they thought they had protected themselves against just the sort of political backlash that developed.

Wary of using Brazilian hardwood, they said they asked their architects in the firm Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn for alternatives to wood from the rain forest.

But “plastic” wood favored by environmentalists--a composite composed of wood chips and synthetic material--was rejected for aesthetic reasons.

“It just doesn’t look like wood,” Paternoster said.

The city went ahead only after being assured that the wood they purchased had been properly harvested by two international organizations--the Brazilian Institute for Environment and the Renewal of Natural Resources and the International Timber Trade Organization--Paternoster said.

“We felt we were doing the right thing,” said Paternoster, who added that returning the entire shipment would have cost the city $523,000 and delayed completion of the initial phase of the $525-million, 300-acre Queensway Bay project until October. The cost of replacing 23% of the lumber will be about $75,000.

Environmental groups say they only trust wood that has been certified under the strict standards of the environmentally friendly Forest Stewardship Council.

As a concession, Hankla said the city would use only timber certified by the council to replace the wood being rejected.

As an outgrowth of the controversy, the City Council will consider creation of a task force to consider changing purchasing procedures, including a possible ban on future purchases of rain forest wood.

City Councilwoman Jenny Oropeza, who said she initially argued in favor of returning the entire shipment, said the city’s hands were tied by contracts.

“This has been a real lesson for all of us,” she said.