Port Security Hearing Focuses on Funding

Representatives of the nation’s shippers, truckers and dockworkers offered a congressional panel a host of ideas Thursday on how to better secure U.S. seaports from terrorist attacks.

Meeting in San Pedro, they brainstormed about worker identification cards, thicker cargo containers and high-tech sensors to track cargo from Singapore to Los Angeles. But despite the wealth of ideas, no one could answer the most nagging question of all:

Where is the money to pay for it?

Port officials nationwide have been asking that question more often as their operations have come under much of the same scrutiny that airports faced immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Significantly upgrading port security would be costly -- requiring an estimated $100 million at the Port of Los Angeles -- and major federal funding has not been forthcoming.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, $92.3 million in transportation security money has been distributed to ports, Los Angeles Port’s executive director, Larry A. Keller, testified before the House government reform subcommittee on energy policy, natural resources and regulatory affairs. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest complex in the country, received a total of $1.5 million.

“More is truly needed as our nation depends on an efficient and safe transportation network to distribute cargo efficiently along our trade corridors,” Keller testified. The country’s economic viability, he said, depends on “the ability to move cargo seamlessly through the Port of Los Angeles.”

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Doug Ose (R-Sacramento) promised to introduce a bill to redirect a portion of the marine transportation duties collected by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.

Ose proposed channeling some of that money to the nation’s seaports to pay for security improvements.

The Los Angeles security director for Maersk Sealand Ltd. praised the protection provided by the Los Angeles Port Police and federal agencies in the Port of Los Angeles, where Maersk operates Pier 400, the nation’s largest proprietary container terminal.

“Collectively, they comprise the finest law enforcement and port security cadre in the world,” said Maersk Sealand Security Director John Ochs.

He noted that the federal government appropriated $8 billion to improve security at airports. That $8 billion, he said, “should serve as the benchmark for the additional resources these agencies require.”

Timothy J. Parker, executive secretary of the Steamship Assn. of Southern California, urged the government to fully fund federal efforts to improve port security.

Federal officials should ensure that state and local security mandates be made consistent with federal security goals, perhaps by giving the U.S. Coast Guard authority to make sure those mandates do not clash with federal guidelines, Parker said.