Search for Cargo Inspection Site Continues

Los Angeles harbor commissioners voted Tuesday to continue seeking a site for construction of a new cargo inspection facility, but offered no indication that local residents would be involved in the search.

That worries some residents who say they deserve to know if their neighborhood could be the site of a center for searching suspicious cargo containers.

“I think the days are over when this port can make that kind of decision and then just basically tell the public that that’s where it is,” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who represents the port area. “You have to balance security with the public’s right to know.”

The board voted 3 to 0 to pay a consultant $313,804 to further study potential sites already being considered and to search for other locations. The consultant, Washington Group International, has already received $1.09 million to produce a preliminary study of potential sites and designs for the center, where security inspectors can hand-search cargo containers they consider high risk. The federal government is paying for the work.

The Port of Los Angeles, citing security concerns, has declined to release the preliminary study or to make public the sites under consideration.

Commissioner Thomas H. Warren, who headed Tuesday’s meeting, said federal security officials recommended that the port discuss those sites in closed session.

In fact, security concerns may mean that the community will not learn of the potential sites until after one is chosen, he said.

Currently, cargo containers deemed high risk are scanned with gamma-ray equipment at the ports. Some are then driven five to six miles away to an inspection facility in Carson. The most suspicious containers are inspected at the ports.

U.S. customs officials have said the facility should be built as close to the port as possible, and Hahn suggested that it be on Terminal Island, in the heart of the port complex. But some sites outside the complex are being considered, port officials say.