Port Officials Say Critical Report Will Not Undergo Revisions

Harbor area residents on a panel that advises the Port of Los Angeles accused officials this week of trying to revise a consultant’s report that was critical of the port’s environmental record.

But the panel’s co-chairmen assured members Tuesday night that the report won’t be changed by port staff, and a port official concurred.

The controversy raised questions in recent days about how much power the port has when dealing with the advisory panel created by Mayor James K. Hahn to give the public more of a voice in port projects.

The report was commissioned by a panel subcommittee as part of Hahn’s 2001 campaign pledge to assess how the port has dealt with air pollution and other effects and to make any needed amends.

Environmental consultant Sandra Genis studied the port’s environmental reviews of proposed projects and concluded that some underestimate air pollution and other effects from major terminals built in the last decade.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex has grown to become the single largest air polluter in the region.

Port officials, complaining that the report contained factual errors, said Monday that they planned to study it and make revisions where needed. They said that the $25,000 report, which was paid for by the port, was still just a draft.

“We’re looking at it in an objective fashion,” Ralph Appy, the port’s environmental management director, said Monday. “We really want to make sure she did it right.”

After the panel meeting on Tuesday, however, Appy said his staff would continue reviewing the report but would not change it. He said it contained some valuable information that port staff could use in preparing future environmental documents.

The dispute illustrates the shifting relationship between the port and residents who have complained for years that the port was ignoring their concerns about pollution, traffic and noise.

Port officials’ earlier comments angered some members of the advisory panel, who claimed the port was attempting to censor a public report.

Dr. John Miller, a physician who chairs the subcommittee that requested the report, insisted earlier Tuesday that is was a finished work.

“They don’t have the right to take an independent report and do a revisionist history to get rid of things that are awkward for them,” he said. “It will not be an independent report if they rewrite it.”

Port spokesmen denied a Times request to speak with Genis. The port’s contract with Genis does not allow her to share information without port permission, said spokeswoman Theresa Adams-Lopez. However, Harbor Commission President Nicholas Tonsich said late Tuesday afternoon that he would have no problem with Genis talking to The Times about her report.

USC preventive medicine professor Edward Avol, who is also a consultant to the advisory panel, said that he was cautioned last week not to speak to the media without port approval.

Genis critiqued 10 environmental impact reports required by law before the port could build expansion projects such as the massive Pier 300 and Pier 400 container terminals. She concluded that most of those reports fail to address how much cargo will pass through those projects, especially if cargo volume increases over time.

She was particularly critical of how the reports dealt with air pollution, traffic and blight. Those reports found that nine of the 10 projects would have “significant unavoidable adverse effects on air quality,” she wrote, calling those effects “a significant cumulative impact which has not been mitigated.”

Genis also found fault with how the port measured the air pollution created by a project, noting that the port used estimates ranging from 10 minutes to 20 minutes for how long trucks idle. “Current modeling used by the California Air Resources Board assumes that an average truck will idle for 104 minutes per day,” she wrote.

In a written statement, port officials said Genis did not take into account certain regulatory standards in place when the environmental reports were prepared. It criticizes her for not considering the port’s most recent environmental impact report, which they said reflects current port practices “and in some ways, should have been the only document that was necessary to review.”

Hahn has appointed a special panel of experts to create a plan to reduce port pollution to 2001 levels and keep it there. Port officials said this week that the panel’s meetings are closed to the public, including a session this afternoon at the San Pedro Sheraton.