Ports complex plans to grow bigger, cleaner

As officials work on the details of a much-heralded plan to combat pollution at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, the two ports are gearing up to fortify their dominance of the nation’s Pacific Rim trade with long-delayed expansion projects.

The projects call for enlarging terminals and rail yards, building a marine terminal for crude oil and widening roads. An aging Long Beach bridge would be replaced -- at the cost of $864 million -- to allow larger container ships to visit what is already the nation’s busiest port complex.

If all goes according to plan, the ports hope to begin work on at least four of a dozen high-priority expansion projects by this time next year. Setting all this activity in motion was approval last fall by commissioners at both ports of their $2-billion Clean Air Action Plan, which aims to reduce harbor emissions by 50% over five years.

“This is the biggest piece of work this city has undertaken in some time,” said Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners President David Freeman. “We’re going to grow and we’re going to clean up this place or my head will be served up on a silver platter in Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office.”

Still, it won’t be easy convincing port communities that large-scale industrial growth and a healthy environment aren’t mutually exclusive goals.

There remain ongoing tensions between the fast-growing ports and neighborhoods enduring their side effects: air pollution, industrial blight, heavy truck traffic, excessive noise and light, container terminal projects that consume homes and businesses and higher rates of asthma and cancer.

State air quality and health experts have linked 2,400 premature deaths a year to noxious emissions produced by the ports, which reported an average 10% increase in trade in 2006. A state study released last week showed that residents who live near rail yards face higher cancer risks from soot.

Now the big question being asked harbor-wide, from the working-class neighborhoods of Wilmington and west Long Beach to the Dalmatian-American Club of San Pedro, is this: Will port growth outpace the mitigation efforts?

Tom Politeo, a spokesman for the Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter, worries that some expansion projects could be up and running before the ports’ clean air plan is fully implemented.

“The level of technology being described is not up to the task when you have an industry growing at a rate of 11% per year,” Politeo said. “Even if everything in the ports is 90% cleaner, you’ll eventually lose ground on the basis of current growth rates.”

Robert Kanter, director of planning and environmental affairs for the Port of Long Beach, disagreed.

“Unless we can clean the air, we’re not going to move forward with any of these projects. The community won’t allow it,” he said. “In fact, I expect that every one of the environmental impact documents for these projects will be challenged and end up in court.”

A court challenge has delayed some of the projects for about six years. The Los Angeles City Council approved plans in 2001 for a 174-acre terminal for China Shipping Container Lines Co., prompting lawsuits by environmental groups that wanted assurances that environmental reviews would be properly completed.

That suit ended in 2003 with the port and city of Los Angeles announcing an unusual $60-million settlement with the environmental groups. Most of the money will go to a wide array of projects to reduce air pollution.

Although the suit did not directly affect other expansion projects, it had a chilling effect on plans for other efforts. It also helped prompt the drafting of the Clean Air Action Plan.

Officials continue to refine the plan, and last month approved, as part of it, what was billed as an unprecedented overhaul of dockside trucking to reduce diesel pollution from trucks by 80% in five years.

Calls to reduce pollution are driven in part by the increase in trade at the port complex over the last decade or so.

The value of containerized trade -- led by imported furniture; clothing and shoes; computers and office machines; autos, trucks and motorcycles; and toys -- soared from $74 billion in 1994 to $305 billion in 2006. That’s an increase of 312%.

Port trade, which helps support an estimated 3.3 million jobs from California to New York, is expected to double by 2020, port officials said.

The projects range from a $90-million container terminal expansion plan to the replacement for the Gerald Desmond Bridge, believed to be the only significant bridge in the nation wearing “diapers,” large wire nets that prevent chunks of exfoliating concrete from falling into the water and streets below.

On the north shore of the bridge, port officials want to build a showcase of green shipping technology on the last parcel of undeveloped land on Terminal Island. The 160-acre Pier S terminal would include shoreline electric power for freighters, low-emission locomotives and equipment and trucks designed to operate on alternative fuels.

But the ports’ vision is an unnerving one to Elina Green, project manager of the Long Beach Alliance for Children With Asthma.

“What happens if these projects are built and the ports fail to achieve the levels of emissions reductions they’re promising?” Green asked. “Already, we have higher rates of asthma in Long Beach than in Los Angeles County [as a whole] or even statewide.

“There’s so much fog and murkiness around their rosy predictions,” she added. “They say growing green means expanding terminals and putting more trucks on the road. What’s cleaner about that? It’s not logical.”

As part of an effort to deal with such questions, port authorities are developing public relations campaigns aimed at helping people to, as one port spokesman put it, “connect the dots in terms of how products get from overseas to the shelves of a local store.”

To make the ports hip, they are also creating a traveling educational exhibit -- expected to cost up to $1 million -- that will visit local schools to dazzle students with port facts.

For example, the ports handle more than 40% of the nation’s containerized cargo imports. They generate 259,000 full- and part-time jobs in Southern California and $6.7 billion a year in state and local tax revenues.

The exhibit will also tout the landmark Clean Air Action Plan, which calls for scrapping the oldest of the roughly 16,000 trucks working at the port and retrofitting others with the assistance of a port-sponsored grant subsidy.

The expansion effort will need all the fanfare it can muster, said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, a lifelong San Pedro resident whose district includes the Port of Los Angeles.

“We won’t feel comfortable until we reduce the number of premature deaths connected to cargo-related pollution,” she said. “I agree that the technology exists to have both clean air and economic development. But I also believe we’re going to have to apply very strong pressure on the ports to make that a reality.”

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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Supersizing the ports

With its containerized trade expected to double by 2020, the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex has plans to build a dozen expansion projects ranging in cost from $90 million to $864 million. The projects include:

Los Angeles Harbor

(1) A new wharf and rail yard for the TraPac Container Terminal

(2) Replacement wharves at the Yang Ming Container Terminal

(3) A new 10-year lease for UltraMar

(4) A new container terminal for China Shipping Container Lines Co.

(5) Additional container storage and wharf work at the YTI Container Terminal

(6) Additional container storage at the Evergreen Container Terminal

(7) Walkways and infrastructure improvements at the San Pedro waterfront

(8) Additional container storage at the APL Container Terminal

(9) Crude oil marine terminal, tank farm facilities and a new terminal at Pacific Energy

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Long Beach Harbor

(10) Pier S, an environmentally friendly 160-acre terminal

(11) A higher, stronger suspension bridge to replace the aging Gerald

Desmond Bridge

(12) Terminal expansions and other improvements in the Middle Harbor

Sources: ESRI, ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Times reporting. Graphics reporting by Louis Sahagun