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Green
ports
Monday, November
21, 2005
Journal of Commerce
BY BILL
MONGELLUZZO
When shipping executives
traveled to Sacramento on Nov. 4 for a meeting
of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's task
force on the movement of goods, they expected a
discussion on how to develop the marine
transportation system while limiting pollution.
Environmentalists had other ideas. They treated
the session as a forum on how to halt growth at
ports.
That same day in Long Beach, the
South Coast Air Quality Management District
issued a seven-point announcement. The district
said ports haven't been doing enough to prevent
increased air pollution.
Ports in
California are under growing environmental
pressure, and they're not alone. At a time when
cargo volume continues to grow, ports throughout
the nation find themselves forced to increase
spending to reduce air and water pollution.
Although all U.S. ports face demands to
redesign facilities and replace equipment to
lessen air and water pollution, the pressure may
be greatest in California, where the ports of
Los Angeles and Long Beach handle more than 40
percent of all U.S. containerized imports.
Long Beach had to spend $1 million to
permit ships at a new terminal to operate from
shoreside power. A program to reduce truck air
pollution on Interstate 710 near the Southern
California ports offers owner-operators up to
$25,000 to replace old equipment. And shipping
interests have had to fight off legislation to
impose a $30-per-TEU fee divided among
infrastructure, security and environmental
measures.
"It's a national story. The
industry has to take the Southern California
effort seriously," said John McLaurin, president
of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association in
San Francisco, the industry's lead
representative on environmental issues in
California.
The ports are spending tens
of millions of dollars on projects they hope
will mollify the most vociferous and well-funded
environmental groups. Port officials consider
multimillion-dollar "mitigation" projects a cost
of doing business. "We're No. 1," said Bruce
Seaton, interim executive port director at Los
Angeles, which handled more than 7 million TEUs
last year. "We need to be the leader in
environmental matters as well."
It isn't
easy. When the South Coast Air Quality
Management District, a Southern California
regulatory agency, issued its seven-point "clean
port" initiative, it emphasized that the ports'
initiatives to date, including Los Angeles's
revolutionary program to cap emissions at 2001
levels, were inadequate. "The proposed no net
increase plan for the Port of Los Angeles is a
good start, but it's not enough," said William
A. Burke, chairman of the AQMD.
Environmental organizations in
California are emboldened by their recent
successes in delaying marine terminal and
intermodal rail expansion projects. They cite
studies that have uncovered especially high
rates of cancer and asthma along busy truck
arteries such as I-710, calling these lifelines
to the ports "diesel death zones."
Groups such as the Coalition for
Environmental Health and Justice want more than
just cleaner-burning engines in trucks and the
use of alternative fuels in yard tractors. That
coalition's subheading describes its true
mission: "Communities United Against the 710
Freeway Expansion." A growing number of
environmental and community activist groups want
nothing less than to block further growth at the
nation's largest port complex.
Many of
the top U.S. container ports have grappled with
environmental issues of one sort or another. In
New York-New Jersey and Oakland, harbor dredging
is the hottest issue. For metropolitan areas
like Houston and Los Angeles-Long Beach, diesel
emission issues are front and center.
Charleston learned a difficult lesson in
1999 when the South Carolina State Ports
Authority attempted to build a large container
complex at Daniel Island. Community groups
jettisoned the project not because of air- and
water-quality issues but because of the noise,
bright lights and traffic congestion that a
marine terminal would inflict on neighboring
residents. The Bayport terminal under
construction at Houston had to overcome similar
opposition.
Even seaports located in
cities such as Charleston, Savannah, Norfolk and
Seattle-Tacoma that meet the Environmental
Protection Agency's clean air standards are
under scrutiny. The Natural Resources Defense
Council, in its 2004 analysis of the top 10
container ports titled "Harboring Pollution,"
indicated it will pressure ports to reduce
diesel emissions even if the ports are in areas
that have met EPA goals.
Most ports have
developed pollution-reduction plans in an
attempt to satisfy environmental regulators and
local community groups. The Port Authority of
New York and New Jersey is implementing measures
even if they are not required by regulatory
agencies, said Port Director Rick Larrabee.
In line with its program to dredge the
harbor to a depth of 50 feet, the port is
spending $60 million to purchase and restore
wetland areas. New York is retrofitting the
Staten Island ferries with cleaner-burning
engines and is working with other organizations
to retrofit trucks. The port also is touting
various environmental awards it has won. The
port authority has created an environmental
department and is participating in an
International Organization for Standardization
certification program for its environmental
programs.
"We knew we needed to have a
credible environmental agenda. We wanted to get
out in front of it," Larrabee said.
The
Port of Charleston went the legislative route to
ensure that it has political as well as
community support for its proposed container
complex at a former Navy base, spokesman Byron
Miller said. Charleston will follow all of the
environmental requirements in the legislation,
such as building direct highway access and
overpasses into the facility to reduce the
impact of truck traffic on the surrounding area,
Miller said.
In Southern California,
each lease for a new or expanded facility gives
the port an opportunity to raise the
environmental bar. With little waterfront land
remaining for development, the Southern
California ports use the leasing process as
leverage to attract terminal operators committed
to building the greenest facilities possible
with today's technology. Cost is a secondary
consideration.
Any new or expanded
marine terminal in Southern California will
include as standard features environmental
measures such as shoreside power for operating
vessels from "cold iron" at berth, yard tractors
that burn clean diesel or alternative fuels,
electric cranes and the use of diesel oxidation
catalysts to reduce harmful emissions.
Environmental considerations permeate
every port activity from the design and
operation of marine terminals to how the lease
is written, said Robert Kanter, director of
planning at the Port of Long Beach.
Environmental-impact studies will be performed
according to the strictest standards and will
consider all health risks associated with port
operations, he said.
Port environmental
strategy continues to evolve as terminals
experiment with various technologies to
determine which new options are available to
reduce pollution. "We do the best we can at the
moment while always looking to the future," he
said.
Port planners fear, however, that
no matter what they do, environmentalists will
find some loophole in an environmental-impact
report or will whip up community opposition to
major projects such as BNSF Railway's proposed
near-dock rail transfer yard.
BNSF's
intermodal yard, which would be adjacent to
Union Pacific's Intermodal Container Transfer
Facility, about four miles from the harbor,
highlights the Catch-22 environment in which
port and intermodal projects now exist.
Environmentalists have always urged ports to
shift traffic from truck to rail, which provides
significantly cleaner transportation.
BNSF's Southern California International
Gateway would remove 1 million truck trips a
year from I-710, but residents of the Wilmington
and West Long Beach communities near the
proposed site oppose the project because the
short four-mile dray from the harbor would
direct those truck trips through their
neighborhoods.
Some transportation
planners are beginning to doubt whether any
major port-related project will be built in
Southern California. They fear that
environmental groups will attempt to kill any
project that would allow the ports to grow.
A no-growth policy is not the intention
of Schwarzenegger's task force on goods
movement, said Barry Sedlick, undersecretary of
the California Business, Transportation and
Housing Agency, which co-sponsored the Nov. 4
hearing in Sacramento.
Sedlick noted
that the task force's mission statement is to
develop a plan for expanding California's
maritime transportation infrastructure in an
environmentally friendly way. The commission
will submit its recommendations to
Schwarzenegger next month.
State Sen.
Alan Lowenthal successfully sponsored
legislation two years ago to fine terminals $250
each time a truck with an appointment must wait
in line for more than 30 minutes. Last year, he
pushed marine terminal operators into extending
their gate hours. He believes ports can grow
without alienating their communities. His
recommendations, however, could be difficult to
follow.
Lowenthal said the ports should
set a goal of zero emissions, with a plan that
works toward that goal. He recognizes that
today's technology cannot provide for zero
emissions from port operations, and says interim
goals such as no net increase in pollution
should be included in the plan.
Lowenthal was interviewed this month at
a Long Beach conference that discussed
futuristic technologies such as a container
shuttle from the harbor to inland transportation
hubs that runs on magnetic levitation. Maglev,
while a proven technology for mass transit, is
unproven in the freight arena. Lowenthal said,
however, that an environmental plan that keeps
the door open to such technologies is necessary
to win the support of environmentalists and
community groups.
Transportation
consultant Gill Hicks, former managing director
of the Alameda Corridor Transportation
Authority, said that to accommodate future
demand for cargo facilities, transportation
interests must move quickly to develop a growth
strategy that also satisfies environmentalists.
"The ports are losing the P.R. war," he warned.
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