Air pollution concerns delay port expansion

By Vanessa Stone
Daily Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer

An effort to expand Pier J at the Long Beach Port has come to a halt after angry environmentalist groups claimed that the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is flawed with major deficiencies concerning air pollution.

After environmentalists presented the city council with a three-inch thick binder of health concerns, the Long Beach Harbor Commissioners voted to unanimously revoke their previous certification to expand Pier J into a jumbo terminal.

Reworking the measures proposed by the Clean Air Coalition, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the California Earth Corps would delay the project at least eight months, according to port officials.

"The environmentalists cannot object to the project, they can only appeal the EIR report, whether it appropriately address the impacts of the environment," said Tom Johnson, the manager of environment at the Port of Long Beach.

Plans to expand Pier J will merge two existing terminals into one bigger terminal to accommodate larger ships and eliminate a bottleneck of truck traffic.

The proposed landfill project would add 115 acres onto this mega-terminal in the next decade and would be designed as a rectangular terminal to assist ships more efficiently, according to the Port of Long Beach Web site.

Environmentalist groups acknowledge the need for expansion considering that the port is one of the busiest in the world, with nearly $100 billion of goods being shipped each year.

"We are not against port expansion, we are just concerned that it is done in an environmentally safe way," said Daniel Hinerfeld, a spokesman for the NRDC.

The NRDC outlined 12 main points where the EIR is flawed, all dealing with the extent of the air pollution.

One main issue is that the EIR only analyzes the impacts of the project in the year 2015 without accounting for the first four phases to be completed in 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2014.

Another issue is that the amount of equipment needed and the number of hours it would require to perform this expansion was underestimated.

Port officials realized that they might have omitted information regarding the impact on the environment, but the final blow was a letter from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD).

"The [AQMD] criticized the way we [Harbor Commission] calculated the air admissions from vessels while waiting to come into the port," Johnson said. "Any project that involves more ships is going to increase air pollution because ships are not regulated the way trucks and trains are."

Johnson explained that the Harbor Commission only calculated air pollution for ships waiting five miles out, but their jurisdiction is 100 miles out.

While California is experiencing a decline in air pollution, the Harbor Commission has set-up an Air Quality Improvement Program to achieve long-term air pollution reductions.

"This commission wants you to know, that we know, we all breathe the same air and we want our staff to get this right," said Vice President Commissioner Doris Topsy-Elvord.

Although the port is committed to air quality improvement, environmentalists believe it is not enough.

"It is very important that the pubic is told clearly of health consequences of a big project like this," Hinerfeld said.