Environmentalists complain about pollution from container terminal and want more mitigation.
The Port of Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners last week delayed a vote certifying a final environmental impact report (EIR) for improvements to the Yusen Terminals Inc. (YTI) container terminal.
After hearing comments from several groups dissatisfied with mitigation plans, the board delayed the vote on the EIR until its next meeting on Nov. 6.
The $60 million project would improve the 185-acre terminal that YTI operates on Terminal Island, so that it could accommodate larger ships with capacities up to 13,000 TEUs and increase its annual capacity from 1,692,000 TEUs to 1,913,000 TEUs.
Patrick Burgoyne, president and chief executive officer of NYK Ports, which includes both YTI and Ceres Terminals, said in an interview this week that the project is essentially a “wear-and-tear” upgrade, and not an expansion.
“This is insuring that our facility does not become obsolete in the next two years,” he said. Deepening a berth to 53 feet would allow the terminal to take advantage of a nearby channel that has already been dredged to the same depth by the port. The terminal is currently called by ships of about 6,000 TEUs of capacity, and the planned improvements will allow it to accommodate with ships twice that capacity and compete on a level playing field with other terminals in the ports.
YTI currently has two operating berths: Berths 212-213 and Berths 214-216, and one non-operating berth, Berths 217-220.
Berths 214–216 would be deepened from 45 to 53 feet with an additional two feet of over-dredge depth, for a total depth of 55 feet mean lower low water (MLLW) and the non-operating berth would be deepened from 45 to 47 feet with an additional two feet of over-dredge. The berths would also be reinforced.
A 100-foot-gauge crane rail would be extended to Berths 217–220 so that larger cranes could be utilized, backlands at the terminal would be repaired and improved, and a new rail track within the terminal’s on-dock intermodal container transfer facility would be added.
The deeper berths and other improvements would allow the terminal to serve larger ships expected to call through 2026.
Construction is expected to begin next year and take 22 months.
Michelle Grubbs, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, said her members supported the final EIR for the terminal improvements, adding it would allow the terminal to handle larger, cleaner ships more efficiently and increase the terminal’s rail capacity.
Ian McMillan, a staff member with the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), said the district was concerned the environmental impact report showed the terminal, by itself, may cause a violation of the federal nitrogen oxide standard.
“We are concerned that not all feasible mitigation measures being implemented,” he said.
Chris Cannon, director of the environmental management division at the Port of Los Angeles, said a big part of the reason that the NOx standard would be violated was because of existing high-level background pollution.
Joe Galliani of the South Bay 350 Climate Action Group complained the port was not keeping a “zero-emission promise” and said the terminal’s diesel operation would “pump greenhouse gases and pollution into our air.”
“You need to cut your carbon output here… This is an organization that can lead the way. I don’t understand why your zero-emission technology is not being applied here stringently,” he said.
Nick Burant, a policy associate with the Coalition for Clean Air, said approval of the project would be “shocking,” noting the project would lead to increased cancer and asthma risk and complained about the “lack and insignificance of mitigation measures.”
But the EIR said the “maximum incremental cancer risk is predicted to be less than the significance threshold” for residents in surrounding communities, except for some residents in a portion of a marina at the port.
Burant said approval of the project would represent a “passing of the torch. We understand the port no longer wants to be a leader here and that considering health and sustainability is something that the port is passing on to AQMD and the state.”
Kathleen Woodfield, vice president of the San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, said approval of the project would require the board to make a finding of “overriding considerations” and demonstrate that the board believes “commerce is more important to you than public health” and it did not push zero emissions technology.
Adrian Martinez, a staff attorney for Earth Justice, said the project would disproportionately affect minority and low income populations. “We need to implement zero- and near-zero emission technologies” to meet federal and state pollution standards, she added.
Cannon said YTI will be required to implement all feasible mitigation measures for the reduction of air pollutants such as diesel particulate matters, greenhouse gases and pollutants such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides.
He noted the terminal is being modified to allow larger ships, which he said is something the port wants to encourage since it reduces pollution on a per-container basis and because newer ships have cleaner engines and are more capable to use alternate marine power (AMP), that is, plug into the electric grid ashore and turn off their engines when in port.
Burgoyne told American Shipper that given another chance to do so, his company would publish the mitigation plans for the terminal sooner.
“We’re confident that when the full facts are understood about the wear-and-tear upgrade we are engaging in, those same environmental groups will look favorably on the project and support it,” he said. “NYK’s environmental record in the port of L.A./Long Beach is second to none.”
The Port of Los Angeles said in 2004, the NYK Atlas, the first container vessel to be built with AMP specifications already in mind, visited the port and the YTI terminal added “plug in”-ready technology so it could accommodate these ships in 2006, before the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a shore-power regulation in December 2007.
Burgoyne noted in the past year the terminal added four “plugs” to increase compliance with shore-power regulations. NYK’s ships are also compliant with all vessel-speed reduction regulations.
Cannon said another mitigation project undertaken by YTI includes repowering rubber-tired gantry cranes with cleaner engines, noting they have long, useful lives “which would make it economically unfeasible to replace at this time.”
Burgoyne said the company “is wholly in compliance today with all California requirements for terminal operations in the port of L.A./Long Beach and we will continue to be so going forward,” while “striking the balance between environmental compliance on one hand and a sensible business plan on the other hand.”
All six shipping lines that are members of the G6 alliance, as well as Hanjin, Evergreen and Maersk Lines, move boxes through the terminal. Not all those companies have ships tie-up at the terminal, but charter slots from carriers that do.
Cannon said the terminal lease has “reopeners” every five years that can be used by the port to encourage the terminal to employ zero-emission equipment in the future. Anthony Pirozzi Jr., one of the commissioners, wants to find out if the five-year period between lease reopeners could be shortened.
“We are absolutely open to considering alternatives as the technology progresses,” said Burgoyne, who noted the company has tested both LNG and electric-powered yard hostlers at the terminal.
Pirozzi also wants to know if the fact that big ships are being used would mean a reduction in the number of smaller ships coming to the port.
Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said he would provide the commission with additional information, but noted in September, for example, the number of containers was up 9 percent while the number of ship calls was down 11 percent.
Cannon said the City of Los Angeles is asking the port to develop greenhouse gas targets through 2050 and the port is already 15 percent below the city’s greenhouse gas target for 2020.
David Arian, vice president of the commission and former international president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, discussed what he saw as tradeoffs between the environment and employment in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
He said a clean air program was devised for the two ports several years ago after the mayors of the two cities relied on recommendations of four environmentalists and four labor leaders who met together, and “fought like hell for six months; came to a consensus.”
“I think we are back in the same position again,” he said. “Without us being able to bring that 53 feet along the dock and build new docks, we can’t stay competitive. We don’t do this project, we can’t stay competitive.”
Arian claimed “the difference between the Port of L.A. and the Port of Long Beach, the Port of Hamburg or any other port is the way they are staying competitive is by fully automating and by eliminating 80 percent of their workforce. That is not the program for L.A. We don’t see automating another terminal in the near future. Because we want those man hours, we want people working, we want to be in that position.”
Art Wong, spokesman for the Port of Long Beach, disputed the comment about workforce reductions there, saying, for example, OOCL has said the new automated terminal it is building in the Middle Harbor of Long Beach will employ about the same number of people, albeit doing different jobs. The project, however, will about double the capacity.
Arian said the Middle Harbor project will eliminate trucks that move containers within the terminals and diesel emissions, which he said were the most destructive pollutants and cannot be done without a fully automated terminal.
“What you can do in an automated terminal in terms of environmental issues is much different than what you can do at a conventional terminal,”he said. “And I think environmentalists and others have to identify with that and I think there is going to be a compromise as there was in the past. We have to find where that middle ground is in moving forward with these developments.”
L.A. port commission postpones vote on YTI expansion
