Rail Project for Port of Los Angeles Sparks Anger in Long Beach

It was a provocative statement from the mayor of this city of nearly half a million people, where the port, one of the busiest in the nation, has long driven the economy. For years, Mayor Bob Foster said, he has favored development projects in the region, looking for ways for the port to bring in more business. But the $500 million project by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway would increase traffic and pollution and have a devastating effect on residents in adjacent working-class neighborhoods, he said.

“This is really taking advantage of poor people for the advantage of others,” Mr. Foster said in an interview. “The city of Los Angeles and a major corporation are really treating Long Beach in a deplorable manner — one city is literally ignoring another city’s residents. We’re asking them to be clean and to be a good neighbor and help mitigate this, but they’re basically thumbing their nose at us.”

The fight over the proposed railyard, which would serve as a large center for trains that move shipping containers from the Port of Los Angeles to other parts of the country, is the region’s biggest battle yet over threatened competition from the expansion of the Panama Canal, set to be completed by 2015.

Community activists say the project’s supporters have ignored the negative effects it would have on the neighborhood already hurt by pollution, but those who back it contend that it is the most environmentally friendly way to grow businesses in the region and maintain the port’s dominance.

“We have to start moving things faster and cleaner, and we have to have the infrastructure to do that as close to the port as you can, which is what this does,” said Wally Baker, the chairman of Beat the Canal, a coalition of industry and labor groups supporting projects that they say will bring thousands of jobs to the area. “The last thing we want to do is create more uncertainty. That’s the kind of goofy thing that drives business away from California.”

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have long been economic engines for the region, which is now home to the nation’s largest hub of distribution warehouses that sort the imported goods before they are sent to retailers across the country.

Roughly 40 percent of the country’s container imports, including cars, clothing and household items, mostly from Asia, pass through the two ports, making it the sixth-busiest harbor in the world. Many here worry that competition with ports on the East Coast is the most important threat, because so many of the products that arrive in Long Beach and Los Angeles are on their way elsewhere, often crisscrossing through a web of trains and trucks to get to consumers in the East.

Other ports along the East and Gulf Coasts are rushing to make significant changes to compete with the widened Panama Canal. Last year, the Obama administration moved to speed up the review process to deepen the harbor for many of the ports, saying that deeper harbors would help to create new jobs and strengthen the economy.

Mr. Baker’s group has estimated that the ports could lose 100,000 jobs once the Panama Canal expansion allows larger ships to bypass California and go directly to the East Coast. Without the canal’s expansion, these larger ships could not fit through the waterway. And while Mr. Foster and Long Beach port officials have said that they do not see an immediate threat in the expansion, Los Angeles officials seem to disagree.

David Arian, a retired longshoreman and the vice president of the commission that oversees the Port of Los Angeles, called the railyard “essential to our future.”

“It is the only way to stay competitive, it’s the only way to deal with the canal,” he said during the hearing in March to approve the project. “It’s the only way we’re going to get that market share.”

Officials from the port declined to comment further, concerned that they could provide more fodder for a lawsuit from the plan’s opponents.

The ports have long been known as the biggest contributors to air pollution in the region, with local officials complaining that such pollution has caused an epidemic of asthma, stunted lung development in children and chronic lung disease in adults.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/us/rail-project-for-port-of-los-angeles-sparks-anger-in-long-beach.html?partner=rss&emc=rss