Our article yesterday (click here) about westside Long Beach residents and environmentalists criticizing a proposed plan to expand the current Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF) drew a lot of attention, as evidenced by the passionate comments left below the story. The story centered around concerns from public speakers at a meeting of the Joint Powers Authority (JPA), a four-member board that will ultimately decide the fate of the project once an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is completed in April 2010.
I know that all of those acronyms can be very complicated to follow. Still with us? Let’s continue.
Speakers expressed fears that an ICTF expansion would worsen air quality and noise pollution in the area. Beyond promises that their concerns would be taken seriously, representatives from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles did not address these issues in detail. Therefore, our article focused on the comments made by the speakers – namely, their fears.
Yesterday afternoon, we followed up with Andy Perez, representative with Union Pacific – the railroad company operating the ICTF under a lease with the two ports.
Perez said that the proposed ICTF project would severely reduce noise and air pollution at the facility, calling it “an extreme makeover” and explaining that the facility’s size will actually be reduced – from a current 277 acres to 204 acres – while still drastically increasing its capacity to handle cargo containers in preparation for an industry boom when the economy recovers. The $400 million privately-funded renovation, Perez said, will immediately cut pollution by an eye-opening 74% thanks to the use of alternative energy in trucks, trains and cranes (electric, magnetic and LNG solutions were mentioned, though exact numbers of each are not yet available). Bright lighting would also be reduced with the use of directional lighting at night – instead of large, stadium lights currently being used.
“We’re already meeting current requirements set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Air Quality Management District (AQMD), but we don’t just want to meet them. We want to exceed them,” Perez said yesterday afternoon.
These were the details that public speakers – and probably the JPA board, as well – sought on Wednesday night as they feared their community would fall deeper into a well of diesel pollution. Updates on the project from Port project directors were sparse in detail, however, which left attendees uncertain. Long Beach City Councilmember Tonia Reyes Uranga was one of those attendees.
“[Community members] are skeptical of some of the promises that are being made,” Reyes Uranga said yesterday. She also said that she would have been pleased to hear Perez’s comments during the Wednesday meeting, and that his figures on pollution reduction were positive.
“It’s a real issue of trust and communication – something that’s been lacking for the last twenty years,” she said. “The ports sometimes have difficulty explaining things in a plain and public way. And now they’re getting better and I think that a lot of it has to do with having a Commissioner from the westside.”
Indeed, Nick Sramek – president of the Port of Long Beach’s Harbor Commission and Chair of the JPA – grew up on the westside of Long Beach, and pointed out during Wednesday’s JPA meeting that he grew up around Silverado Park (the site of the meeting). It’s yet to be seen whether Sramek’s roots will play a role in his view of the ICTF expansion, since he made few comments on his opinion during the JPA meeting. Reyes Uranga is hopeful that it will contribute to changes in the area’s rough history with cargo movement, possibly meaning a win-win for the industry and westside residents who have had to live with poor air quality and are wary of further pollution.
“The culture is beginning to change, but it’s not going to completely change until they can come out and prove something to us,” Reyes Uranga said. “It’s a tough area, and [residents] are always battling something.”
Perez sticks to his guns, adamant that the ICTF expansion will drastically and immediately reduce a variety of pollutions while contracting the size of the facility and enabling it to handle greater cargo capacity. Sounds like a win-win, right?
We’ll have to wait until April, for the full EIR with complete details on pollution effects and job creation that were promised at Wednesday night’s meeting. For now, Union Pacific is asking for trust and the community is asking for proof. Perez’s claim that the expansion will cause an immediate 74% reduction in pollution would be groundbreaking improvement. Meanwhile, a youth football team practiced outside of the Silverado Community Center, huffing and puffing in the night air as they jogged into a huddle.