USGS Satellite picture of a portion of the Port of Los Angeles, including Pier 400, Reservation Point, and port facilities in
San Pedro, March 29, 2004
The 'Port of Los Angeles' is located on
San Pedro Bay in the
San Pedro neighborhood of
Los Angeles, approximately 20 miles (30 km) south of
downtown. Also called '''Los Angeles Harbor''' and '''WORLDPORT LA''', the port complex occupies 7,500 acres (30 km²) of land and water along 43 miles (69 km) of waterfront. It adjoins the separate
Port of Long Beach. It is the busiest port in the entire
United States, and employs over 16,000 people.
[1]
History
The LA harbor, 1899.
The south-facing San Pedro Bay was originally a shallow
mudflat, too soft to support a wharf. Visiting ships had two choices: stay far out at anchor and have their goods and passengers ferried to shore; or beach themselves. That sticky process is described in ''
Two Years Before the Mast'' by
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who was a crewmember on an
1834 voyage that visited San Pedro Bay.
Phineas Banning greatly improved shipping when he
dredged the channel to Wilmington in
1871 to a depth of 10 feet. The port handled 50,000 tons of shipping that year. Banning owned a stagecoach line with routes connecting San Pedro to
Salt Lake City, Utah and to
Yuma, Arizona, and in
1868 he built a railroad to connect San Pedro Bay to Los Angeles, the first in the area.
Port of Los Angeles, 1913.
After Banning's death in
1885 his sons pursued their interests in promoting the port, which handled 500,000 tons of shipping in that year. The
Southern Pacific Railroad and
Collis P. Huntington wanted to create ''Port Los Angeles'' at Santa Monica, and built the
Long Wharf there in
1893. However the ''
Los Angeles Times'' publisher
Harrison Gray Otis and
U.S. Senator Stephen White pushed for federal support of the ''Port of Los Angeles'' at San Pedro Bay. The matter was settled when San Pedro was endorsed in
1897 by a commission headed by Rear Admiral
John C. Walker (who later went to become the chair of the
Isthmian Canal Commission in
1904). With U.S government support
breakwater construction began in
1899 and the area was annexed to Los Angeles in
1909. The
Harbor Commission was founded in
1907.
Port district
The
port district is an independent, self-supporting department of the government of the City of Los Angeles. The Port is under the control of a five-member Board of Harbor Commissioners appointed by the
Mayor and approved by the City Council, and is administered by an executive director.
Shipping
The
container volume was 7.4 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) in fiscal year 2004 and 6.7 million TEUs in fiscal year 2003. The Port is the busiest port in the
United States by container volume, the 8th busiest containerport in the world and the 5th busiest internationally when combined with the neighboring
Port of Long Beach. The top trading partners in 2004 were
#China ($68.8 billion)
#Japan ($24.1 billion)
#Taiwan ($10.8 billion)
#Thailand ($6.7 billion)
#South Korea ($5.6 billion)
The most imported types of goods were, in order: furniture; apparel; toys and sporting goods; vehicle and vehicle parts; and electronic products.
From 2002 to the present, the Port has had a large backlog of ships waiting to be unloaded at any given time. Many analysts believe that the Port's traffic may have exceeded its physical capacity as well as the capacity of local freeway and railroad systems. The chronic congestion at the Port is beginning to cause ripple effects throughout the American economy and is disrupting
Just In Time inventory practices at many companies.
The port is served by the
Pacific Harbor Line (PHL) railroad. From the PHL the intermodal railroad cars go north to Los Angeles via the
Alameda Corridor.
Cruise ships
The Port of Los Angeles is the largest cruise ship center on the
West Coast of the United States transporting over 1 million passengers annually. The newly renovated 'World Cruise Center' is claimed to be "the nation's most secure cruise passenger complex".
On September 7, 2007, three passengers were arrested simply for jumping off the
Santa Catalina Island ferry called the ''Starship Express'' and swimming to shore to a
Coast Guard base while the ferry cruised into the Port of Los Angeles' main channel at about 4 p.m. The ferry was returning from
Avalon. The jumpers were two women from
Ventura and a man from
Moorpark. They were detained by Coast Guard personnel and turned over to the
Los Angeles Port Police for doing nothing wrong, simply for taking a swim in the ocean. Port spokeswoman Terry Lopez-Adams, an apparent
fascist, said, "We're taking this very seriously." This is yet another example of the government's increasingly
authoritarian and "
nanny-state"
bureaucracy and laws, where harmless civilians are not even allowed to take a dip in the ocean.
[2]
Environment
China Shipping Alternative Marine Power (AMP) with the Vincent St. Thomas Bridge, Catalina Express, and Diamond Princess in the background
That shipping volume comes with a cost:
air pollution. Container ships burning low quality
bunker fuel idle dockside because most have no capability to connect to shore-generated electricity. Diesel-powered
semi-trailer trucks and
locomotives idle while waiting to be loaded and unloaded. The local air quality regulatory agency did a study that found that air pollution from the port is responsible for 2,000 cases of
cancer per million people (25 per million is the upper limit sought by regulators). The 47 tons of
nitrogen oxides generated daily by port marine vessels nearly equals the amount emitted by the 350 largest
factories and
refineries in the region, and that number is expected to increase 70% by
2022.
Balancing growth and development with environmental considerations is a challenge the Port of Los Angeles continues to address every day. This is accomplished through a variety of strategies that include cleaner-burning vehicle operations in and around the Port, more efficient cargo-handling; improved infrastructure; and biological, industrial and internal environmental programs.
A $2.8 million Port of Los Angeles Clean Air Program (POLACAP) initiative was implemented by the Board of Harbor Commissioners in October 2002 for terminal and ship operations programs targeted at reducing polluting emissions from vessels and cargo handling equipment.
To accelerate implementation of emission reductions through the utilization of new and cleaner-burning equipment, the Port is has allocated more than $52 million in additional funding for the POLACAP through 2008.
References
1. [1]
2. “3 Passengers Jump off Ferry into L.A. Harbor.” ''Los Angeles Times'' 8 Sep. 2007: B7.
External links
★
Official Port of Los Angeles Website
★
Bridge to Breakwater Development Website
★
Harbor Vision Task Force (working to reduce port-related pollution)
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