Report: LAX, Los Angeles port key to revitalizing city economy

Report: LAX, Los Angeles port key to revitalizing city economy The Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles International Airport, the major ports-of-entry in Southern California, are key to countering significant area job losses and revitalizing the city's economy, according to a report released Wednesday.
   The Los Angeles Economy and Jobs Committee report, requested by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and conducted over 15 months by the privately funded 26-member panel, said terminal and runways upgrades at LAX and immediate expansion of cargo terminals at the port are critical priorities to help offset the more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the city since 1990.
   At LAX, which the panel said contributes $61 billion a year to the local economy, the report recommends city officials expedite work on the Mid-Field Concourse terminal, improve passenger safety by reconfiguring the airport's north runways, relocate Transportation Security Administration baggage screening equipment, and modernize domestic and international terminals.
   In making recommendations about the port, the report warned that Port of Los Angeles cargo facilities must be expanded before the port reaches its rail-loading capacity, which the panel estimates will be in 2010. The report also encourages port and city officials to seek alternative funding for infrastructure development in the port, such as state and federal government sources and vehicle tolling systems in the port area. While urging immediate development, the panel also acknowledged that the port must address community concerns over the environmental impacts of port operations, saying it felt strongly that 'there can be no (port) growth without green and no green without (port) growth.' The panel recommends that port and city officials create new incentives and requirements to reduce port-generated pollution emissions.
   Together with neighboring Long Beach, the two ports are the busiest port complex in the Western Hemisphere, moving nearly 16 million TEUs last year and contributing $28 billion a year in state and local tax revenue.
   The panel does not recommend how port or city officials can overcome threatened litigation from environmental groups and kick-start development in the harbor.
   In December, the Port of Los Angeles broke their nearly five-year self-imposed moratorium on port development when the Harbor Commission approved a prerequisite Environmental Impact Report for an expansion and redevelopment project at port's TraPac Container Terminal. The approval, the first step to getting the four-year old terminal project underway, was the first move toward a major development project at the port since 2003.
   The port, along with officials from the neighboring Long Beach port, have pushed back development and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on environmental programs since a 2002 National Resources Defense Council lawsuit severely delayed a Los Angeles port terminal project. Port officials eventually settled with the NRDC at a cost of nearly $100 million in project retrofits and lost revenues.
   State law regarding public works projects provides the ability for the public to delay or stop a project by questioning its EIR.
   Despite all the money and effort spent by the two ports over the past four years to appease groups such as the NRDC, it took less than two weeks for a coalition of 16 environmental, community and labor groups to question the TraPac project's EIR. On Dec. 17 the coalition filed an appeal with the Los Angeles City Council against the 10-day-old EIR, saying that port officials were not moving fast or far enough in proposed environmental efforts regarding the project. ' Keith Higginbotham