Ports plan to add 2,400 acres of landfill as part of a 21st century expansion project.

Ports plan to add 2,400 acres of landfill as part of a 21st century expansion project

A $4.8 billion project that would add 2,400 acres of landfill to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and accommodate a projected tripled cargo rate by the year 2020 has taken the first step toward reality.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which wants to dredge 85 million metric tons of mud from the bottom of San Pedro Bay to create the landfill, held the first public hearing on the environmental impact of the project last month. A decision by the Secretary of the Army on the project is expected early next year, and construction could begin in 1993, said Michael Piszker, feasibility study manager.

The massive project, if approved, would increase the number of cargo terminals at the two seaports from 70 to 108, increasing cargo capacity by 60 percent.

It would also double the annual $3 billion the ports contribute directly and indirectly to the Southland economy to $6.2 billion. In addition, it would increase port-associated employment from 47,000 jobs to 97,000 jobs.

Floyd Clay, a Los Angeles Harbor Commissioner and project proponent, said the either the ports expand "or the trade is going to shift to Seattle-Tacoma or Oakland-San Francisco."

The two other West Coast ports have a natural advantage over Los Angeles in a battle for Pacific Rim trade because the northern ports have room to expand, Clay said. "They don't have the city all crowded around them," he said.

Under the port expansion plan, the additional landfill would be divided almost equally between the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, said Yvonne Avila, spokeswoman for the Port of Long Beach.

The dredging of sand would serve the dual purpose of creating land and making the channels deeper for larger ships. Post Panamax ships, so named because they are wider than the Panama Canal, are becoming more an more popular and they require deeper channels, Avila said.

The Port of Los Angeles, which became the No. 1 port of containerized cargo this year, and the Port of Long Beach, which ranks third in the nation, are usually fierce competitors, but are united in trying to implement this plan, according to officials from the two ports.

Chuck Ellis, public information officer for Los Angeles Harbor, said that a boom in population and a boom in Pacific Rim trade is going to happen anyway. If the expansion is not implemented, trucks will converge from all directions on the Los Angeles basin to bring in goods to a booming local population.

The project "is a chance for government to step in before it's too late," Ellis said.

The project will increase the amount of traffic from 19,000 trucks a day to 48,000 trucks a day and 25 trains a day to 90 trains a day, according to Gill Hicks, general manager of the recently-created Alameda Corridor Authority. That group is a joint-powers agency planning to construct a combination expressway-railway to handle the increased traffic.

The planned corridor, a 20-mile-long combination expressway and railroad route has no parallel in the nation, Hicks said. It will cost $500 million and will widen Alameda Street to a six-lane, nonstop highway and create a corridor for Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Santa Fe trains to run twice as fast.

But some Wilmington and San Pedro residents, as well as an official of the Los Angeles Foreign Trade Association, said they have some doubts that the ports need the entire 2,400-acre expansion.

"I think it's a very ambitious project and my hope is the growth and trade through this area will substantiate the project the ports have planned," said Jay Winter, executive secretary of the foreign trade association. "I think that we're going to experience growth, I don't know if it is going to be very fast."

Winter added he thinks the biggest problem the project might have is meeting the requirements of the California Coastal Commission as well as other government agencies which need to approve the plan before construction begins. Political opposition could also be a problem, he said.

"It's absolutely gigantic," said Bob Seabourn, president of Friends of the Harbor, one of several boaters and homeowners groups opposing the expansion.

"They want to have supertankers and supercontainer ships occupy the space to the exclusion of everything and everyone else," he said.

The loss of the boating waterways is an impact of the plan which really can not be mitigated, harbor officials admit. But, Ellis noted, the ports have the larger responsibility of bringing in goods for the Los Angeles area.

Seabourn and other residents have written letters asking that the comment period on the environmental impact report be extended to Feb. 1, 1991, but Piszker said that there will be no extension.

Besides the loss of boating waterways, opponents, including homeowners' associations in Wilmington and San Pedro are concerned about the influx of traffic into their neighborhoods, Seabourn said.

In any case, opposition to the plan, is far from organized at this point, Seaborn admitted. "This thing has been kicking around for 23 years and occasionally it would rear its head over the years . . . . (But) I don't think anyone in the public took it seriously," he said.

PHOTO : Dredging: The plan calls for 85 million metric tons of mud to move