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Investment in Sacramento, Calif., Port Keeps Options Open for Oakland Port

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 00:00 CST

By Jim Wasserman, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Nov. 8--OAKLAND -- The Port of Oakland with its 36 giant cranes and 20 berths is so massive and global in scale that it truly begs the question: What does the nation's fourth-busiest port need with the Port of Sacramento?

So far, there's largely one answer to why the world-class port, which handled almost 30 million tons of freight on 1,902 ships, is negotiating to manage an operation that averages one ship a week: It keeps options open for the future.

The Oakland port expects China-driven Asian trade to increase 8-10 percent yearly, and with no place left to expand, Oakland is hoping to accommodate some of this growth by using the berths and storage areas at the 150-acre West Sacramento facility.

"We don't want any of our ports to go out of business," said Wilson Lacy, maritime director of the Port of Oakland. "We're not intending to colonize or anything like that."

Indeed, Oakland came to the bargaining table in response to an SOS issued by Sacramento, awash in red ink and grasping for a way to stem losses that totalled $5.5 million after five years.

"They have management experience that would be difficult for us to duplicate," said West Sacramento City Manager Toby Ross. "For relatively minor, incremental costs they can market it in a way we cannot. The Port of Sacramento struggles every year to mount a visit to Japan or Korea. The Port of Oakland is there about five months of the year."

By December, the two ports hope to have an agreement on a takeover that could occur early next year because the Sacramento port could run out of money as early as June.

Sacramento's revival hinges on Oakland's larger strategy. The Bay Area port is hemmed in by traffic congestion, the air pollution concerns of its West Oakland neighbors and an expected tripling of cargo within 20 years -- all the while knocking up against geographical limits.

Transportation bottlenecks grow as ever more cargo needs to get off the Oakland docks and into distribution centers from the Central Valley to Salt Lake City.

"We've expanded our ports, but the infrastructure that supports maritime operations has not kept pace," said Port of Oakland spokesman Harold Jones.

Officials at the Bay Area port, which occupies the front lines of globalization and expanding world trade in the Pacific, have already invested $1.2 billion to dredge deeper channels, buy added cranes and expand terminals for global shipping lines.

Now their aim is to take more diesel-burning trucks off congested Bay Area interstates 80 and 580 and load more containers onto railroad cars and barges. At the same time, Oakland must assuage the concerns of West Sacramentans who fear it is merely offloading pollution in their area.

Lacy is pressing the corporate and political world for modernized, expanded railroad corridors across the West -- especially on the line between the Bay Area and Sacramento where Amtrak and freight trains share tracks.

The port has already invested millions of dollars to open a dockside railyard that it says has taken 20,000 truck trips yearly off nearby freeways. It wants to take off thousands more by opening a rail shuttle to Shafter in Kern County to supply major distribution centers in the San Joaquin Valley. Containers would return bearing the agricultural products that represent 40 percent of the Port of Oakland's export cargo.

Finally, the Port of Sacramento could one day become an inland staging area for barged container traffic to and from the Port of Oakland, eliminating still more Bay Area truck traffic, Lacy says.

"I'd like to see it as a support facility for Oakland if we can," Lacy said. "Short sea haul would relieve congestion on the freeways. It takes 100 gallons of fuel to move stuff from here to the Woodland Target store. From Sacramento, it could be 10 gallons."

Barging containers to West Sacramento would also help curb diesel emissions in the West Oakland neighborhoods that forced a 1998 legal settlement with the port over its expansion plans. The port allocated $9 million to electrify cargo loading equipment, replace AC Transit diesel bus engines with cleaner burning engines and provide financial incentives to truck drivers for putting in cleaner-burning truck engines.

"The settlement did produce good results and may produce even more good results for Oakland," said Alan Ramo, who filed the original lawsuit against the port as an attorney with the Golden Gate University Environmental Justice Law Center.

Such so-called "short-sea" options like the one proposed between Oakland and Sacramento are a growing trend globally, said Aaron Ellis, spokesman for the Virginia-based American Association of Port Authorities.

"There's a real push nationwide and internationally to do more of what is done in Europe," he said. "To use canals, waterways and rivers to get the cargo off the highways, the railroads whenever possible."

Last month New Jersey-based Pacific Shipper magazine hailed the notion in an article on the Port of Oakland's competitive challenges to bigger ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

"The barge system would alleviate congestion that may develop in Oakland and open another shipping route linking California's Central Valley and its coastline," the magazine stated.

Last year, L.A. ranked as the nation's largest port, handling 7.3 million containers. Long Beach was second with 5.7 million; and Oakland fourth with 2 million.

Lacy and Port of Oakland spokesman Harold Jones say dredging Sacramento's 43-mile ship channel to a 35-foot depth is also on the agenda. The port's shallow 30-foot channel is a major hindrance to bigger ships that could bring more profitable cargo to the West Sacramento port.

"We already have one of the largest dredging projects in the United States," said Jones. He said half the $300 million cost of dredging the Oakland harbor to 50 feet from 42 feet is borne by the federal government.

Channel deepening, estimated at $65 million with the federal government paying half, has long eluded the Port of Sacramento.

Jones and Lacy also pointed to a $7.8 billion bond measure, SB 1024, proposed by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, as a possible source of funds to upgrade and better connect the ports.

The transportation funding proposal contains $2.5 billion for port, rail and highway projects that move goods more efficiently to and from the state's "global gateways." If passed next year by the Legislature, it would go before voters in November 2006.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

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Source: The Sacramento Bee

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