From an article in Sunday’s (12-04-05) Copley News Service: — “Surging imports from Asia have brought more than a wealth of toys, clothes and electronic gizmos to consumers here and around the country. The flow has also spawned more traffic congestion, dirtier air and other fallout for local communities and the region’s environment …

“In ongoing workshops organized by the state to discuss how best to expand the cargo industry, no issue has been more contentious than how to reduce those effects. At recent workshops in downtown Los Angeles, state officials asked environmental and community activists to prioritize the worst impacts, and suggested that it might not be possible to lessen all of them. It was not what activists near the Port of Los Angeles — who have spent years battling increasing air pollution, noise, glare and traffic congestion generated by port activities — wanted to hear. ‘We want life in our community to be improved, not degraded,’ said Noel Park, a San Pedro port critic who is on the port’s community advisory committee. Barry Sedlik, undersecretary of the state Department of Business, Transportation and Housing, insisted that mitigation will be ‘simultaneous and continuous’ as the cargo industry expands. But he conceded that it won’t be ‘instantaneous’, and added that ‘funding is always a question. The situation we are in today is that decisions have to be made, and decisions have to be made under uncertainty’…

“But Julie Masters, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that ‘people are concerned about pledges, promises and goals that are unenforceable.’ She suggested that no expansion projects should move forward until there is a blueprint for environmental mitigation to go along with construction plans. Many Harbor Area activists are particularly incensed over plans to build an intermodal, truck-to-train yard between Wilmington and Long Beach. The project would eliminate an estimated 1.5 million truck trips a year on the Long Beach (710) Freeway, but trucks would still have to shuttle cargo containers to the yard from the port … ‘and (local neighborhoods) are still going to take the brunt of those million and a half trucks,’ said Jesse Marquez, executive director of the Wilmington-based Coalition for a Safe Environment …”

“Andrea Hricko, director of community outreach and education at USC’s Southern California Environmental Health Services Center, said that unless local public-health impacts can be eliminated, cargo volume at the port should be ratcheted down to serve only the region’s population. Goods destined for other parts of the nation could be redirected to different routes.”

When industry representatives and supporters said that would lead to job losses and could jeopardize the future of the region’s economy, Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments acknowledged the impacts on the community and asked, “How do you get to an acceptable level (of mitigation) so the community says, ‘This is better?”…

“It was a question that went unanswered at the Los Angeles workshops.”

[But until an answer is found, let’s listen to Julie Masters and Andrea Hricko.]