April 16 – 29, 2004
Turning the Tide
Kocol and Wilson Lobby Sacramento, Seek Re-Thinking of Tideland Trust Doctine
By Paul Rosenberg, Editor

     At the end of March, the two co-chairs of the Port Community Advisory Committee (P-CAC) traveled to Sacramento to meet with the State Lands Commission (SLC), to advance the crucial issue of off-port spending on mitigation measures. Such spending, virtually mandated by the China Shipping Agreement, conflicts with interpretations of the Tidelands Trust Doctrine by the SLC staff. (Key to their interpretation is the 1955 Mallon decision, which held that Long Beach could not use state tidelands oil money for its city parks. However, mitigation was not a factor in the case.) SLC Commissioners Steve Westley and Cruz Bustamante appear more flexible.
     Port Commissioner and P-CAC chair Camilla Townsend Kocol said the original reason for the trip was “to run by them our new exciting plans for the development of the Evergreen properties,” which includes a charter school, maritime studies center, and new Port Police headquarters. But this was overshadowed by the larger task of overcoming SLC staff opposition to off-port spending an aesthetic mitigation—most notably for the San Pedro Welcome Park and the Wilmington Greenbelt. 
     Similar concerns originally threatened Kocol’s plans for the charter school, which would prepare students for port-related careers, but after presenting the modified proposal, “There’s not going to be a problem there,” she said.
     “It was really a good learning experience,” said P-CAC Community Co-Chair Jayme Wilson, who accompanied Kocol. Regarding the opposition to off-port spending, he said, “I was never sure how much of it was State      Lands, and how much it was the port attempting to blame State Lands.” 
     Now he knows. “After three separate meetings, I really saw that State Lands has a totally different interpretation of things than we do down here in San Pedro,” Wilson concluded. In contrast, port staff, including attorney Tom Russell, accompanied them for part of the trip, and advocated for off-port spending. 
     “The staff people at State Lands don’t seem to understand that if something is 100 feet off state lands or 2000 feet off that can still be negatively impacted.” In particular, said Wilson, “The Welcome Park on Gaffey Street, 2500 feet from the port, clearly visible from the port…clearly has a nexus, now that locals are not using the [freeway] entrance on Swinford, and are now using Gaffey instead… . That in itself is a linkage to the port.”
     Everyone in San Pedro knows this from experience. But for SLC staff, it remains a legal theory—one they see as dangerous because of how others might use it. 
     But attorney Gail Ruderman-Feuer, who successfully argued the China Shipping case for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the spending of settlement money on parkland “should be no-brainer for the State Lands Commission…. They are worried that if they approve the use of money for parkland here that they will face too many applications like that in the future. But that doesn’t make it wrong.” Faced with more applications, “The State Lands Commission should say ‘yes’ when it’s appropriate, and ‘no’ when it s not,” she added.

Wilson also took an inspirational side trip. “I drove to San Francisco to look at their new ferry building, and to Jack London Square, where they had an old village, like Ports O’ Call. I saw a lot of hope about what we can accomplish with our own waterfront.” But the most important work probably lay in meetings with elected officials.
     “Meeting with [SLC Commissioners] Steve Westley and Cruz Bustamante went very well,” Kocol said, confidently. Wilson agreed. “I think the elected officials were very receptive to positions from San Pedro that the impacts can expand beyond the port boundary. Both Wesltey and Bustamenate looked for ways to make changes without totally changing the State Tideland Doctrine.”
     But change through legislation remains a distinct possibility. Kocol hosted a dinner for legislators the last day of the trip, and found it “surprising” that such outreach was unusual, given the Port’s importance in California’s economy. “The Port needs to be doing more of this proactive outreach,” she insisted. 
     “What we really came back with is a real need for legislation… . So that if a port meets a certain standard of size, and throughput, etc. might have a wider impact zone,” Kocol explained. “I think their biggest fear is what you do for Los Angeles, you will have to do for other ports.”
     “I need to speak to State Lands myself, so it’s very premature,” Assemblymember Alan Lowenthal cautioned, while endorsing the underlying idea. “What Camilla has asked me makes great sense…. It’s taken us a long time to understand that pollution travels over great distances, and there are some very serious impacts and that need to be mitigated—and not just on the simple strip along the coast that part of the tidelands, because the impacts go inland, too.”

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