POLA Container Volumes Slip 6% in April
SAN PEDRO — April 2015 containerized cargo volumes at the Port of Los Angeles decreased 6.1 percent compared to the same period this past year.
The port handled a total of 662,973 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in April 2015. Comparatively, the previous April was particularly robust as importers advanced inventory due to concerns about labor negotiations later in the year. Additionally, there were vessel alliance uncertainties this April as shipping lines continued to return to their Trans-Pacific rotations.
For the first four months of 2015, overall volumes (2,486,927 TEUs) are down 5.3 percent compared to the same period in 2014. Current and historical data is available here.
Imports dropped 9.9 percent, from 364,126 TEUs in April 2014 to 328,140 TEUs in April 2015. Exports declined 15.8 percent, from 172,945 TEUs in April 2014 to 145,655 TEUs in April 2015. Combined, total loaded imports and exports decreased 11.8 percent, from 537,071 TEUs in April 2014 to 473,796 TEUs in April 2015. Factoring in empties, which increased 12 percent, overall April 2015 volumes (662,973 TEUs) dropped 6.1 percent.
Current and past data container counts for the Port of Los Angeles may be found at:http://www.portoflosangeles.org/maritime/stats.asp
Long Beach Cargo Continues Rebound
LONG BEACH — Container cargo flow through the Port of Long Beach increased 7.9 percent in April compared to the same month this past year.
This is the busiest April in nine years.
A total of 614,860 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containerized cargo were moved through the port in April. Imports reached 317,376 TEUs, a 7.3 percent increase from this past year. Exports fell 6.1 percent to 137,546 TEUs. Empty containers surged 25.3 percent to 159,938 TEUs. With imports exceeding exports, empty containers are sent overseas to be refilled with goods.
In April, the terminals were also working through the backlog left over from the winter’s congestion in San Pedro Bay. By the end of the month, no more container ships were waiting at anchor to come into the Port of Long Beach. To see the latest on cargo ship tracking at the Port of Long Beach, please see “Vessels at a Glance.”
For all the latest monthly cargo numbers, click here.
For more details on the cargo numbers, please visit www.polb.com/stats.
LB Council Approves Alcohol Nuisance Abatement Ordinance
LONG BEACH — On May 12, the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved the further implementation of an alcohol nuisance abatement ordinance to decrease nuisance-related activity such as loitering near liquor stores.
Liquor stores requirements include:
- The store must provide exterior lighting and security measures to the satisfaction of the Long Beach Police Department chief.
- No more than 10 percent o f store windows and transparent surfaces may be covered or obstructed.
- The business must be operated and maintained in a neat, quiet and orderly condition.
- The businesses may not result in adverse effect to the health and peace or safety of people in the area.
- All exterior payphones shall be removed.
- The building address shall be displayed on all sides of the building facing a public right-of-way, including an alley.
LB Harbor Board Approves Cement Terminal Project
LONG BEACH — The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners approved the Mitsubishi Cement Facility Modification Project this past week.
The approval gave the green light to the addition of 40,000 metric tons of additional storage capacity consisting of storage and loading silos on vacant port property that is adjacent to Mitsubishi’s existing facility at Pier F.
The site will increase in size from 4.21 acres to 5.92 acres. The board’s approval was contingent on environmental measures and upgrades.
The terminal receives imported cement and cement-like materials via bulk cargo ships. The product is stored in a warehouse or in silos. It is then loaded onto trucks and taken to local and regional concrete batch plants. With the economy improving and demand for cement rebounding, the approved project will allow Mitsubishi to more efficiently meet the regional demand for cement.
To ensure that the facility is as green as possible, the project requires Mitsubishi Cement to maintain a truck fleet with at least 90 percent of the fleet having engines from 2010 or newer. Mitsubishi will also install solar panels and energy-efficient lighting and conduct an energy audit every five years. Mitsubishi will also work with the port on a technology review every five years to identify new technologies that can be incorporated into operations to further reduce emissions.
While the terminal already offers shore power so ships at berth can shut down their engines to reduce emissions, not all vessels are able to plug in. With the upgrades, when ships can’t use shore power, a new emission control system called “Dockside Catalytic Control” will connect to the vessels’ exhaust stacks and capture pollutants.
The approved project calls for Mitsubishi Cement to contribute $333,720 to the port’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Grant Program. The port Community Mitigation Grant Programs are designed to improve community health by lessening the impacts of port-related air pollution, and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Construction of the improvements is expected to take two to three years.
Snowden Gets Vindicated
On May 7, after almost two years since the Edward Snowden publicized that the National Security Agency was collecting phone records, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals declared that the secret program was illegal from the start.
The court found that Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act does not allow the dragnet program in which the NSA collects records on Americans.
The decision came as Congress considers whether to amend or renew Section 215 before its sunset on June 1. Narrowig Section 215 under the proposed USA Freedom Act or to letting it expire would end the agency’s wide-ranging collection of phone records.
Section 215 authorizes a court to order the disclosure of business records only when they are “relevant to…an authorized investigation [of] international terrorism.” That provision would plainly allow the government to get the phone records of a suspected terrorist or his associates. But the NSA has argued that it should get much more: Everyone’s phone records are “relevant,” it contends, because at some point it might be useful to search them to identify terrorist ties. The court of appeals unanimously rejected the NSA’s reading as “unprecedented and unwarranted.”
The USA Freedom Act would end the phone-data collection program and foreclose the use of other statutes for similar “bulk collection.” It would mandate that experienced lawyers appear before the surveillance court to defend privacy when the government seeks new spying powers.
The USA Freedom Act has been endorsed by Silicon Valley corporations, human-rights groups, and a broad spectrum of legislators, like Sens. Ron Wyden, Pat Leahy and Mike Lee, and Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and John Conyers. But don’t mistake this for a new realization by our representatives that privacy matters. The real reason the bill has such wide support, including from the executive branch, is that its reforms are quite modest—and absent reform of some kind, Section 215 may simply expire. The NSA currently collects all our phone records, but because of changes by President Obama last year, it can search them only after it has shown a judge that it has reasonable suspicion that a particular number is linked to terrorism. Under the new law, it would still be able to do that—but phone companies, not the NSA, would store the data.