LA City Council approves SEIR, repeats violation patterns
More than 20 years after the Port and City of Los Angeles first got into the business of breaking the law to build the China Shipping terminal without an environmental impact report, the lawbreaking continued on Aug. 12. The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-1 to approve POLA’s 2019 supplemental environmental impact report, rejecting formal appeals that warned it was repeating past mistakes by approving a document with fundamental violations of the California Environmental Quality Act: failures of analysis, mitigation and enforceability. District 15 Councilman Joe Buscaino voted with the majority. Only District 11 Councilman Mike Bonin voted against.
In addition to two local homeowner groups and allies represented by the Natural Resources Defense Council, rare appeals were also filed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the California Air Resources Board.
“This is only the second time we have appealed an approval of a project to you,” SCAQMD Principal Deputy District Counsel Veera Tyagi reminded the council. “The EIR is legally defective for several reasons. First, it fails to ensure that mitigation measures are enforceable; second, it fails to require all feasible mitigation; and third, it fails to analyze the air quality impacts without mitigation.”
NRDC attorney Claire Woods cited two major flaws overlapping with SCAQMD, plus one more.
“The SEIR is unlawful because it fails to show that the 2008 mitigation measures are infeasible and fails to adopt additional mitigation measures that are feasible today,” Woods stated. “To be clear, under CEQA the port can’t delete or modify the mitigation in the 2008 EIR unless it shows that each measure is infeasible.”
There were also further legal flaws encompassed under the broad umbrella of those major flaws.
But, in an Orwellian twist, POLA Executive Director Gene Seroka bizarrely argued that complying with CEQA would violate CEQA.
“If we’re unable to move forward today, this facility will remain out of compliance with CEQA and closure of the terminal is a very real possibility,” Seroka warned.
Appellants vigorously disagreed.
“We do not want to see the China Shipping terminal closed under any circumstance,” said Dr. John Miller, president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, one of the original plaintiff organizations that initiated litigation 19 years ago. “Mr. Seroka seeks to foment fear of this to justify ignoring CEQA.”
Miller’s prepared remarks were not heard by the city council, due to its flawed (if not illegal) public comment process under COVID-19. But NRDC’s formal appeal explicitly called for a new agreement “that avoids litigation and keeps the terminal open.”
Indeed, the terminal has virtually never been in compliance with CEQA, dating back to when planning first began in the late 1990s, as Woods reminded the council. But the port was operating in a parallel universe.
“Certification of this final EIR is a win-win for both skilled labor and the environment,” Seroka claimed.
While a number of labor leaders appeared to support this contention, no environmental advocates did.
To the contrary, Kathleen Woodfield, an NRDC client representative who did speak, vividly underscored how long residents have been suffering from port lawlessness.
“My son was in a stroller when I first testified about China Shipping, he is now in college,” Woodfield told the council. “I am still fighting against the port’s relentless failure to do this right.
“I am asking you to reject the EIR. We want the port to make up for its illegal pollution caused by its failures to implement the measures it promised to adopt in 2008 — a failure that was actively orchestrated through illegal waivers, and then actively hidden from us for 10 years.”
Seroka illustrated himself as a brave knight setting everything straight — a proactive problem-solver, with decades of real-world experience, spanning the globe. His background may be true, but the fairy tale he told is not.
“When I became executive director here at the Port of Los Angeles in the summer of 2014, staff brought to my attention the languishing compliance with 11 of the 52 mitigations and lease measures in the 2008 China Shipping expansion environmental impact report,” Seroka said. “As a problem-solver, I immediately brought this issue to the public, owning it and stating that I wanted to fix it in order to rebuild trust.”
“Immediately” meant more than a year. On Aug. 5, 2015, Random Lengths News Publisher James Allen requested information on any such “languishing” measures through a Public Records Act request. The port didn’t reply until Sept. 22, more than a month later than the law allows. It was only after Allen’s request that the port went public and began the SEIR process.
However Seroka may see himself, the pattern of the port’s behavior remained fundamentally unchanged on his watch, as was also reflected in the flawed SEIR.
“The port says the mitigation measures will be implemented after a renewed lease with China Shipping,” Woods pointed out. “However, the port fully admits that it is impossible to know when or whether China Shipping will sign a new lease. In fact, the record is replete with evidence China Shipping will not agree to a lease amendment. In the past, China Shipping refused to incorporate the 2008 EIR measures in its lease. Why is now any different?”
Woods’ observation undermines the core premise of Seroka’s “practical problem-solver” narrative, which the council uncritically accepted. It also undermines his claim that approving the SEIR would automatically bring the terminal into compliance with CEQA and thus prevent it from being closed down. As has happened repeatedly, for more than 20 years, the basic logic of the port’s actions regarding China Shipping remain mired in contradiction, as well as disregard for a legal ruling.
The AQMD expressed disappointment with the decision in a statement provided to Random Lengths News.
“The City Council missed an important opportunity to hold China Shipping accountable for reducing the air pollutant emissions from their terminal,” it stated. “AQMD is still considering its options on next steps.”
“We’re considering our options,” NRDC senior attorney Melissa Lin Perrella told Random Lengths News. “Litigation has always been an option.”
In addition to AQMD and CARB joining the appeal, Perrella pointed out that in 2008 there were environmental staff at the port who certified these measures, that are now under dispute, as feasible, as doable and committed to doing them.
“Either the port got it entirely wrong in 2008 and lied to the public then, or they’ve gotten it entirely wrong and are being untruthful with the public now,” Perrella said.
Given that technology has advanced considerably in 12 years, their position is that the measures they adopted in 2008 are feasible.
“There [are] actually some better things that the port can do now,” she said. “We’ll be making a decision pretty soon … We don’t want another day to go by where folks who are residents are unnecessarily breathing dirty air.”