TITLE
Recommendation to request that City Council and Long Beach Harbor Commission meet jointly in closed session within the next 30 days for a briefing on port security from Chief of Police, Jim McDonnell, and Coast Guard Sector Commander and Captain of the Port, Roger Laferriere.
DISCUSSION
A UCLA report, PORT SECURITY:IMPROVING EMERGENCY RESPONSE CAPABILITIES AT THE PORTS OF LOS ANGELES AND LONG BEACH notes that
The nation’s two busiest container ports sit side by side in the heart of Southern
California. Together, the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach constitute the busiest port complex in the United States and the third busiest in the world. The complex handles over 43 percent of all shipping containers entering or leaving the country-more than all of the ports on the East Coast combined-and carries more than $200 billion in containerized cargo annually. Because of their critical economic importance, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have been recognized by officials and experts alike as some of the most likely and inviting targets for terrorists. In a list of the top 624 terrorist targets in California released by the California Attorney General’s Office in February 2003, the Port of Long Beach ranked third and the Port of Los Angeles ranked sixth. Had the two ports been considered together as a single port complex, they might have been more accurately identified as the state’s number one target, instead of Los
Angeles International Airport (LAX).
The Port of Long Beach is the world’s 5th largest containers port complex and handles over 40% of the containers entering the U.S. In 2010, the Port had 6.2 million cargo containers (TEUs), and over 4,000 vessels arrivals. Over the next 10 years $4.4 billion will be invested into capital improvements for projects, such as, the Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement project, Middle Harbor Redevelopment project, Pier S container terminal, Eagle Rock Aggregated Terminal, and the Green Port Gateway proj...
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