Environmentalists bent on halting Carnival Cruise Line’s move to a new dock near the Queen Mary in Long Beach have agreed to meet with cruise line officials on Feb. 21 to try to resolve their differences.
The Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to keeping California’s oceans free from pollution, filed a lawsuit last December challenging the cruise line’s plans to build a 1,000-foot-long dock near the historic Queen Mary.
The stakes are high because the cruise line would deliver hoards of passengers to the doorstep of downtown Long Beach, where a number of tourist-oriented businesses operate.
The foundation asserts that the two cruise ships that would use the dock would contaminate the water with oil and gas and churn up the ocean floor.
“It’s been an uphill fight,” said Robert Palmer, chairman of Surfrider’s Long Beach chapter, which filed the lawsuit. “We are trying our hardest to restore a beach that has been ignored for 50 years.”
The Surfrider Foundation believes the two cruise ships that would be docked in Long Beach would be better off if they were located closer to the Port of Long Beach at Pier J.
Queen Mary officials agree with Carnival Cruise Lines’ assertion that the ships would not add that much pollution to the ocean, which already is navigated by cargo-container ships.
Cruise line operator Carnival Corp. announced more than a year ago that it would relocate its local terminal from the Port of Los Angeles and would build a new dock and passenger terminal next to the Queen Mary. The debarkation terminal would be located inside the huge geodesic dome that once held the Spruce Goose, an enormous wooden plane built by Howard Hughes during World War II.
If the move goes through, it would be an economic boon for Long Beach and the Queen Mary, which would stand to gain millions of dollars from cruise-ship passengers coming into town.
It would also be a blow to the Port of Los Angeles, which has been the home of Carnival’s West Coast-based ships, the Elation and the Holiday, for years. Carnival Cruise’s ships account for half of the 1 million cruise line passengers that travel from L.A.’s port.
Carnival Cruise Lines decided to leave L.A. because the facilities in San Pedro are antiquated, said Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz.
The Queen Mary’s operator, Queen’s Seaport Development Inc., offered the company a better location, she said.
“We viewed Long Beach as a much more attractive alternative,” de la Cruz said. “We see Long Beach as offering a number of options for our guests right near the pier.”
Those options include the city’s Aquarium of the Pacific, a lineup of attractive hotels along the shoreline and the Queen Mary itself, which would be used as the embarkation terminal for cruise passengers.
