Riverside Suit Against Port of L.A. Could Hamper Growth Plans

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Should developers be held accountable for the environmental impact on a city 60 miles away from their project?

The city of Riverside thinks so and has filed a potentially landmark lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles over a planned $106 million expansion of a shipping terminal.

If Riverside is successful, it could set a precedent for other Inland Empire cities hit hard by rail traffic to seek millions for railroad and traffic improvements.

Riverside officials claim in a lawsuit that an environmental impact report on the China Shipping Group project failed adequately to study the effects of the additional cargo trains that will cart goods through their city.

“The high number of trains causes major traffic delays with residents (cumulatively) waiting three to six hours a day at each crossing for the trains to pass,” said Riverside Mayor Ronald Loveridge. “In addition, as the vehicles idle, wasting gas, you end up having more pollution in neighborhoods.”

The lawsuit filed Feb. 18 in Los Angeles Superior Court claims Riverside already endures 128 trains passing through daily, with 75 percent carrying cargo from either the port of Los Angeles or Long Beach. The expansion, it alleges, would cause an additional six trains to pass through each day.

In addition, Riverside has a high number of train crossings that are at grade causing cars to stop when trains pass through with 25 in critical need of overpasses or underpasses to ease congestion, Loveridge said.

The suit seeks to force the port to revise the environmental impact report to analyze the effects on Riverside. It also seeks to have the port pay an as-yet undetermined share of the cost for the railroad bridges, which Loveridge estimates cost about $30 million each.

A spokesman for the port and Los Angeles city attorney working on the case both declined comment, noting it was a legal matter. However, the lawsuit could break new ground if it requires developers to study the potential effects of their projects on communities many miles away.

“Riverside is truly stretching the law here and it’s going to be an uphill battle because the port has become known for striving for bulletproof EIRs. (But) it’s an interesting case that asks valid questions on both sides.” said Sharon Rubalcava, an environmental compliance attorney and partner at Alston & Bird LLP.

If the lawsuit is successful, it potentially could affect other expansion projects, such as the Port of Long Beach’s plan to combine and expand two middle harbor terminals at a cost of $750 million the kind of project that supports the thousands of companies and workers that service the port.


Dramatic rise

Although this is the first lawsuit filed by an Inland Empire city in an attempt to hold one of the ports accountable for the Union Pacific and Burlington North Santa Fe trains that pass through carrying goods to interior destinations, Rubalcava said other cities have complained about train traffic ever since trade dramatically rose five years ago.

Among those cities is Colton, about 10 miles northeast of Riverside, which has tracks for both rail lines and is the site of a major rail yard. There are six at-grade crossings and residents there experience cumulative delays at one intersection of up to two hours or more depending on rail traffic, said Amanda Rhinehart, a senior city project manager.

“You have to make sure that you go to the bathroom before you leave somewhere here because you’ll get stuck at a crossing for a while. It’s always been bad, but the last few years, it’s really ruined the quality of life,” she said.

Colton would have considered joining the lawsuit, Rinehart said, but it wasn’t aware of it until the Business Journal brought it to the city’s attention.

The lawsuit could tarnish pledges by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed by community activists living in and around San Pedro to clean up the pollution caused by the Los Angeles port. That effort, embodied in the 2006 Clean Air Action Plan, aims by 2012 to reduce pollution caused by both the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports by 80 percent through major reductions in train, ship, truck and other emissions.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes the port and has supported the mayor’s green-port initiative, said that cities such as Riverside and Colton may have been left out of the picture.

“We can talk all we want about greening our port and the immediate area around it, but if we truly want to be a leader we have to take into account the impacts on neighbors like Riverside,” said Hahn, who nevertheless supports the terminal expansion. “Lawsuits aren’t always the best way to go because it does stall the project at a time that we are hurting for business, but Riverside is on the right track to having its voice heard.”


Tortured history

Local environmentalists have long targeted the terminal by China Shipping, a Shanghai-based shipper owned by the Chinese government.

China Shipping opened its 75-acre terminal in June 2004 but only after delays caused by a coalition of homeowners and environmentalists that sued the port alleging the environmental impact report on the terminal was inadequate. The port settled with the group, agreeing to pay for $50 million in environmental improvements.

The City Council then approved a $22.2 million settlement with China Shipping to cover the costs of the two-year delay. The company had signed a 40-year lease through 2045.

The expansion approved by the port in December would double the shipper’s terminal size to 142 acres by 2030 with the ability to process up to 75 percent more cargo.

An irony of the lawsuit: It comes as traffic at the ports has fallen sharply due to the worldwide recession and dramatic decline in global trade.

Still, Rubalcava said there are significant impacts on Riverside.

“Riverside is blaming the rise in cargo from the Port of Los Angeles for more emissions and traffic jams, whereas the port is saying that Riverside’s emissions problems are due to cars and trucks and the traffic near rail is because of their land-use decisions,” she said.

Susan Kohn Ross, an international trade consultant with Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP, said that Riverside may find itself in the unenviable position of seeking redress after years of enjoying the benefits of increasing international trade, which led to a boom in industrial real estate development, and revenue for Riverside and other Inland Empire cities.

But now with cargo numbers and industrial real estate demand falling, it could appear the city is scrambling to find money for promised improved crossings it cannot now finance.

“With a relatively small number in the rise of trains less than 5 percent it could be challenging to, all of a sudden, voice disagreement when for years business was good,” Kohn said. “And is the port going to have to take into account the impact on Chicago if one train from the port goes there?”

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