Port of Houston Fail the Grade

Only one of the nation's top ten ports received a failing grade in a port operations analysis released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). That port was the Port of Houston.
    According to the study, an F means: "The port has demonstrated a reckless lack of concern for public health and the environment." Houston was the only port out of the ten to be assigned an F overall as well as F's for its land use practices and community relations.
    "We are not astonished," said Jim Blackburn, chair of the Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association (GBCPA). "The Port of Houston Authority is a major environmental problem on Galveston Bay. They determine what they want to do and then they attempt to force it upon the unwilling community. The Port Authority deals arrogantly with neighbors and follows practices abandoned in other cities long ago."
    The ten ports assessed were chosen because they ranked as the nation's ten largest in container cargo for 2001. Four are on the West Coast--Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland and Seattle. Five are East Coast ports--New York-New Jersey, Charleston, Hampton Roads (Virginia), Savannah, and Miami. Oakland was the only one to score a B. Charleston was the only D, and Houston was the only F. All the rest scored C's.

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Port of Houston Fails the Grade, 2 of 3

    The 77-page report is titled "The Dirty Truth about U.S. Ports." The NRDC authors note: "A grade of F reflects our judgment that the port's practices render it an environmental hazard."
    One trigger for the research was that ports are a major source of air pollution because of the low-grade fuel most ships use, the thousands of diesel truck visits each day, and the diesel locomotives hauling mile-long trains to the docks. A 1999 California study found that diesel exhaust is responsible for 71 percent of the cancer risk from air pollution.
    A second reason for the analysis was that many ports are undergoing expansion. Ports are among the most poorly regulated pollution sources in the United States. Nationally, the proportion of pollution deriving from ships is growing due to this lack of regulation.
    The basis for the scoring consisted largely of data supplied by the ports themselves. Air pollution derived from other sources, such as local industry, was not factored into the NRDC calculations. For detailed "report cards" on each port and an explanation of scoring procedures and data sources, see the full text of the report on the GBCPA's website (www.gbcpa.net).
    Some of Houston's worst failings lie in its land usage. "The Port of Houston earns an F grade for its overall lack of responsible land use planning," says the NRDC. A key factor is that it has not selected already industrialized property or "brown sites" for container port development, which is the state-of-the-art method elsewhere.
    The Barbour's Cut container terminal swallowed a residential neighborhood and also consumed previously undeveloped land when it was built. The 1,100-acre Bayport terminal now proposed would lie entirely on a natural "green site," very close to long-established residential areas. More than 5,000 people live within one mile of it.

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Port of Houston Fails the Grade, 3 of 3

"The Port of Houston also earns an F grade for community relations, reflecting its past and present practice of disregarding the effect on local communities of expansion projects," says the NRDC study. "Further, the PHA does not have a good record of following through on its mitigation commitments to communities. Residents feel the PHA is hostile towards them."
    An example cited is the so-called Citizens Advisory Group created to produce the impression of community input on the Bayport plan. The report quotes the late Drusilla Dickson, who lived within a few hundred yards of the site, describing the Citizens Advisory Group as a sham.
    "Far from genuinely considering community interests in relation to port activity, the port authority is instead using this group for the limited purpose of improving its chances of building (the Bayport complex)," said Dickson. She died last year just as she was considering moving away from the giant proposed container terminal.
    The report also describes community damage done in Morgan's Point and La Porte by Barbour's Cut since the 1970s, and a Seabrook election in 2000 in which the mayor and three councilmen were removed from office for trying to make a deal with the Port Authority against the wishes of a majority of voters.
    "The Dirty Truth about U.S. Ports" observes that many ports have developed hostile relations with neighboring communities, sometimes even refusing to share critical information about the possible effects of port operations.
    The study concludes: "Ports can be very bad neighbors. In addition to the air and water pollution problems they create, they can be loud, brightly lit at night, and a cause of traffic jams. These problems can go be beyond simple annoyance to cause serious negative health effects."