Push for more funding for L.A./Long Beach port complex moves forward in Congress

A port funding request that could provide revenues for dredging as the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex prepares for the new megaships moved forward Tuesday when the House Committee on Appropriations included it in a draft bill.

U.S. Rep. Janice Hahn’s request for $1.26 billion — which, if eventually approved, would be divvied up among all the nation’s ports — was included in the preliminary version of the 2017 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

The money would go into the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which is used to pay for critical infrastructure projects at the nation’s ports.

While part of a long budgetary process, the inclusion in the draft bill keeps alive the possibility of additional revenue for the ports next year.

“This is yet another victory for ports and the future of the U.S. economy,” Hahn said in a statement Tuesday. “This funding will go toward important dredging and maintenance projects and will be critical in ensuring our ports are prepared to handle the megaships of the future.”

While the funding remains only in a request stage and is preliminary, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said the additional revenue would help keep the port competitive in a global industry that is fast changing.

Among those changes are megaships that often require infrastructure accommodations, including chael dredging, due to their enormous size.

Hahn, who represents the Los Angeles Harbor in Congress, has complained in the past that larger ports paid the most into the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund but did not get a comparable amount back.

Hahn’s request “brings us closer to a more equitable distribution of (Harbor Maintenance Tax) funding,” Seroka said Tuesday.

In 2014, Hahn led an effort to set aual targets for harbor maintenance appropriations increases leading toward full usage of the HMT revenue by 2025.

The two largest container vessels now calling at ports in North America, the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin and the Maersk Edmonton, are scheduled to retu to the Port of Los Angeles next week, according to a news release Tuesday. The release stated that the port recorded its “busiest first quarter in its 109-year history” in 2016, with container volumes increasing 11.3 percent compared to the same period last year.

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