Creating Jobs One Community Buffer At A Time

It had been a while since I traveled down to the waterfront area of Wilmington, California.  Most of my recent meetings have been in East Los Angeles or further North in Wilmington.  However, last week, I had the good fortune to attend a meeting sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency related to Health Impact Assessments.  On my trip down to Bannings Landing, a community center in Wilmington, CA, I noticed large stretches of green fencing.  At first, I did not recognize what was happening, and I figured it was just another terminal expansion at the Port of Los Angeles.  Then, it dawned on me that this was the construction of the 30 acre community buffer that had been promised as a result of the expansion project at the TraPac terminal.  Masked behind large green fences, many people were working to prepare this 30 acre Harry Bridges buffer zone.  There was even a sign on the fence with a number to call for those interested in a job on this project.  This buffer zone would not have been constructed and would not have been employing people today if community advocates and environmental groups had not stood up to the original inferior proposal for the expansion at the TraPac terminal. 

The key to understanding how this buffer came about requires looking back to the original TraPac project that was proposed in 2003.  At that time, the Port of Los Angeles and the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to move Harry Bridges Boulevard, a street used by many diesel trucks, to further encroach into the community of Wilmington.  Residents and organizations like Coalition for a Safe Environment, Communities for a Better Environment and NRDC fought back against poor proposals related to this project using the environmental process afforded by the California Environmental Quality Act.  Concurrently, knowledge of the significant and potentially devastating impact of port operations on communities continued to grow.  

When the TraPac project resurfaced in 2007, it came back in a much better form and included a large buffer area of 30 acres that will serve to provide some distance between the community of Wilmington and the impacts from TraPac terminal. This buffer will also provide a nice landscaped area to improve the aesthetics of the community of Wilmington, a community that has been battered by the negative impacts of port operations for decades. This mitigation project could not have come at a better time because it simultaneously improves livability in Wilmington and employs people at the same time.   

Sometimes organizations, like NRDC, are unfairly characterized as opponents to economic growth.  These claims are simply a bunch of bogus unsubstantiated rhetoric used to inflame emotions.  I view the work that environmental and community groups do as essential to making conditions better and more livable in port communities like Wilmington.  The Wilmington community should feel proud of its victory—it stood up to the nation's largest port and demanded that the impacts from port operations be reduced.  Luckily, groups and individuals working on Wilmington issues have allowed me to work to improve the TraPac project to bring benefits to an otherwise disparately impacted community.  And if working to protect the community from increased pollution concerns was not great enough, I also saw many jobs attached to our efforts to make things better.