A plan to dredge two turning basins in the bay near the Port of Oakland to better accommodate mega-sized container ships is gathering steam despite opposition from local environmental justice groups.
The huge container ships that frequent Oakland’s port, the ninth busiest in the U.S., often struggle to switch directions at the existing harbor basins, according to port officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the federal navigation channel that services the port.
The issue has led to numerous cargo-ship traffic jams in recent years, furthering backlogs amid ongoing supply chain woes, with vessels sometimes forced to anchor idly in the bay for days.
The Army Corps’ proposal calls for widening each of the two basins by about 20 acres to allow some of the port’s largest ships to turn more easily. The agency has already completed a draft environmental impact report that is currently under review and is now seeking feedback from community members.
But some environmental justice advocates said the project would detrimentally impact the area’s already compromised air and water quality and are disappointed by what they say have been a dearth of opportunities for community members to weigh in on the project.
“They have done a poor job on community engagement,” said Margaret Gordon, co-director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, noting that there has been only one virtual call between her group and the agencies working on the project. “All they want to talk about is the plans for construction and not the emissions from ongoing operations.”
Container ships have grown significantly larger in recent years, expanding with an increasingly global marketplace. Currently, the port, through which about 99% of Northern California’s container cargo passes, can accommodate ships that carry as many as 18,000 standard 20-foot container boxes.
The dredging proposal would allow for shipping vessels as long as 1,310 feet — greater than the height of San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower — that can carry more than 19,000 containers through Oakland’s Inner and Outer Harbors.
Supporters of the plan said that widening the turning basins will improve transit efficiency, help modernize the waterway, and potentially even reduce emissions by allowing ships to plug into electricity from land rather than burning dirty diesel fuel while idle.
“Each turning basin provides its own utilities. These properties lease out, and the leasees compete for the business,” Justin Taschek, a Port of Oakland project manager, said at last week’s Bay Conservation and Development Commission hearing. “All vessels go to both the outer and inner harbor. It’s integral to remain competitive throughout the complex to allow all vessels to visit all properties.”
