Shipping Containers Pile Up Around Ports
By STEVE STRUNSKY 04/21/2003 13:56:16 EST
They stand like empty Everests of trade, mountains of shipping containers stacked seven or eight high,
over hundreds of acres of industrial land around the East Coast's busiest port.
The shipping container surplus around Port Newark and the adjacent Port Authority Marine Terminal at
Elizabeth is a byproduct of the U.S. trade deficit.
Because of the deficit, the port takes in and unloads more containers than it can fill up and ship out.
And since it's cheaper for freight companies to buy new containers overseas than to ship empties back
from the United States to be reloaded, the result is stockpiling that has literally altered the local
landscape.
To the aesthetically imaginative, the boxy foothills of blue, yellow and ochre containers might look
good. For Carlos Rodriguez, a 29-year-old auto mechanic at a salvage yard near a container lot on
Doremus Avenue, the stacks look better than the trash heaps some of them replaced.
"It looks cleaner," said Rodriguez, 29. "They used to dump a lot of garbage there."
But to others, the mounting containers from Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere are
eyesores that are gradually blotting out the skylines of Newark and Manhattan.
"You don't want to get up in the morning and look over toward the river and see those containers," said
Newark City Councilman Augusto Amador.
Despite the short-term economic advantages of stockpiling, planners say the containers could have
negative long-term effects on the environment, traffic, employment, and even the viability of the port
itself by discouraging the cleanup and development of contaminated lots where the containers are
stacked.
"These properties can have a much higher utility, a much higher use, because they're prime distribution
locations," said John Hummer, director of freight initiatives at the North Jersey Transportation Planning
Authority, which approves federal funding of transportation projects. "And instead, the properties are
being used for this, which we don't feel is appropriate."
Amador worked with one storage company, Palmer Industries, to move more than 1,000 containers
stacked along the Passaic River. And he said the city is looking into limiting the height of container
stacks, as long as jobs at the port aren't affected.
Some observers say the containers stand in the way of improving the area around the port.
A study by the NJTPA with the New Jersey Institute of Technology found that development of
warehouse and distribution centers at the port - rather than along suburban or rural highways an hour or
more away - would reduce highway truck traffic and clean up the contaminated former industrial sites,
known as brownfields, where many of the containers now rest.
Such development would also create jobs "for an urban workforce that desperately needs it," said Jim
Mack, a brownfields specialist at NJIT.
As an example of how stockpiling can conflict with development, the NJIT study found that the owner of
a 13-acre site where a developer had offered to build a 330,000-square-foot distribution center received
a competing offer by a container storage company. The storage company's proposal, for a 10-year
lease at $3,000 per month per acre, was doubly attractive in that it allowed the property owner to avoid
the costly cleanup a warehouse proposal would entail. The companies were not named.
Another brownfield site currently leased for container storage, a 37-acre lot that was once a tar refining
plant, is owned by the chemical giant DuPont.
Rick Straitman, spokesman for DuPont Corporate Remediation Group, said, "we would like to see the
site developed," and that the company is working with the state Department of Environmental
Protection on a clean-up plan.
In the meantime, he said, DuPont leased the site because, "as you know, a piece of vacant land
attracts dumping."
Indicative of the nation's trade deficit, the Newark-Elizabeth complex unloaded more than 1.6 million full
containers in the first 11 months of 2002, but shipped out only 688,000, said Steve Coleman, a
spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the ports.
Coleman said the agency does not track the number of empties around the port, although estimates
run to about 150,000.
"That's why we're working with the shippers to see if there's any way that they can move these
containers back to their point of origin," Coleman said. "But obviously it's an economic issue."
And as long as shippers store the containers on private property, he added, "there's nothing we can do
other than try to convince them."
But some questioned the port authority's eagerness to curb stockpiling. Port agencies around the
country compete for cargo, and the availability of container storage space is a strong selling point, said
Joseph Dorto, general manager of Virginia International Terminals, or VIT, which operates Virginia's
ports.
"It's a very competitive business and everybody's looking for an edge," Dorto said.
At the Port of Hampton Roads, Dorto said VIT has imposed a quota on containers on port property, a
move he said improved port operations by creating more space for truck movement.
But quotas would be less applicable to Newark-Elizabeth, where most containers are on private
property around the port. And after imposing the quotas, which are disliked by shippers, Dorto noted,
"we weren't the most popular guys on the dock."
Officials of Palmer and other container storage companies failed to return calls or declined to talk
publicly about the issue. Some said privately that the container debate is a public relations fight they
cannot win.
Sam Crane, a spokesman for Maher Terminals, which loads and unloads containers at Port Newark,
said as long as there is a trade deficit, there will always be empties.
"We're the largest consuming region in the country, and some would say in the world, so that's the
reason," Crane said. "We're always going to have a surplus of containers." |
