"he upgraded to a used shipping container. I'm getting one too. "
I know where you can get a deal on one! <G>
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Stacking up
By Steve Strunsky
ASSOCIATED PRESS
washingtontimes.com
NEWARK, N.J.-
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 because 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 altered the local landscape.
The problem is not so severe in all East Coast ports. While
the Port of Baltimore experiences a higher import than export
level, shipping containers are stacked three high, said port
spokeswoman Judi Scioli.
"We don't stack containers higher than four, and they are
all in the terminal. You won't see them being stored anywhere
else," she said.
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," Mr. Rodriguez said. "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
Council member 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 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."
Mr. 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 transportation planning authority 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
work force that desperately needs it," said Jim Mack, a
brownfields specialist at the New Jersey Institute of
Technology.
As an example of how stockpiling can conflict with
development, the New Jersey Institute of Technology 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 that a
warehouse proposal would entail. The companies were not
named.
Another brownfield site leased for container storage, a
37-acre lot that was once a tar-refining plant, is owned by
chemical giant DuPont.
Rick Straitman, spokesman for DuPont Corporate
Remediation Group, said the company "would like to see the
site developed" and that it is working with the state
Department of Environmental Protection on a cleanup 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
688,000, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the ports.
Mr. 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," Mr. 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," Mr. Dorto said.
At the Port of Hampton Roads, VIT has imposed a quota
on containers on port property, Mr. Dorto said. He said the
move 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.
After VIT imposed the quotas, which are disliked by shippers,
"we weren't the most popular guys on the dock," Mr. Dorto
said.
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," Mr. Crane
said. "We're always going to have a surplus of containers."
•Staff writer Marguerite Higgins contributed to this
report. |
