California River Ports
Development and Happenings on the California River System

By Wes Starratt, Professional Engineer

California’s River Ports are alive and well, broadening their base away from their heavy dependence on construction materials by developing new export and import operations. At the same time, they expect to be teaming up with the Port of Oakland in a program to move ocean-going cargos to and from their inland ports through MARAD’S proposed Marine Highway Program.

Layout of River System
California’s river ports consist of the Port of West Sacramento (79 nautical miles from the Golden Gate Bridge through the San Francisco Bay and the 30-foot deep Sacramento Ship Channel) and the Port of Stockton (75 nautical miles inland through the Bay, the San Joaquin River, and the 35-foot Stockton Ship Channel).

Between these ports, marine terminals include the:
• Crockett sugar refinery
•  Privately-operated Port of Benicia, which largely focuses on automobile imports
•  Oil terminals for Tesoro, Shell, and Pacific Atlantic at Martinez, and the Valero oil refinery at Benicia
•  Mirant power plant, the Dow and the DuPont chemical plants, and the USS-POSCO’s steel-coil processing plant, at Pittsburg, each with its own private maritime facilities.

MARAD’s Marine Highway Program
The ports of West Sacramento and Stockton, long the gateways for California’s agriculture exports and imports destined for the vast central valley, are closely watching the U.S. Maritime Administration’s (MARAD) proposed Marine Highways Program.

The program would provide federal support for a marine highway that would barge containers between the two inland ports and the Port of Oakland, where container ships offer direct access to overseas markets. At the same time, the barges would offer desperately needed relief from the heavy container truck traffic and pollution on freeways leading to the Port of Oakland. While the Marine Highway designation provides no direct funding, the ports are closely watching the proposed federal economic stimulus program as a means of funding the program.

Preliminary feasibility studies for the program have recommended specially designed ferries to transport up to 350 chassis-mounted containers that are loaded and unloaded as self-powered chassis trains. The ferries would utilize a drop-gate design, similar to a landing craft. Two tug/ferry combinations are contemplated, one for Oakland-Stockton and the other for Oakland-West Sacramento.

Port of West Sacramento
The Port of West Sacramento will be dredging the 43-mile-long Sacramento Ship Channel from 30 to 35 ft. It has been a long time in coming, but local funding has been secured through state bonds and port funds. Construction should commence in 2010.

The port has five 600-foot berths, a score of transit sheds, warehouses, and commodity handling facilities, trucking facilities accessible to nearby freeways, and railroad connections to both BNSF and UP. It is a landlord port, with operations carried out by SSA Marine. The port currently handles almost 1 million metric tons per year, 70 percent imports and 30 percent exports of bulk and break-bulk cargos. The port is anticipating one of its best rice reasons.

Because the decreased level of construction activity has dramatically affected imports of bulk cement, the port’s two new import cement terminals are operating at only 10 percent of capacity. However, imports of wind turbines are up. The port is also gearing up for a new import (sugar-based ethanol) with a new storage and distribution facility.

The port will soon be adding two new exports: wood pellets produced in a new $60-million plant built by the German firm, Enligna; and ferrous scrap to be processed by a proposed $50-million shredding plant.

The Port of Stockton
The Port of Stockton is an operating port with berthing space for 17 vessels, more than one million square feet of dockside transit sheds, and seven million square feet of warehousing for bulk and general cargos. It has connections to both Union Pacific and BNSF railroads. Currently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is studying the deepening of the Stockton ship channel from 35 to 40 ft.
During 2008, the port handled 4.3 million metric tons of cargo, of which more than 80 percent was imports, including cement, liquid fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia, and substantial quantities of pipeline and construction steel. Recently, some of those imports, largely construction materials, have been affected by the dramatic downturn in construction activity. Rice exports, however, have increased, and imports have included shipments of wind turbine components from China and Vietnam.

Deputy port director Mark Tollini says, “We are trying to get away from the construction industry and, instead, focus on food and energy.” Toward that end, the port is completing Phase One of its cold storage facility to provide chilled and frozen foods for local markets.
“We are expecting to develop an import/export food terminal and have been making contacts in Chile,” says Tollini.

In This Issue

New Items

Time for the Tough to Get Going

Supply Chain
Real Estate Responds to Supply Chain Shifts

Taking Your Ship to an IP Environment

Compliance Corner: SOPs, the Foundation of Trade Compliance

New Applications for RFID

Features
Gateway at a Glance ­� Canada

Moving Goods in a Slower Economy

Ports & infrastructure
National Gateway — a Public-Private Partnership in Progress

California River Ports

Port Products
Clean Air Equipment

Commentary
Contract Negotiations Approaching

Who, What, Where, When

Final Say