Harbor Commissioner Jim Hankla has apparently dropped his attempted end run around the Long Beach City Council and promised to keep his hands off while a city-contracted engineering firm conducts a thorough study of the Long Beach Breakwater.

“It was a rogue moment, which I’m confident won’t be repeated,” chuckles Patrick O’Donnell, Fourth District council member, who says he has spoken with Hankla and received that assurance. “We can’t have people doing this.”

As reported in The District this week [CLICK HERE], Hankla—acting on a tip by Third District council member Gary DeLong—had begun quietly advancing an already-completed independent study of the Long Beach Breakwater that protects their political interests.

That study, by a retired 72-year-old engineer named Bud Johnson, recommends lowering a 1,800-foot expanse of the breakwater to sea level just east of the Queen’s Gate entry to the harbor. It theorizes that this would permit enough tidal circulation to pull much of the surface water pollution out to the open ocean without affecting the Port of Long Beach or the Alamitos Peninsula. Johnson estimates the job can be done in 18 months, at a cost of $10 million.

At least as attractive to Hankla and DeLong is that Johnson’s study would not affect Hankla’s plans to expand the Port of Long Beach nor impact residents on the Alamitos Peninsula in DeLong’s district.

“I don’t know the complete details about what Hankla had begun to do,” says O’Donnell. “But his concern was that the study we were undertaking was just to take down the breakwater and not to look at interim measures. But our study absolutely encompasses interim measures and concepts.”

Hankla told The District that he had already turned over Johnson’s study to Port-hired consultants for examination. Thing is, the city council is already paying $100,000 to the respected marine engineering firm of Moffat & Nichol to do the same thing—Johnson’s study is already included in the firm’s expansive research. That duplication of time and expense—for the past year the city has also paying senior staffer Tom Modica to oversee the breakwater project—is especially troublesome when Long Beach is battling a $17 million budget deficit.

”From now on there will be one breakwater study,” O’Donnell says reassuringly. “It will be the city’s breakwater study, which the city will take the lead in.

“But our study is not starting out with a solution. We are asking science to develop a solution. Who knows what the solution will ultimately be? Maybe it will determine that nothing will be done. But our study is to develop potential alternatives.”

O’Donnell had expressed disbelief when the rumor of Hankla’s unilateral move—which might have undermined a 7-1 vote (DeLong dissenting) by the city council in July 2007—was brought to his attention by The District. “In the old Long Beach, that would have been the strategy,” O’Donnell had said. “But in the new Long Beach, we don’t operate that way.”

Although the confirmation of Hankla’s plan seemed to undermine O’Donnell’s contention, the council member now argues that Hankla’s subsequent decision to abandon that plan confirms the authority of the city council.

“The role of a harbor commissioner is not only to act in best interest of the state of California,” says O’Donnell, referring to the fact that the Port of Long Beach is a state facility entrusted to the city. “When the city council vets harbor commissioners, we vet them to act in the best interest of the city, too. That’s why the city council is the appointing body. We don’t hand over future of the harbor to these commissoners and say, ‘Do whatever you want.’”

Tags: gary delong, jim hankla, Long Beach Breakwater, Long Beach City Council, Moffat & Nichol, patrick o'donnell, Port of Long Beach

Viewing 5 Comments

Dave in Alamitos Beach 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

I've said for a long time that The District Weekly is the best thing to happen to Long Beach in years. I don't want to seem too sycophantic but I have to believe that Dave's reporting, coupled with O'Donnell's righteous indignation, helped put an early end to this ill-advised runaround the approved process.

Hankla may have been within his rights, but once he starts using the Port's money and resources to study the issue, there is at minimum a duplication of effort, and at worst an attempt to replace Moffat & Nichol's report with their own, or if not replace, then at least compete.

I have no problem with a "second opinion," but shouldn't it really be that? In other words, don't you need a first opinion first?

reply edit reblog flag

John Boyle 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Thank you, Dave!

reply edit reblog flag

Joe Weinstein 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

There's nothing wrong with many studies and reports and opinions, not just one or two. Except, with so much to potentially gain or lose, why did PoLB folks wait so long, until well after instead of well before Council asked for a study??

And why should either the Council or PoLB encourage only an inhouse or a single external contractor to study San Pedro Bay structure and reconfig possibilities? One would think that many academic computer modeling and engineering departments could be encouraged to put their students and interns to work and cheaply produce varioius studies. Indeed, some years ago a rather good initial student study was for a while web-posted by Surfrider.

For decades, until a few years ago, in the SF Bay, the Army Corps of Engineers maintained an SF Bay Model which (besides still being a tourist attraction) was then used to generate all kinds of studies and reports, testing all kinds of reconfigurations of all kinds of existing and possible new structures in SF Bay. Unlike the LB Council and PoLB's long-insistent 11-th century attitude about possibilities here in San Pedro Bay - i.e. that ignorance and status quo are the divinely ordained sides of the unique coin of bliss - the attitude in SF Bay was that more knowledge about possibilities was always a good thing.

By the way, just because the Corps has control of the breakwater doesn't mean what was so long assumed here in LB: that anyone else can't credibly study it, and to boot must wait for suitable Congressional funding and directives to the Corps.

One thing that seems to have escaped attention is that possible beneficial reconfigs can concern more than just the east breakwater: they may well involve other other existing or potential structures. Another thing that apparently has escaped attention is that net benefits many be of different kinds, and therefore the 'best' answer will depend on the driving questions and on the assumptions. In particular, questions may concern not only surf restoration and pollution flushing, but also how do we deal with tsunami threats, and in particular how are we planning for the decades-hence future waterworld that, given present City Hall policies, will be the fate of many Long Beach neighborhoods? A future in which - thanks to the global warming promoted by continued carbon combustion from the likes of PolB's global trade and Boeing's massive air transport - enterprises heavily fostered (pun OK) by LB City Hall - Greenland ice will melt or float away, thereby raising sea level 8 meters (25 feet).

reply edit reblog flag

http://www.joeweinstein.info

wrongbeachJohn 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Dave-GREAT WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

reply edit reblog flag

2 /people/wrongbeachJohn/ /people/wrongbeachJohn/following/

Mike Ruehle 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Now we hear Councilman DeLong is working behind closed doors to undermine City Council’s $100,000 decision to STUDY breakwater changes that could improve Long Beach’s water quality. Councilman DeLong, doesn't encouraging two different groups to work on the same project waste taxpayer’s dollars? Why are you undermining, rather than supporting, the decision of your City Council peers?

Similarly, during the August 27th meeting of the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority (LCWA), Chairman DeLong was questioned by Samuel Schuchat, a LCWA Boardmember and the Executive Officer of the Coastal Conservancy, about his negotiations in Washington D.C., supposedly on behalf of the LCWA. Councilman Delong reported that he was near completing a deal whereby the Port would pay to restore the Los Cerritos wetlands. In return, the Port would be granted pollution mitigation credits to allow further Port expansion without having to offset the pollution created by the expansions. Mr. Schuchat bluntly asked Chairman DeLong why he was focused on restoring wetlands that the LCWA did not own. In reality, he was asking LCWA Chairman DeLong why he was providing pollution mitigation credits to the Port when he should have been working to purchase the Los Cerritos wetlands property. Councilman DeLong, what is your interest in supporting Port expansion with unchecked pollution? Why haven’t you asked your constituents which is more important, clean wetlands or clean air?

reply edit reblog flag