Twenty-First Century Terminal

The Port of Los Angeles is already the busiest container facility in the United States, and the eighth busiest in the world. In 2000 it handled some 112 million tons (102 million Mg) of cargo shipped within 4.4 million containers on 3,060 vessels. Yet the port needs to expand to keep pace with ever-increasing trade volumes, especially with countries in the Pacific Rim. So in 1986 Congress passed a resolution to allow the port and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with plans to dredge San Pedro Bay and reclaim that material to create a 595 acre (240 ha) pier, Pier 400. But while the first phase of construction for the project was under way in the mid-1990s, a major shift occurred in the types of cargo moving in and out of the United States and in the sizes of vessels used to transport those goods. Immediate alterations were needed in the depth of the Pier 400 navigation channel and in the configuration of the terminal to accommodate these market conditons.