Stacks of cargo containers, huge gantry cranes and long stretches of railroad tracks seem to cover every bit of real estate at the Port of Long Beach.

But northwest of the Gerald Desmond Bridge there is a vast 160-acre stretch of empty land – Pier S, the last big piece of undeveloped property at the port complex.

It’s the site of what is planned to be the first completely new terminal to open at either the Long Beach or Los Angeles ports in more than a decade. And it’s a project that is starting to move forward even though the expansion of the Panama Canal is expected to draw cargo to East Coast ports and away from Long Beach in coming years.

But while the expanded canal could change traditional shipping patterns, port officials are relying on the old adage that the best defense is a good offense. They say Pier S and other expansion and modernization projects are the best bets to ensure goods keep entering North America through Southern California.

“The port doesn’t build things for the fun of it,” said Robert Kanter, managing director for environmental affairs and planning at the Port of Long Beach. “We’re building to meet the demand.”

The $650 million project, part of a larger strategy at both the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports to accommodate bigger ships, has been in the works for more than a decade. The port bought the Pier S site, a former oil field, in 1994 and had plans to develop it as early as 1999.

The development is about to face its first hurdle in the next few weeks as the port prepares to release an environmental impact report.

The report will lay out different configurations of the project, and outline measures to reduce its impact on the environment and nearby residents. Those measures might not be enough to mollify the concerns of environmental groups, which have stalled previous port expansion plans.

Opponents, in fact, may argue the port doesn’t really need a new terminal, because it’s uncertain how much traffic the port could lose when the expanded Panama Canal opens. But port officials say they have to be ready for increased competition and that now is the time to prepare.

“Nobody has a crystal ball, but I think we’re fairly comfortable,” said Sean Strawbridge, the port’s managing director of trade relations and operations.

Pier S

The new container terminal would be Long Beach’s first since it opened the Hanjin terminal at Pier T in 2002. At roughly one-quarter of a square mile, it would be smaller than all but one of the port’s seven existing terminals.

It will likely have more than a half-mile of wharf space, enough room to dock two or three ships, each about 1,000 feet long and capable of carrying about 9,500 20-foot cargo containers.

If approved, Kanter said Pier S will take between four and seven years to build. It has been speculated that Evergreen Shipping Agency, part of Taiwanese shipping giant Evergreen Marine Corp., is interested in operating the new terminal.

Evergreen, which already operates a terminal at the Port of Los Angeles, did not return calls for comment.

However, because Pier S is on the land-facing side of Terminal Island, Strawbridge said it won’t be able to service the largest vessels expected to call on the port in the future.

Those will be sent to the port’s Middle Harbor terminal, a project under construction that will combine two older terminals into a single modern one. When complete, it will be able to handle ships carrying up to 18,000 20-foot containers. Construction on the $1 billion Middle Harbor project started earlier this year and could be completed as early as 2020.

Pier S and Middle Harbor will share many features, including longer wharves and on-dock rail – tracks that go all the way to the terminal and allow cargo containers to leave the port by train rather than truck.

The Port of Los Angeles is making similar upgrades to two of its terminals: TraPac and China Shipping are both extending their wharves, installing cranes and getting more room for cargo. TraPac is adding on-dock rail, too.

Those are all features shipping companies are looking for, said Michelle Grubbs, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, which represents West Coast shipping companies and terminal operators.

“You need the larger berthing space to be able to dock these large vessels,” Grubbs said. “And when you’ve got more containers, you need more space to be able to unload them.”

Competition

All those projects together mean the two ports will be able to handle much more cargo. But the question remains whether all that capacity will be needed beginning in 2014, when the expanded Panama Canal will allow large vessels from Asia to pass through to Southeast and East Coast ports.

“Nobody knows what’s going to come out of the Panama Canal when they cut the ribbon,” said Dave Sanford, director of navigation policy and legislation for the American Association of Port Authorities.

About 60 percent of cargo coming into local ports stays in or close to Southern California, but much of the rest goes to the East and Midwest – areas that could be served by other ports, including some in Canada and Mexico that are in the process of expanding.

But local port officials and industry experts say there will be plenty of demand for new terminal space.

“Just because the canal opens up doesn’t mean ships are all of a sudden going to stop coming here,” said Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

Sanford said that companies invested in Long Beach and Los Angeles aren’t likely to suddenly pull out.

“There is a huge attraction, particularly for Pacific Rim shippers, to their existing relationships to West Coast ports and the connections, particularly to rail, into Middle America,” he said.

There are more tangible reasons as well. In the short term, many Eastern ports don’t have deep enough water to handle the largest cargo ships that will be able to use the expanded canal, said Strawbridge.

“You’ve got to think about where those vessels are going to go after they traverse the canal,” he said.

Sanford said big ships headed through the widened canal will need channels up to 48 feet deep. Today, only ports in Norfolk, Va., and Baltimore have 50-foot channels. Miami and New York are deepening their channels to 50 feet, with both projects scheduled to be complete in 2014.

He said other ports are doing studies on deepening their channels, but the process is too costly and time-consuming for many ports.

In the longer term, Strawbridge said, shipping companies will start using even larger ships – some too big even for the expanded canal but not too big for Long Beach’s modernized terminals. He said nearly half of cargo ships on order are designed to carry more than 10,000 TEUs, many of which will likely be too large for the canal.

Environmental opponents

The biggest hurdle for the Pier S project could be local, when the environmental impact report is released.

Legal challenges by environmental and community groups stalled port expansion projects for much of the past decade, but both ports have had an easier time getting projects approved recently thanks to clean-air programs that have reduced truck and ship emissions over the past few years.

But port officials acknowledge that Pier S is a different animal.

When port officials were pushing the Middle Harbor project, they argued that environmental measures in the plan would reduce overall emissions compared with the two existing terminals. They can’t say the same thing about Pier S.

Kanter, the port’s environmental affairs director, said Pier S will be “probably cleaner than any other terminal in the world,” but acknowledged it will still produce more emissions than an empty lot.

Indeed, environmental groups have already said they will use a more critical eye on Pier S.

“The baseline is going to be very different – there’s not a container terminal there now,” said Melissa Lin Perrella, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has sued the port over past projects.

As a result, Pier S will include numerous measures to keep emissions at a bare minimum. The terminal would be built to let ships plug in to shore-side electricity instead of having to run their engines for power. Forklifts and other equipment at the terminal would run on electricity or fuels other than diesel. Ships docking at the terminal would be required to slow down when they enter a 40-mile radius of the port.

Regardless, Kanter said he expects groups opposed to port expansion to fight the project.

“Are groups going to say we don’t need this? Yes. But we can demonstrate a need,” he said. “We’re implementing every (environmental) strategy that can be implemented.”