Stas Margaronis did a presentation about the possibility of "Short Sea Shipping" in the form of a new 4,000 ton Container Ship that would cost about 30 million dollars shipping containers from Stockton to Eureka. Currently there are about 400 trucks from Stockton area distribution plants travelling to Eureka. And about 200 local trucks heading to Stockton. Stas said that the turnaround time for his concept was 25 hours and all those trucks could be replaced by this Ship that would travel to our port 2 times a week. This would actualize a 66% reduction in emissions compared to trucks. Also there is cost savings. It costs $1,500 per truck to haul goods from Stockton, compared to $1,100 by ship. A saving of $400 a load!
Currently there is a successful pilot project working from Oakland to Stockton that travels 75 miles. Stockton to Eureka would be around 300 miles.
There were arguments in the room about the use of LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) use of the ship over the use of diesel fuel.
Financial obstacles were also identified. 15 million for container dock with 7 acres upland properties for temporary storage. All together Stas felt it would probably initially take a 60 million dollar investment. He felt a joint partnership between the Port of Stockton and Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District would be mutually profitable.
5 comments:
Unless money grows on redwood trees, I'd rather Humboldt residents not shoulder any portion of the burden to replace something that isn't broken.
So 200 local trucks would be put out of business? At a cost of How much? sounds like a bad plan.If you think that the cost of goods will go down in this area think again.
4:37pm-Good point and this was brought up at the meeting. Stas made it sound like his project would "enhance" local trucking, saying it would cause more local truckers to stay in county, but did not give any substantial facts about that.
It would be actually 600 truckers affected, if you include the Stockton based ones. Let's be fair here.
Sure, a few of them could find some work picking up things from the ship and delivering them locally, but I suspect the local delivery business is already taken care of.
This nonsense and these meetings are useless. None of this will ever happen. Where is the Green Diamond loading dock for the oak chips? I would like to be the consultant that is getting rich off of these pie in the sky dreams that never come to fruition but are studied for years. The Green Diamond shipping dock may eventually send out a ship since the supposedly now actually have a contract but how will they debark those logs and chip to spec with a portable debarker? What are they going to do that Morris couldn't do when they failed miserably at the same effort. Wasting money , overpaying elected officials and catering to the homeless/drug population should be the official sports of Humboldt County. It is all that is done well here anymore.
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