Port Gives Millions to Companies with Billions

Community leaders question Port of Seattle priorities, want money to go toward environment and small business support

from the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports 

Community leaders and environmentalists are criticizing the Port of Seattle for wasting millions in taxpayer dollars in rent breaks for companies worth billions. They say the taxpayers’ money would be better spent on needed environmental improvements, mitigating the port’s impacts on its neighbors, and helping small businesses in the tough economy. 

The Port of Seattle calls its plan, presented to the Port Commission in late August, a “customer retention” program. But Port officials have previously admitted there’s no guarantee the rent breaks would attract more cargo or result in lower rates from terminal operators.

The Port’s plan gives $7 - $10 million in rent breaks to Elliott Bay cargo dock operators including: 

• Terminal 5 - Eagle Marine Services, a subsidiary of Neptune Orient Lines Group (Singapore), which made $155 million in profits in 2008.

• Terminal 46 - Total Terminals International, LLC, a subsidiary of Hanjin (South Korea). Hanjin reaped a 2008 net profit of $238 million, up 122.7% from 2007.

• Terminals 18 and 25 - SSA Terminals, LLC and SSA Containers, which both belong to Carrix, Inc. Goldman Sachs is 49% owner of Carrix, and the remainder is privately held.  Goldman Sachs made $2.32 billion last year.   

While giving away millions in rent breaks, the Port of Seattle has: 

• tried to raise fees on small independent fishermen at Ballard’s Fishermen’s Terminal.

• allowed port properties in Burien and Seatac to decay, creating “jet ghettos”;

• told SeaTac Airport neighborhood residents it doesn’t have money to buyout or noise proof homes in the path of the new runway.

• moved slowly on cleaning up cruise ship sludge, Duwamish River clean up, and other needed environmental remediation.

• put the costs of buying or leasing clean diesel trucks on the backs of the individual truck drivers, not the trucking companies.  

“The Port says it doesn’t have enough money to update the net sheds and storage lockers—some dating from the 1940’s—to comply with fire codes, yet it can subsidize billion dollar corporations. Small businesses are getting shafted by the Port of Seattle, once again,” said Pete Knutson, fisherman and director of Friends of Fisherman’s Terminal.

“So the Port of Seattle tells us they don’t have the money to protect the value of thousands of King County taxpayers’ homes in the path of the runways in Boulevard Park and Seatac, but they can give millions away to international corporations? What’s really going on here?” asked Washington ACORN member and South Park resident Michael McGrath. 

Port truck drivers and labor, environmental and community groups say the clean truck part of the program, which gives $2 million to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency for a loan and lease program, is ineffective and unsustainable because it puts the costs of clean air technology on individual, mostly immigrant, truck drivers, not the profiting trucking companies.

“These billion dollar corporations are pressuring the Port of Seattle to make me and my fellow truck drivers pay for retrofit diesel trucks out of our own pockets,” said Olufemi Dosunmu, a truck driver at the Port of Seattle. “I’ve testified over and over again that the Port’s truck drivers cannot afford to pay for clean diesel trucks. This will put hundreds of us out of business while the Port of Seattle does exactly what Wal-mart wants.”

 “The Port continues to claim they don’t have the funds to assist the community in dealing with the impacts of port-related activities while at the same time giving handouts to businesses worth billions. They’re not willing to take meaningful action to improve working conditions for port truck drivers, which is what it will take to truly clean up the dirty trucks,” said Bang Nguyen, Community Coalition for Environmental Justice board member. 

This give-away plan shows the Port is contradictory, hypocritical, and more interested in giving away money to its corporate clients than achieving environmental justice. 

The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports is group of labor, environmental, community, and economic justice groups. It can be reached at 206-265-0417.