Mexico Envisions a Seaport to Rival L.A.’s

MEXICO CITY —  Desert scrub, rows of broccoli and a few scattered Airstream trailers are about all that dot the seaside landscape at Punta Colonet. But Mexican officials hope an ambitious development plan will transform the Baja California cove into a seaport as busy as that in Los Angeles.

The site, 120 miles south of Tijuana, is where the Mexican government and major shipping and freight concerns envision a massive ocean freight container port to compete with those north of the border. Next year, government officials hope to begin receiving construction bids from major global shipping companies to start work on the harbor, berths and terminals.

Mexican officials hope the port will open in 2012 and will include about 20 slips for container cargo ships, Mexican port and merchant marine coordinator Cesar Reyes Roel said.

He says the plan calls for the port to ultimately receive as much cargo as the Los Angeles port does now, and would result in a new Baja city linked to the U.S. by a 180-mile railroad.

The driving force behind the proposal is the “surprising and consistent” growth in Asian maritime cargo to North America, Roel said. Moving forward will depend on receiving private capital from the shipping and terminal companies, he added.

Los Angeles and Long Beach are the U.S. gateways for Asian goods, and some officials at those ports are skeptical that Punta Colonet could handle 7 million cargo containers a year, as does the Port of Los Angeles, the largest U.S. seaport. “We think it’s ambitious,” Port of Los Angeles spokesman Arley Baker said.

There is enough interest in Mexican ports, Roel said, that major global shipping companies have asked the government about establishing or expanding ports not only in Punta Colonet, but also Ensenada, El Sauzal, Guaymas and Lazaro Cardenas.

The Punta Colonet plan emerged after a citizens group in Ensenada began seeking an alternative to a Baja California state proposal to expand that city’s port and build a railroad link to the border town of Tecate.

“We knew that we couldn’t just say no to the government,” said Antonio Martinez-Pastor, the Ensenada planner whom the civic group hired to scout other locations for a port and railroad.

A months-long survey led Martinez-Pastor to the almost uninhabited cove of Punta Colonet, 60 miles to the south outside the town of Colonet, home to about 14,000 residents.

The land on which the port is proposed is owned by several ejidos, communal landowner groups that typically consist of peasants or indigenous groups. Mexico is in the process of determining the size of the port, which would require massive public works investment, including a breakwater.

The port project and the rail link would cost $2 billion, Roel said.

Roel and other sources said Union Pacific had expressed interest in building the rail line. A Union Pacific spokesman said Friday that it was too early to comment on that prospect.

The proposal has provoked concern at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and among California state officials about losing valuable cargo trade to Mexico. Sacramento is studying how to speed cargo through the Los Angeles area. New night and weekend port hours are to be added this summer. Expansion of the two ports is limited by land-use and environmental restrictions and overtaxed roads and rail lines.

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Kraul reported from Mexico City and Schoch from Long Beach.