California Homeland Security Director Matthew Bettenhausen on Friday (Feb. 15) announced $40 million dollars toward improving port security in the state at a ceremony in Oakland, including $451,480 to the Port of Redwood City.
The funds come from voter- approved Prop 1B, a measure which improves infrastructure, security, and public safety. One billion of the nearly 20 billion dollars approved will be allocated to enhance security and safety in the ports and mass transit systems. California voters approved Proposition 1B in November of 2006, which enacted the Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality, and Port Security Bond Act of 2006. California’s ports handle nearly half of the nation’s goods.
“The threat to our port system is one of the most fundamental challenges we face,” said Director Bettenhausen. “The threat to California’s economy is very real if our port system is vulnerable to a terrorist attack. I applaud the Governor for his vision as we work to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism or natural disaster.”
“Ensuring our ports’ security is vital to a vibrant economy and will help keep California competitive on a global stage,” said Port of Redwood City Chairman Lewis Miller “Over a million jobs are directly attributable to our ports, which serve as a lifeline to international trade. Better and more efficient security will allow the ports to maintain and grow their customer base while protecting these jobs and enhancing safety.”
Port of Redwood City Operations Manager Donald Snaman said the grant for the port will fund projects in these categories:
1. Maritime domain awareness enhancement and vulnerability mitigation.
2. Emergency Operations Center enhancement.
3. Vulnerability assessment – Port security strategic plan and Transportation Worker Identification Credential Infrastructure (TWIC) design.
4. Security/Emergency Response Plan development, training, drills, and exercises
Snaman disclosed a groundbreaking method that determined the $40 million among California ports. Representatives from all 11 ports met for two days in Sacramento to review and discuss all projects submitted for funding.
“We all got to ask questions about each other’s projects and their merits for meeting the overall state homeland security objectives,” Snaman said. “Collectively we came to the meetings with more than $57 million in requests. At the end of two days we all voluntarily removed projects or components therein to get to the $40 million.”
This enabled State OHS staffers to easily present the projects for appropriations.
“As a group we decided a couple of other guidelines, such as no one could use these state funds as their part of the match of their federal grant,” Snaman said. “The state’s guidelines allow for this, but we felt ‘sustainability’ was a key component to the projects. If you can’t keep the project alive after it’s been installed, then you shouldn’t be going after the grant funds. We also disallowed any grant funds for O & M for the same reasons. This cooperative method of the receiving entities determining as a group how to distribute the funds is logical, but normally not done in practice.”
The California Homeland Security office also announced these grants to other ports in California:
• Humboldt Harbor $ 586,500
• Hueneme $ 2,461,848
• Long Beach $ 8,368,345
• Los Angeles $10,066,000
• Oakland $ 3,800,000
• Richmond $ 3,404,507
• Sacramento $ 1,026,728
• San Diego $ 2,550,000
• San Francisco $ 3,117,512
• Stockton $ 4,167,080