By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOT

Delighted that the first phase of the state-of-the-industry Bayport Container Terminal is open at last, Port of Houston Authority Chairman James T. Edmonds is looking to accelerated schedules for completing Bayport and bringing additional container capacity online at Pelican Island in Galveston.

'As far as I'm concerned, you can put 'THRILLED' in capital letters on your headline,' Edmonds told the American Journal of Transportation in an interview prior to the Feb. 8 grand opening ceremonies at Bayport. CMA-CGM vessel calls will now shift to Bayport from Barbours Cut Terminal.

'It's a personal thrill for all the port commissioners and staff, if you will, to have won that battle,' Edmonds said, referring to the protracted effort to please environmentalists and still get terminal facilities built. 'But, the most important thing is fulfilling our mandate of providing jobs, economic development and affordable goods to the marketplace.'

Originally planned for build-out over a period of 15 to 20 years, the 1,043-acre Bayport site is now projected for completion in half that time, in about eight to 10 years, Edmonds said. The permitting process already is underway for the 1,100-acre Pelican Island site, across the channel from Galveston Island. The Pelican Island master plan is set to be completed in 2008, and the site will be developed by about 20 years from now, according to Edmonds.

Houston port officials are allowing ample time for the Pelican Island permitting process ' following a lesson learned from Bayport.

Referring to the Bayport permitting process, Edmonds said, 'We thought this would take a year to a year-and-a-half and $1 million to get the permit. It took six years and a whole bunch of millions of dollars.'

Along the way, port officials appeased community interests with unprecedented environmental commitment.

'For all the grief we've gone through, Bayport is a better facility, and we've done some things we would never have done otherwise,' Edmonds said, citing as examples the forcing of new industry standards for reducing light and noise intrusion on neighbors, a cutting-edge storm water management system, the construction of a 20-foot-tall landscaped berm around the entire project and the conservation of more than 1,100 acres of wetlands. 'There's no question, we've done a better job and we've been more sensitive.'

The opening of Bayport's first berth and adjoining 65 acres should have an immediate positive impact, according to Edmonds. For the past two years, the Port of Houston Authority's primary container facility, Barbours Cut Terminal, has been pushing containers through at a pace of about one-and-a-half times designed capacity. In the coming year, Bayport should handle about one-fourth of all PHA-generated containers, or 350,000 to 360,000 twenty-foot-equivalent container units (teus). At full buildout, Bayport's annual container throughput capacity should be 2.3 million teus.

With a rapidly growing in-state market, new container facilities can't come to Texas any too soon. The population of Texas, which now stands at 23 million, is projected to more than double, to 50.6 million, by 2040. Edmonds noted that 86% of the cargo containers that currently come into Barbours Cut Terminal stay in Texas.

Bayport's impact on the local and regional economy should be substantial. When cargo and cruise facilities are completed, projections call for the creation of more than 32,000 jobs while more than $2.4 billion a year in business revenue will be generated.

Nonetheless, Edmonds conceded that private industry might have given up in the effort to build Bayport when faced with levels of opposition such as those encountered by the public port authority.

'If this were a for-profit company, we never could have done it,' Edmonds said. Being a public entity, with economic development and customer servic