By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOTUS Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and US Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., were among high-level officials pledging to do their part to support the US port industry, in separate remarks at last week’s American Association of Port Authorities spring conference in Washington. Also at the AAPA spring conference, Michael A. Leone, port director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, was elected to assume a one-year chairmanship of the hemispheric ports group in October. It will mark the first time anyone has served a second time as AAPA chairman, as Leone also led the association in that capacity in the 2003-04 term. Harman, after accepting AAPA’s annual “Port Person of the Year” award at the March 24 “Washington People” luncheon at the Willard InterContinental Hotel, said of the honor, speaking to more than 200 port industry leaders, “It’s a big deal to me, and what you do is a very big deal to your country.” Harman, who co-authored and championed SAFE Port Act legislation that has brought some $400 million a year in port security grants since 2006, said, “The explosion of a dirty bomb in the harbour of any port could bring shipping traffic to a halt, possibly across the globe. “It could cause large-scale radiological contamination, likely requiring that that specific port be closed, as well as loss of life,” she continued. “And that idea is what keeps me up at night.” Harman vowed to continue to pursue efforts in Congress that focus on port funding priorities and provide money for security programs and technology that ports otherwise would not be able to afford. “We’ve got to find ways to secure the waterways of America’s ports in a way that isn’t obtrusive – that doesn’t slow the movement of cargo or penalize business,” she said, “but we’ve got to keep working at this problem.” Harman said a successful effort will require nonpartisan support, quipping, “The terrorists aren’t going to check party registration before blowing us up.” The California congresswoman, whose district include the Port of Los Angeles, of which Dr. Geraldine Knatz, current AAPA chairman, is executive director, said she believes LaHood, with whom she previously worked on Capitol Hill, including when LaHood was a congressman from Illinois, said the newly installed DOT head “will take the notion of bipartisanship, which I support, to a new level.” LaHood, in separate earlier remarks, said the US Department of Transportation is committed to ensuring that ports large and small and the intermodal systems of which they are a critical part are viewed “holistically.” “I am confident you will receive a fair share for port, intermodal and freight efficiency projects,” LaHood said. “You have lots of partners over at DOT, and we want to work with you,” LaHood told the port leaders, adding that current economic challenges won’t deter that support. “We are committed to really helping the port communities around the nation to be the economic engines we know they can be.” Calling coastal and inland waterways “underutilized,” LaHood vowed to advance the America’s Marine Highways program, the Maritime Administration’s new name for short-sea shipping, and he said he would like to see expansion of DOT involvement as a “one-stop shop” for port development projects, such as those currently being implemented in ports of Anchorage, Hawaii, Guam and Philadelphia. LaHood said that, after DOT gets beyond its current concentration upon getting nearly $50 billion of stimulus package funding disseminated, perhaps in the fall, he will convene a meeting on a national freight policy that likely will incorporate ports. Speaking prior to LaHood, Rodney E. Slat