thebajarunner
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Port bids open today for Colonet- LATimes
Wow,
and we all thought driving through the San Quintin Valley was slow,
What will it be like driving through Colonet with 200,000 habs.?
Mexico plans huge Baja port for U.S. trade
President Calderon will open bidding for infrastructure contracts Thursday. The project is likely to transform the village of Punta Colonet.
By Marla Dickerson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 28, 2008
MEXICO CITY — Mexico's government is setting sail with the largest infrastructure project in the nation's history, a $4-billion seaport that it hopes
will one day rival those of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
President Felipe Calderon is scheduled to travel to northern Baja California today to open bidding on a development that his administration hopes will
catapult Mexico into a major player in North American logistics.
Plans call for the construction of a massive port in the tiny coastal village of Punta Colonet, about 150 miles south of Tijuana, along with new rail
lines to whisk Asian-made goods north to the United States. Mexico's aim is to snatch some Pacific cargo traffic from Southern California's ports,
whose growth is constrained by urban development and environmental concerns.
Punta Colonet is expected to have a capacity of 2 million shipping containers annually when it opens in 2014, Mexico's transportation secretariat told
The Times But officials envision it ultimately handling five times that amount. Last year, the ports of L.A. and Long Beach handled 15.7 million
containers combined.
The massive development is to be privately funded, with the first phase estimated to cost $4 billion to $5 billion. The government is expected to
award the 45-year concession in 2009.
A number of major players are expected to vie for the project, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, the world's second-richest man. Slim's
infrastructure company, known as Ideal, has teamed with Mexican mining and railroad giant Grupo Mexico and New Jersey-based terminal operator Ports
America Group to make a run at the deal.
"We've spent a lot of years working on this," said Miguel Favela, head of Mexican operations for Ports America. "It's going to make Mexico . . . much
more competitive."
About 30 million shipping containers crossed the Pacific Ocean last year, a flow that increased about 10% annually in the last decade. A weak U.S.
economy has slowed the trade, but experts predict it will rebound.
With shippers increasingly worried about congestion at L.A.-Long Beach, Punta Colonet has emerged as an attractive alternative. It's close to the
United States. It possesses a wide, natural harbor. And it's in a lightly populated area offering room for expansion.
When Calderon visits the dusty hamlet of about 2,500 people today, he is expected to talk about the big changes in store. The village will need
extensive upgrades to its roads, housing, electrical grid and water supply. State and local officials are planning for a city of about 200,000 to
spring up around the port.
The changes envisioned are alarming environmentalists, who worry about the potential destruction of the area's plants and wildlife. But the farmers
who scratch out a living there are thrilled at the prospect.
"What we need is employment for our kids," said Jesus Lara, representative of several peasant landowner groups that are eager to sell. "Everyone is
excited. Having the president come to your town is like winning the Lotto."
But whether Punta Colonet turns out to be lucrative for Mexico won't be known for years. Competitors up and down the Pacific coast are in the midst of
major upgrades. Panama has begun a $5.3-billion expansion of its landmark canal. Canada's Prince Rupert port in British Columbia began speeding
containers to the American heartland by rail last year and is planning a major expansion.
Little of the cargo bound for Punta Colonet will stay in Mexico, making the port vulnerable to the whims of shippers, who can choose other routes to
the U.S.
"Nothing is guaranteed," said Asaf Ashar, research professor with the National Ports and Waterways Institute in Washington. "It's a big risk."
Building a seaport from scratch would be difficult enough. But the overland transportation piece is likely to make or break Punta Colonet. The deal is
being structured as a joint port-and-rail project, requiring terminal operators, railroads and construction companies to team up in consortia to win
the bid. The railroad's ultimate route and U.S. crossing points will depend on which railway operator is chosen and how it manages to link up with
existing rail networks on both sides of the border.
Union Pacific Corp. of Omaha and Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway Co. control the U.S. side of the tracks at most of the key U.S.-Mexico border
crossings. Striking a deal with one of those companies to get the cargo to the American side will be crucial, said Paul Bingham, managing director of
the global trade and transportation practice for Global Insight, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm.
"They have the ability to essentially choke off that port," Bingham said.
BNSF spokesman Patrick Hiatte said Wednesday that the company was "very interested" in the Punta Colonet project. He declined to say with whom the
firm might collaborate to make a bid.
Union Pacific could not be reached for comment. The company earlier had teamed with Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings to make a run at the
project, but that alliance dissolved last year.
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David K
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I hope a seperate highway south or make the highway four lanes that far will be part of the project...
The railroad (through Valle de Trinidad) to Mexicali or Algodones or San Luis will take the cargo... but the other traffic increase between Ensenada
and Colonet will require more lanes for autos and trucks.
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wilderone
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(The following sounds a little disjointed, but so many facts bear on so many issues, I tried to pare it down and this is the result.)
Any project of this magnitude will require the cooperation of government, both US and Mexican. Already our highways are clogged with trucks; already
the rail lines are expanding and dumping more and more Asian crap into our country. How much Asian crap do we need? Where is the discussion about
loading the containers (with what?) returned to Asia, which is definitely part of the container shipping business? And also require truck loads via
highway. How efficient and cost-effective will it be to ship containers 100s of miles further in the Pacific Ocean, put them on a rail line taking
2-3 days to reach Texas, offload, pay taxes, and then transport by gas guzzling trucks to loading docks all over the US?
Compare the $170 million terminal project of Prince Rupert Port with a design capacity of 500,000 TEU’s was funded by five partners: Maher Terminals,
$60 million, including three super post-panamax cranes; Government of Canada, Western Economic Diversification Canada, $30 million Province of
British Columbia, $30 million; CN Rail, $25 million towards the terminal’s rail related infrastructure and Prince Rupert Port Authority, $25 million.
In addition, under the Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative, the Canada Border Services Agency invested $28 million to establish a
state-of-the-art container-screening program at the facility.
With regard to the Prince Rupert expansion, CN Rail has offered to purchase the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway from United States Steel for $300
million U.S. EJ & E starts north of Chicago and circles west of the city and back to the southeast. CN plans to spend $100 million on new
connections and infrastructure upgrades to the boost the capacity of this railway. The Province’s $30-million financial contribution to Phase 1 and
support for the overall terminal project reflects its commitment to the Pacific Gateway’s northern corridor and achieving two million TEUs in
container traffic by 2011. So the US will have an additional 2 million containers dumped across its borders by 2011 coming from Canada - about 1/8th
the amount of LA/Long Beach. How does it make sense to spend $9 billion dollars on a container port which will dump 2 million containers into the
US? I can see how construction of this project - with private funding - would help Mexico. I can't see how it will help the United States, or that
it is needed.
And who's going to pay for the desal plant, environmentally sensitive (of course) electric plant, highways, roads, sewer and waste facilities in
Colonet? (“The massive development is to be privately funded, with the first phase estimated to cost $4 billion to $5 billion.”) The Mexican
government better put its money where its mouth is, and I don't think that has ever happened in the past. To begin constructing the port itself,
requiring hundreds of skilled workers - not tomato farmers - will require that infrastructure to be in place in Colonet. Let's see who blinks first.
The railway terminus would considered reasonable for Calexico or Yuma. But about 85 percent to 90 percent of the nation's winter vegetables are grown
in Yuma County fields on 75,000 to 80,000 acres News of the possible rail line has spurred legislation from a Yuma lawmaker, opposition from city and
county officials, and several agricultural groups organizing to ensure a route is designed with the community's interest at heart. “But in Punta
Colonet, many residents and officials from companies interested in the project have not heard of Yuma [!] - and think there are more viable options
for the rail route to connect Punta Colonet with the United States. According to Ensenada Mayor Cesar Mancillas and Ernesto Ruffo, a representative of
the firm Punta Colonet Infrastructure, they want to see the railway extend from the port into northern Mexico and connect to Nogales or El Paso,
Texas, saying they see more opportunities with that route.” The expense of a rail line all the way into Texas would add considerable cost to the
project. The additional “opportunities” envisioned by such a route are not explained - tourists traveling from Ensenada to El Paso?
And, importantly, the rail line would essentially become another segment of the NAFTA corridor – which already has taken thousands of jobs from
Americans, clogged our freeways, and ingested pollution on our agriculture and citizens.
Truck to rail container crossings into the United States from Mexico for 1996–2003 truck traffic is massive—since 1999, well over 4 million trucks per
year have crossed the southern U.S. border headed north. Like the railway, the largest NAFTA highways converge and cross the international border at
Laredo. In Mexico, the NAFTA highways are part of the Federal Highway System, while in the United States they represent some of the most heavily
traveled sections of the Interstate Highway System, most notably, I-35 which runs through the center of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas and has been
dubbed the “NAFTA Superhighway.” The proposed NAFTA corridors, which are in the promotional and pre-construction stage, will dwarf the capacity of the
existing NAFTA highways and railways. To assess the economic and environmental impact of the NAFTA corridor system, the size of the proposed corridors
and the volume of traffic they are slated to carry must be considered. This aspect has not been mentioned at all - the terminus location has not been
decided.
Downplaying the staggering economic costs and devastating environmental impact of the NAFTA corridors, promoters are calling the proposed
transportation system a “world class concept” that “paves the way—literally—to the future.” Getting beyond the promotional rhetoric in order to put
the issues of the economic costs and environmental destruction of the NAFTA corridors in perspective involves confronting one of the primary hidden
agendas of the project—the massive offshoring of U.S. transportation jobs to Mexico in order to further capitalist accumulation at the expense of the
working class on both sides of the border.
Although the negative impact of the massive offshoring of U.S. production jobs to Mexico under NAFTA has been widely documented and denounced, the
impending threat to U.S. transportation jobs has been all but ignored despite the fact that the rules governing ground transportation under NAFTA were
carefully articulated to accommodate the eventual offshoring of U.S. trucking, railroad, and other material moving jobs to the south. According to the
terms of the treaty, Mexican trucks driven by Mexican drivers are ultimately to be given full access to American highways, and, as of 2004, foreign
individuals or corporations can own up to 100 percent of Mexican ground transportation companies, including trucking services and terminals.
The shipping firms involved in the scheme are using the international border between the United States and Mexico as a dividing line to pit U.S. and
Mexican workers against each other in order to instigate a wage war that only big capital can win. The cost of the NAFTA corridors will be high on
both sides of the border—there will be further dislocation and debasement of labor in the United States, intense labor exploitation in Mexico,
spiraling oil dependency, the mass consumption of open spaces, and irreversible damage to the environment all along these international transportation
routes—all of this in the name of cheap commodities to maintain profits for U.S. capitalism.
While the offshoring of production jobs to Mexico under NAFTA has been a boon to U.S. capitalism, the negative impact on labor has been well
documented. Between the signing of NAFTA in 1993 and the year 2002, 879,280 production jobs in the United States were displaced.
Again, how much imported Asian goods can be absorbed into the United States? How many trucks and highways and rail cars criss-crossing the United
States will be utilized for the remainder of the imported container transportation needs? The container ports of Prince Rupert, Lazaro Card##as and
Colonet essentially bolster the Asian, Canadian and Mexican economies - not ours. If Mexican trucks will be allowed to travel our highways under
NAFTA, and cargo unloaded on the Mexican side and driven into the US in Mexican trucks, how does that help the US? Someone needs to take a hard look
at the big picture - more jobs lost in the US, more traffic on our highways - which are maintained by the tax dollars of citizens in those states.
And more - much more - imported short-lived junk which will eventually end up in our landfills. It doesn't make sense to me.
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mtgoat666
Select Nomad
Posts: 18391
Registered: 9-16-2006
Location: San Diego
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| Quote: | Originally posted by wilderone
(The following sounds a little disjointed, but so many facts bear on so many issues, I tried to pare it down and this is the result.)
Any project of this magnitude will require the cooperation of government, both US and Mexican. Already our highways are clogged with trucks; already
the rail lines are |
The project will go forward if the successful bidder finds it feasible and then acts on it. Builder will pay for it, and get money back by the
concession to own/operate the new port.
The need for a new town at Colonet is an opportunity for Mexico to implement a master planned community -- would be intersting to see that happen.
Irvine-Colonet? 
One thing that could kill the Colonet project is the Panama Canal expansion that started this year, which will allow more and bigger shipments thru
canal to reach Texas ports,... probably many other factors out there could derail the project.
Don't worry, be happy 
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