Guest blog post: Port of West Sacramento vital to the economy

By Mike Luken, Port of West Sacramento manager

2011 promises to be an exciting year for the Port of West Sacramento, with key projects set to start or wrap up in coming months. Most significantly, we expect to launch our long-awaited project to lower the 43-mile deep-water ship channel from 30 feet to 35 feet. Critical to our long-term competitiveness, a deeper channel will make the Port accessible to 75 percent of the world’s cargo fleet, compared to only 30 percent currently. This will make us a more attractive import and export hub, help with regional traffic congestion and air quality, provide material for Delta levee improvements and habitat restoration, and further improve our ability to locate clean-tech businesses at or near the Port.

We also plan to initiate a marine-highway container barge service between Oakland, Stockton and West Sacramento with help from a $30 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery TIGER) federal stimulus grant. The new marine highway will provide an eco-friendly waterborne shipping route between the three ports, creating a new transportation alternative to conventional freight and cargo movement in Northern California. Funds in West Sacramento will be used for a new distribution center and crane.

Rice continues to be one of our primary export products and has helped the port weather the Great Recession. With five ships carrying more than 86,000 metric tons of bulk rice (a metric ton is about 2,200 pounds) and 14 ships carrying 184,000 metric tons of bag rice, the 2009-2010 rice season, running from November to mid-summer, was one of the Port's strongest in recent years. Bulk rice shipments were the most since 2001. We’re looking forward to another strong season in 2010-2011. The first three vessels loading rice this year will be MV Oakland, Ocean Trader and Blue Baie, each of which in January is loading 13,000 metric tons of bagged rice destined for Japan.

Stay informed about Port of West Sacramento developments through our website at www.portofwestsac.com, by subscribing to our quarterly newsletter through our Facebook account, and by following @portofwestsac on Twitter.