09/04/2003 j Dallas Morning News j Op-Ed

Martin Edwin Andersen: Ports of all sizes

must be secured against terrorism
Few Americans even know about Port Fourchon, a seaport with no permanent residents
straddling a spit along Louisiana's coast. ut i! the" did, the" would better understand
wh" port securit" means economic securit" # and wh" more, much more, still needs to be
done to protect these engines o! our prosperit".
The Greater Lafourche Port Commission's facility plays a strategic role in providing 16 to 18
percent of U.S. oil and gas needs and forms part of a Gulf of Mexico hydrocarbon
infrastructure that furnishes the country with 30 percent of its domestic oil supply.
Because this "small" port is nonetheless a very important one, it serves as an object lesson in
how news coverage and editorial commentary often miss the mark when port security is the
target.
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general issued a report that
criticized its port security grant program, which, since 2002, has distributed $363 million to
more than 1,200 projects to beef up security in a sector whose traditional pre-Sept. 11
concerns were stowaways, pilferage and narcotics smuggling.
The report said that, in its initial stages at least, the grant program spent $67 million for 238
proposed port security projects that an internal review board had said were "marginal" to key
security needs and were given out despite "dubious" scores on key criteria issued by the
project's own evaluators.
In addition, it said, the program "did not have the benefit of national key asset and critical
infrastructure protection information now being developed" by homeland security, meaning
that key program stakeholders at the department "did not collaborate to integrate the program
with broader national security initiatives."
The report was a potential bombshell, if only for the fact that $130 million more is to be
distributed by the Department of Homeland Security in the next few weeks. (In response, the
department has tightened up both the requirements and the process by which the grants are
made.)
From the time the report was first reported in Port $ecurit" News, as far as press attention
was concerned, it was: "Katy, bar the door."
%he Los Angeles %imes, whose readership encompasses two enormous seaports Los
Angeles and Long Beach through which 40 percent of the nation's cargo move, offered an
argument echoed in newspapers around the nation: "The Department of Homeland Security is
supposed to protect the nation's ports against terrorist attacks. So far, it has excelled instead at
securing pork."
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%he %imes and others lampooned the fact that, while the nation's largest and busiest ports
such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, Houston and New York/New Jersey received grants, so,
too, did those of St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands, and Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts.
The latter, %he %imes thundered, "Do not exactly make up the trade backbone of the
American economy."
While true to a degree, the focus on "large" vs. "small" ports was both facile and misleading
for a variety of reasons. Since 9-11, seaports and many inland water facilities are obligated by
law to upgrade their security.
And, as the case of Port Fourchon shows, "small" ports can also be critical to the economy.
Observes Ted M. Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission:
"Every citizen of this country should think of us when they turn on their lights or get into
their car.
"Without a port security grant, we would have not installed a camera surveillance system and
added another harbor patrol vessel."
Smaller ports are neither risk-free nor necessarily less desirable terrorist targets. Some of the
bigger, more visible mega-ports may be higher priority targets, but smaller ports should not
be overlooked because they are links in our chain of homeland defense that should be neither
weakened nor broken.
The argument that only larger ports need funding obscures a far more pressing reality that
the federal port security money still remains woefully inadequate to do the job.
Martin &dwin Andersen is the !ormer managing editor o! Port $ecurit" News. 'is e(mail
address is martinedwineandersen)"ahoo. com.
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