In an effort to ease a bottleneck that’s left nearly 80 vessels waiting offshore to enter Long Beach, port officials relaxed restrictions on storing shipping containers.
To remind, the massive Southern California ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are struggling to handle record volumes of inbound cargo amid shortages of truck drivers and equipment like trailers needed to haul containers from the docks to inland warehouses, rail hubs and distribution centers.
As the city manager said in a statement:
There is currently a national emergency related to the supply and distribution of imported goods arriving in our nations ports. This issue has particularly affected the City of Long Beach and neighboring port operations as delays in offloading, storage, and distribution of goods to their destinations in the supply chain have been substantially delayed, creating national, regional and local economic impacts.
It has recently come to the City’s attention the Municipal Code contains zoning provisions that limit the number and/or height of shipping container storage, that if relaxed for a short time could provide some assistance during this national crisis.
Depending on the property zoning, these limits have been either two stacked containers or eight feet in height. These provisions, which have been in effect for many years, were established to address the visual impact to surrounding areas of sites with excessive storage.
Given this current national emergency and the Governor’s Executive Order to take necessary steps to alleviate the impacts on the system, the City Manager will temporarily waive enforcement of current shipping container stacking and height limits for a period of 90 days from October 22, 2021.
During this period, affected operations will be allowed to stack up to four (4) shipping containers without being cited for a Code violation. This will only apply to properties that are currently zoned to allow shipping container stacking. Properties that wish to stack up to 5 containers high should contact Fire Prevention to ensure the site can safely accommodate the height prior to stacking above four containers high.
Concluding, the City will work during the next 90-day period to assess the situation and the effectiveness of this solution and any impacts on the surrounding areas. City staff anticipates presenting information on this topic to the City Council in November to receive further input on the solution as well as consideration for impacts to the areas where these operations are located.
