Under his leadership in Louisiana, state-of-the-art facilities such as the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal—touted as the world’s most technologically advanced container terminal—have come into operation at the Port of New Orleans. At the same time, the local cruise industry has grown dramatically.

Like hundreds of other port directors, LaGrange says that—since 9/11, the day after he assumed his current job—he has spent myriad hours confronting not only issues of terrorism and port security, but also addressing the vexing lack of federal dollars to do the job right. PSN talked with LaGrange by telephone as the country prepared to go to the polls. Here’s what he had to say:

PSN: How to you think the ports are doing in terms of security?

LaGrange: Awful, in terms of security funding. We’re, for the most part, dealing with partially funded mandates, and we’re only getting a small fraction of the money we need. And the ports are struggling to keep up with the mandates.

PSN: So how are they coping?

LaGrange: Many of the ports down here on the Gulf are considering security fees, or considering amending our tariffs that we charge customers, which in itself would only partially solve some of the issues and problems.

PSN: How would that work?

LaGrange: It would be an amended tariff that would be paid by the shipper upon entering the port, and would be used to partially offset the huge security costs that we’re having, primarily in personnel—overtime and the additional personnel that is required as of July 1 (when the Maritime Security Transportation Act of 2002 took effect.).

PSN: But that could hurt port competitiveness, right?

LaGrange: It could, but what we are doing is, in the case of all the Gulf Coast ports from Brownsville to Tampa, 26 ports all the way across the Gulf, is having closed-door discussions in a conference-type setting. There all of them can collectively talk about the fee structures. In that case, you have almost an even playing field, a parity-type situation. Where (the competitiveness issue) would come into play—where it would hurt—is if, vis-a-vis another entirely different region, (there is) another port that is in some way competitive (with New Orleans). Then you’re in a different conference all together. But if everybody agrees to raise their rates to the same level, then the element of competition pretty much diminishes by itself.

PSN: You must have a high degree of confidence in all the people in that room, as they exchange notes about such vital economic data. ...

LaGrange: That’s exactly right. When we all jump off the bridge, we all need to jump together—arm in arm and hand in hand. Nobody should be kind of lying back, waiting for the other guy to jump first. 

PSN: Are you using the meetings to discuss common approaches to security as well?

LaGrange: Yes, we have. Some of the things, because of federal laws and the nature of the subjects, we can’t discuss, but basically the types of things that are being discussed are, how do we better handle the rising personnel costs of security? The details will be published when we publish the new tariff rates by January 1, the target date. In the next few days we’re going to have another meeting and will be discussing it further. 

Of course, those tariffs have to be passed by each of the individual port authorities; just because the conference says, “Okay, these are our conference schedules,” doesn’t mean each individual port authority does, and that’s when you have to figure out, “Okay, we jumped and you didn’t.” One of the issues is that it be done in a unanimous way—if it’s not unanimous, then it doesn’t happen.

PSN: And the monies that will be raised will be dedicated towards compliance with the July 1 mandates, rather than looking ahead at new technologies and things that you may have to buy in the medium future …

LaGrange: No, it doesn’t touch that. We are talking about a reactionary situation.

There are other things that are being done for the future, however, (including) the American Association of Port Authorities asking Congress for $400 million a year in security funds for the next 10 years. That would probably take care of the needs as we assess them today for your major deep draft ports across America.

We have also all done our own port assessments. Here in the Port of New Orleans we have $44 million in basic needs, and that doesn’t even include personnel. When you put personnel and overtime into the equation, it brings it up to roughly $64-65 million. Up to this point, the port has received $8 million. That tells you we have a long way to go.

PSN: Just eight million dollars since 9/11?

LaGrange: Yes. Mostly its homeland security money, but it also includes Department of Justice funds, through the COPS program, and a few others. I think there were three different sources.

PSN: In terms of port security, what is it that you would like to get done during your tenure as chairman of the AAPA board?

LaGrange: First and foremost, addressing the funding issue. The security assessments have been done, everybody has their plans in place, but there are no implementation skills, there is nothing that has been made available to us for implementation, except on a piecemeal standpoint.

The current $47-50 million a year funding level is a drop in the bucket and that is not going to get us to where we really need to be. So that would be one thing; another is trying to use innovative methods such as tariffs for assessing more funds that we can raise at a local level without unfairly harming anybody from the standpoint of competition.

When you stop and think about how much Customs duties are paid in the maritime ports in the United States—if you want to talk about funding sources—they’re roughly 84 or 85 percent of all Customs duties. Yet ports are reaping absolutely no benefit from those Customs duties. If you want to subsidize and you want an answer to your problem, get the money to where it’s being collected, put the money back into the ports for safety and security purposes. If you can only fund $150 million that came out of the compromise (Homeland Security) bill for the coming year and you need to get up to $400 million for the next 10 years, go to the user fees that are being collected within the ports.

PSN: What has the federal government done right on port security since 9/11?

LaGrange: (Department of Homeland Security Secretary) Tom Ridge is one good thing that’s happened, as well as the department itself. The merger of the many different agencies was good—but we also lost a lot of ground in the confusion early on trying to determine who was “on first,” so to speak. Now, things are starting to shake themselves out and people are starting to understand how the system works.

But the big thing that we have been forced to do—and this is a good part to the lack of funding—is that it’s forced us to become more innovative, it’s forced us to become vigilant, more coordinated, to develop networks from the federal on down to the local, and everything in between. For example, we’ve formed task forces that now meet on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to share intelligence information previously never shared before.

PSN: How do those task forces work?

LaGrange: The various agencies in the area—the FBI, Customs, the U.S. Attorneys Office, the state police, our harbor police department, the Coast Guard—all work together in a collaborative way, meeting on call, daily if necessary, depending on the heightened security level at the time.

PSN: These are like the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the JTTFs?

LaGrange: Exactly, same kind of idea. Here in the Port of New Orleans it has forced us to create an anti-terrorism division of five people within our harbor police department of 75. Their No.1 priority—not their sole one, but priority No.1—is intelligence dealing with all of your various security levels, MARSEC levels, on a given day. Not only do they cope and comply with it; they teach it to our tenants, and customers, and even to civilians coming and going out of the port on a daily and routine basis. And we are now at the point of even sharing personnel with the FBI.

PSN: Does the anti-terrorism division serve as a special response team (SRT) as well?

LaGrange: Yes, it is a special response team. We sent them to (the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in) Glynco, Ga., for training. I don’t know how many other ports can honestly tell you that they have them, but I do know we’ve got ours and we’re glad of it.

We were talking about things that change. … I am looking at a Carnival cruise ship right outside my window now and the security that’s going on, and I’m looking at things that you would never have seen before 9/11. Security fencing and lighting and warning signals and the Coast Guard totally monitoring the cruise ships the entire time they are in our port, out there monitoring it from a water standpoint. And the harbor police are there landside, along with Customs. So the ship is literally surrounded by security right now. And this is on any given day; any given time a cruise ship is in a port.

PSN: You took your current job in New Orleans on September 10, 2001, right? What was that like?

LaGrange: It was crazy. I was here in my office. When they told me that the World Trace Center had been hit, I looked out the window—I thought it was ours. It’s right next door to us. Before 9/11, security wasn’t on my Top 20 list. We had all these other projects on our mind, things that we wanted to do. Security wasn’t on any port guy’s list anywhere, any place, any time. But of course, it rose to No. 1 pretty fast. 

PSN: What kind of technologies do you think are particularly useful? And related to that is there some confusion even now among port security directors because before 9/11 when you talked about port security, you weren’t talking about that kind of security, you were talking about pilferage and that sort of thing? Now there seem to be a lot of people out their flogging their wares, things that haven’t necessarily been tested thoroughly, or even in a maritime environment.

LaGrange: It’s a huge frustration. You’ve got people—and I don’t mind you quoting me on this—that were plumbers last year that are security experts this year. They’re beating your door down day-in and day-out, and it’s so time-consuming and worrisome. It wears you out just trying to meet with all these people. And everybody’s got a new mouse trap, every day. So just when you think you’re getting it down, somebody else shows up with another one, and most of them are untried and unproven.

PSN: Do you think the AAPA ought to be trying to regulate the market a little bit?

LaGrange: They are. The AAPA has a good port security committee and has gotten involved, from a financing standpoint, driving the notion home that you are giving our people a toothbrush without any toothpaste. In the case of the Port of New Orleans, you gave them a third of a gate. Why you fund a third of four different gates? Why wouldn’t you fund one complete gate? We’ve been testifying quite a bit this past year on behalf of AAPA. Like any other new bureaucracy there are a whole lot of things that have to be turned around and changed, and it’s slow.

PSN: How do you think that port security issues have played out in the 2004 campaign?

LaGrange: I think that they have been pretty prominent. I’m amazed at how much it has come up, and rightfully so.

PSN: This year the ports are losing some friends on Capitol Hill, like Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.). In the next Congress, who do you think are going to the people the ports can depend on…

LaGrange: If you call me back in 48 hours, I’ll answer that question. (Laughs.) There are some really good potential allies for the port and maritime industry out there who are going through some heavily contested campaigns right now.

PSN: Do you think, generally speaking, this year’s candidates—Democrat or Republican—“get it” in terms of the real needs of the ports?

LaGrange: Unfortunately, I think the Democrat-Republican thing has been overplayed. It’s not a partisan issue; it’s an issue of understanding what’s important for safety and security for this country. The port and maritime industry has been a waif, it’s been a stepchild, compared to airports and other areas that have received the lion’s share of all the security funding. 

PSN: It did seem that this year, perhaps more than any in recent history, port security issues came into their own. …

LaGrange: There’s no question about it. From a maritime or port standpoint, all of us pretty much agree unanimously that we are getting step-child treatment at best. We are not getting the treatment that we should be to provide the security that needs to be provided.

PSN: How important is the Port of New Orleans to the U.S. economy?

LaGrange: We had a ship collision here in February and the river closed down for four days while the Coast Guard did the search and rescue part of it. Tom Ridge came here the next day and visited the port—because the notion of closing the Mississippi River down, which services 62 percent of the consumer spending public in the United States, would be catastrophic and huge. That first week that we were closed, with the ships blocking the river, the economy lost $19 million a day, but economists and experts tell us that after the first seven days that number increases exponentially, as the supply chain dwindles and as the cargo and the products don’t get to their shelves in retail outlets and the distribution centers.

PSN: It does seem that sometimes, on Capitol Hill, it is hard to get members from the heartland to see port security with the same urgency as do those representing people who live on one of the Coasts …

LaGrange: One thing that a lot of people in industry have come to realize is that Farmer Brown up there knows that 65 percent of all of the grain that is exported out of the United States comes through this port of New Orleans.

The grain belt, or the bread belt, shuts down without maritime ports—all of that grain is going to Asia. That’s pretty huge, to think that all of that comes down in barges. We have a dozen grain elevators in this area—the Port of New Orleans, the Port of South Louisiana—and that’s all Midwestern grain that is coming down to be exported.

PSN: From the security vantage point, what keeps you up at night?

LaGrange: Nothing really keeps me up at night. This is here and there is not a lot we can do except try to improve it. As much as I hate to say it, everybody has got to concede the fact that, particularly in a huge port like this one, nothing is ever going to be 100 percent. I’m looking out at two huge bridges that our office literally sits under. … There’s so many issue that could be debated. Up river from us are huge liquid and dry bulk ports at the Port of South Louisiana, the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

There are no guarantees in anything in life, I guess.

Martin Edwin Andersen can be reached at Mick_Andersen@portsecuritynews.us. 

Copyright (C) 2004 Port Security News