Planning for a New Berth in New York Harbor

It has been over twenty-five years since the last container terminal was developed in the harbor. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) purchased 124 acres of the old Port Ivory manufacturing facility from Proctor and Gamble in 2000. This out of date facility is adjacent to PANYNJ's marine terminal leased to New York Container Terminal (NYCT). A 38-acre parcel of the P&G site is situated on the Author Kill, the Federal Channel. NYCT planned for a new highly efficient semi-automated container terminal on this small parcel and is presently seeking environmental permits from the Federal, State and New York City agencies. The building of this new berth will be coincident with the Port of New York New Jersey Harbor Deepening Project (HDP), which will provide 50-foot channels to the major container terminals in the harbor. The HDP is planned for completed before the opening of the Panama Canal's third lock. HDP's environmental master plan for the harbor indicated NYCT's new planned berth to be the only viable landfill project in the harbor in the next fifty years. NYCT will fund and build the new terminal on PANYNJ and City of New York land, which will be leased from the PANYNJ. In an effort to avoid and minimize impact on tidal wetland, NYCT will increase the throughput density of container per acre from the New York's average of about 2,300 to over 7,500. To achieve this high throughput the yard will use portal type Rail Mounted Gantry (RMG) cranes. Other features which will lessen the environmental impact of the terminal are: infrastructure for cold-ironing of container vessels, electric RMG and STS cranes with regenerative power feature, use Tier 3 tractors or better, use cement augmented contaminated dredge material for on-site fill, utilizing the majority of glacial till dredge material as on-site fill, and elimination of delivery truck idling waiting for service. The vast majority of the site is a closed construction and demolition landfill that provides certain site restriction. In addition, because the site is a former industrial site with a number of active and abandon petroleum pipelines on site, it is under a New York State approved Volunteer Cleanup Program, requiring particular special consideration for certain Areas of Concern. This paper will document the planning effort that investigated all of the above aspects, plus evaluated multiple alternatives and modes of operation to arrive at the most efficient layout, least equipment and manning given the site constraints.