Port of LA wins $70M

The Port of Los Angeles just got about $70 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the money is for work most people never see: digging silt out of channels, hardening waterfront structures against earthquakes, and fixing navigation trouble spots before they slow ships down. The wider San Pedro Bay complex, which includes Los Angeles and Long Beach, was allocated a record $131.8 million in the fiscal 2026 work plan. (portoflosangeles.org) (dredgingtoday.com) This is not money for adding a flashy new terminal or expanding the port’s footprint. Port officials said the funding is for maintenance and resilience, which is more like repairing the runway at a busy airport than building a new airport. (portoflosangeles.org) (maritimeprofessional.com) The fund paying for it is the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which is fed mainly by a federal harbor maintenance tax on waterborne import cargo. Congress created that system in 1986 so ports with federal navigation channels would have a dedicated pot of money for dredging and related upkeep. (law.cornell.edu) (everycrsreport.com) Dredging is simple in concept: ships need deep water, and harbors naturally fill back in with mud and sediment. If the bottom rises even a little in the wrong place, a fully loaded vessel can lose the clearance it needs, which turns a major trade gateway into a bottleneck. (dredgingtoday.com) (everycrsreport.com) The earthquake piece is specific to Southern California. The port said some of the federal dollars can go to seismic resiliency, including in-water berth dredging and stabilization, which means strengthening the places where ships tie up so they hold up better under stress. (portoflosangeles.org) (publicnow.com) Los Angeles is not a small regional harbor asking for a tune-up. The port says it has been the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere for the past 25 years, spans 7,500 acres with 43 miles of waterfront, and operates with a main channel depth of 53 feet. (portoflosangeles.org 1) (portoflosangeles.org 2) It also moved 10,239,318 twenty-foot equivalent units in calendar year 2025, according to its own container statistics. A twenty-foot equivalent unit is the standard box-counting measure for containers, so 10.2 million of them means even small delays ripple through warehouses, rail yards, and store shelves far beyond Los Angeles. (portoflosangeles.org 1) (portoflosangeles.org 2) Part of the reason this allocation is so large is that federal law changed how harbor maintenance money can be used. The Water Resources Development Act of 2020 expanded access to Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund dollars and set aside growing amounts for “donor ports,” which are ports that generate more harbor maintenance tax revenue than they historically got back. (congress.gov) (usace.army.mil) That matters in San Pedro Bay because Los Angeles and Long Beach are two of the country’s biggest import gateways, and Senator Alex Padilla said the two ports together move about 40 percent of the nation’s container imports. When ports that large get maintenance money on time, the payoff is usually fewer depth restrictions, fewer vessel delays, and less chance that an avoidable infrastructure problem turns into a supply-chain headline. (padilla.senate.gov) (portoflosangeles.org)