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Trade isn’t slowed by radiation inspectors
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
A year after U.S. Customs and Border Protection installed radiation portal monitors at Charleston’s three container terminals, the inspection program is being hailed as an unqualified success by what some might consider a surprising source: the region’s motor carriers.
Last month, the Charleston Motor Carriers Association presented customs officials with a resolution applauding both the efficiency of the inspection program and the officials’ efforts to address operational and health concerns before the monitors went live on Oct. 16, 2005.
Since scanning began, more than 875,000 containers have been scanned as they leave Charleston terminals, with “very little, if any, negative operational impact on the Charleston motor carrier community,” said George Kanski, president of the association.
“It’s worked flawlessly,” he said. “If only all things in life could go so smoothly.”
Singled out for specific praise by the CMCA were Pamela Zaresk, area port director for Customs and Border Protection, and Joanne Fogg, Chief Steve Talley and Chief Regina Sullivan, also of CBP.
While the Port of Norfolk, Va., was technically the first cargo facility in the Southeast to deploy radiation portal monitors at its facilities, the Port of Charleston was the first to have a comprehensive program deployed under the auspices of Customs and Border Protection.
Zaresk said a total of 15 radiation portals have been installed at the Columbus Street terminal in Charleston, the Wando Welch terminal in Mount Pleasant and the North Charleston terminal. Portals have not been installed at the Union Pier terminal because it doesn’t receive cargo containers.
“We don’t scan automobiles,” she said of the imported BMWs which comprise the bulk of the shipments at the downtown terminal.
Each facility has four primary scanning portals that all trucks departing with cargo containers must pass through and one secondary portal through which vehicles of interest are sent before being inspected by customs personnel using hand-held scanners.
About 1% of all containers leaving the terminal in the past year, approximately 8,750, were flagged to undergo the secondary inspection, although nothing unusual has been found, Zaresk said.
“One of the challenges with this type of program is that almost everything we come in contact with on a day-to-day basis emits some level of radiation, particularly anything that comes out of the ground,” she said.
“While we have had containers trigger the need for a closer look, we’ve typically been able to resolve the issue in less than three minutes using a hand-held radiological isotope identifier, which sends its readings to our Customs and Border Protection lab in Washington,” Zaresk added.
The program is one of the few overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that isn’t structured as a random inspection program.
“Every container goes through it, no exceptions,” Zaresk said.
That was precisely what initially concerned the 100-member Charleston Motor Carriers Association.
Although radiation portal monitors are a passive, non-intrusive means of screening containers for nuclear and radiological materials, there was a real fear that trucks flagged for further inspection would be tied up at the terminal for hours while the non-threatening nature of their cargo was determined.
“As president of the Motor Carriers Association, I occasionally get calls from drivers if a problem develops while picking up or dropping off cargo, but I can honestly say I haven’t received a single call related to a radiological inspection,” Kanski said.
“It almost makes you wonder if they’re actually on,” he joked, before describing his first-hand experience with them.
“When they first came online I was working with a company that picked up marble slabs at the port,” he said. “Now marble, being of the earth, has a natural radioactivity to it and our trucks were always flagged for further inspection.”
In time, he said, customs personnel were prepared to pull his trucks over whenever they passed through the first set of portals. “But it never became a problem,” Kanski said. “They performed their inspections and checked our bill of lading, but it never became a time-consuming issue.”
Some drivers’ concerns that the process of inspection itself would expose them to radiation is also no longer a issue.
“There was a rumor at one point that the portals emitted radiation, but what we explained to those drivers, for want of a better description, is that the monitors ‘sniff’ their containers and don’t emit anything,” he said.
Zaresk credited Custom and Border Protection’s strategy of working closely with the S.C. State Ports Authority, the motor carriers and other port stakeholders with eliminating potential problems before they began.
“By talking directly to people about their concerns and sharing information, you really can minimize resistance to a new program,” she said. “In fact, I think our biggest challenge was simply one of logistics, of how to set the monitors up in such a way that would keep the traffic flowing, while affording us the control necessary to conduct secondary inspections when warranted.”
Zaresk said that while the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, is always on the lookout for new, improved technologies to detect a radiological threat, she doesn’t anticipate changes at the Charleston terminals anytime soon.
“Right now, customs is looking at the expansion of the program to other locations,” she said. “In fact, we’re going to get them working at the Port of Savannah come the beginning of December.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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