4:00pm | One of the questions that comes up again and again regarding the Long Beach Breakwater is, “Why was it built?”
  
Over the years, those that want the breakwater to remain as it is have argued that the third and easternmost section of the breakwater, known today as the Long Beach Breakwater, was built to protect commercial vessels calling at the Port of Long Beach and continues to serve that important function to this day. Proponents of removing or reconfiguring the breakwater have argued that the Long Beach Breakwater was built to protect Navy ships at anchor in Long Beach Harbor, and since the Navy left in 1997, the Long Beach portion of the breakwater is no longer needed.
  
This argument–about the necessity of the breakwater–remains at the center of the argument of removing or reconfiguring the Long Beach Breakwater.
  
Its roots, however, stretch all the way back to 1938.
  
When the city turned out for an April 29, 1938 celebration signaling completion of what we know as the Middle Breakwater, the total breakwater’s two segments then stretched 22,000 feet, or more than 4.92 miles, from San Pedro to almost directly south of the Los Angeles River opening.
  
Ironically, less than a week before the celebration, Long Beach residents and elected officials were already expressing concern about the impacts of the breakwater on Long Beach. City Hall and a group of shoreline property owners complained about the U.S. Navy’s well stated plan to use the waters behind the Middle Breakwater for a massive Navy anchorage, including special anchorages for explosives. Long Beach city officials cited the “psychological and moral” aspect of an explosive anchorage right off the Terminal Island coast and residents raised concerns about the damage to tourism.
  
US Navy officials relented, and while describing the newly-created eastern anchorages as required, essential and a necessity for the Navy plan to increase the number of warships based in Long Beach-Los Angeles waters, the Navy agreed to relocate the 2,400-foot-diameter explosives anchorage much further west near the start of the breakwater in San Pedro. However, the water behind the newly-constructed Middle Breakwater remained as the new Navy anchorage as well as an anchorage for vessel needing to be quarantined due to disease aboard. 
  
Within a month of the celebration marking completion of the Middle Breakwater, the federal government was already formally studying a third extension of the breakwater. The roots of the full study trace back to a February 1938 request by a California Congressman that the War Department study the need for a third breakwater section. 
  
Eventually ordered by Congress, the 1938 study was cheered by Long Beach City Hall, despite earlier protests over the Middle Breakwater. As it turns out, city officials at the time had already applied to Washington, D.C. for an major extension of the breakwater to the east–what we know today as the Long Beach Breakwater.
  
Over the next two years the federal government continued moving forward with ideas of a third breakwater section. In April 1940, while various ideas were still floating around the halls of Congress, Long Beach port manager Eloi Amar proposed the construction of an 8,000-foot third section, stating that the extension would provide a sheltered harbor for U.S. Navy vessels.
  
In May 1940, Navy officials made their case for the third breakwater section to Congress, arguing that the project was “vital to the national defense,” and “urgent to afford ample protection for the United States Fleet.”
  
A more extensive $17.6 million plan was eventually approved by the War Department and as the Los Angeles Times noted on Oct. 5, 1940, “Construction of a 21,000-foot extension of the Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor breakwater, affording shelter for the expanded U.S. Fleet, was approved today by the Senate.”
  
Work on the third section of the breakwater began in May 1941–work was halted in 1943 as the Navy role in World War II escalated, only to start again in 1947–and was finally completed in 1949.
  
In the 11 years from its initial studies until it was completed, the third section of the breakwater was continually referenced as a necessity of the U.S. Navy–the same Navy that proponents of removing or reconfiguring the breakwater rightly point out left in 1997.
  
As to the question of commercial ships at dock requiring the Long Beach Breakwater, a quick check of Google Maps will show that the third, or Long Beach portion of the breakwater does not protect a single berth at the port, save for a single slip on the east side of Pier J–which it should be noted, has its own entrance breakwaters.
  
No study to date that I have found has shown that removal of the Long Beach Breakwater would result in the normal wave action hitting Long Beach Harbor intruding beyond the space between the southern end of Pier J and the Middle Breakwater into the port. To some degree this narrow area functions as a hydraulic dam where waves moving west through this opening back up as they hit the calmer waters within the port basin.
  
A study conducted nearly a decade ago, with somewhat smaller container and bulk cargo vessels, found that even then the vessels were so large and heavy that with adequate mooring there was very little movement of the vessels even by large wave action. Keep in mind that since the study was done, the average container vessel has grown even larger and heavier. The study ultimately noted that during severe wave action, the only thing not possible was the unloading of containers due to the inability of the cranes to compensate for the maximum measured three foot roll at the top of the study vessels. However, not mentioned in the study is that during a storm, it is unlikely that such a vessel would be loaded or unloaded anyway.
  
What the removal of the Long Beach Breakwater would really mean to the two ports is a loss of protected anchorages in Long Beach Harbor. And yet, the number of ships relying on the anchorages at any one given time, except in rare times of problems at the port, is very low. As port efficiencies in loading and unloading cargo have improved, ships that used to take a week to unload now arrive and leave within days–meaning that the number required to wait at one of the anchorages for a berth will, if anything, only decrease with further efficiencies at the port. Of course there are always going to be vessels that need to anchor to take on stores or parts, but this small number of vessels could be easily accommodated, if need be, within the protected basin behind the Middle Breakwater.
  
It seems clear, at least in the case of the argument over the necessity of the breakwater in regards to shipping, that proponents of removing or reconfiguring the breakwater may be correct.