AltaSea, a marine science research campus located at the Port of Los Angeles has a new CEO, and several new developments are being made.
Terry Tamminen, 69, the state’s former Environmental Protection Agency secretary and a former aide and policy advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, came on board as the project’s new chief executive officer last month.
He took over for Tim McOsker, who left the post to concentrate on his campaign to win the 15th District Los Angeles City Council Seat.
McOsker will remain a volunteer senior advisor.
“I got to know the folks at AltaSea and I’ve been a fan of what they’re trying to do here,” said Tamminen, who comes to the nonprofit with a long list of accomplishments and prominence in environmental circles.
AltaSea, which was originally the vision of Geraldine Knatz, former Port of LA Executive director, was launched in 2013. It plans to establish a $500million marine research center. It was estimated that the campus would take between 15 and 20 years to complete.
The 35-acre San Pedro campus at 2451 Signal St. was to include seawater laboratories, offices, and a lecture hall.
Fundraising proved difficult, but Tamminen said none of this was surprising considering the vision that was so vast.
“Everyone understands big ideas like this take time,” Tamminen said in a recent interview.
Annenberg Foundation gave $25 million to kick-start the transformation of a string o port warehouses located at the outer harbor.
Upcoming projects include the following:
- Renovation of 180,000 square feet in warehouse space will soon begin. This will include new roofs, solar panels, and other improvements.
- Introducing carbon capturing technology, which the Institute for Carbon Management in UCLA’s Samueli Scholastic’s School of Engineering will bring to AltaSea.
- AltaSea signed a cooperation agreement with Eco Wave Power, an offshore wave energy technology company that has developed technology to turn waves into green electricity.
Eco Wave will begin a pilot program on AltaSea’s campus, and then will search for other locations.
So far, the technology, developed in Israel, hasn’t worked commercially, said Tamminen, who was born in Wisconsin but spent much of his youth in Australia.
“Either it was too expensive to build and deploy,” he said, “or was just not durable enough” for the harsh ocean environment.
Tamminen said that the supporters have the potential to create a successful demonstration program using the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant’s local breakwater and a concrete jetty.
Eco Wave will participate in AltaSea’s outreach activities, including the AltaSea Renewable Energy Open House on Feb. 26 and the upcoming AltaSea Blue+Green webinar series, which does not yet have a launch date.
In the meantime, a kelp lab, created by students and faculty at USC, has been operating in one warehouse facility. A more formal ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held for March 7, at 1:30 pm.
Tamminen stated that AltaSea’s vision offers the opportunity to do great work.
“Ever since my first diving lesson in my youth, just a few miles from AltaSea, I’ve had a deep passion and interest in the ocean,” Tamminen said. “AltaSea is uniquely positioned to become the world’s leading destination for the blue economy.”
Tannimen — a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed ship captain, and airplane and helicopter pilot who speaks German, Dutch and Spanish — conducted studies on conch depletion in the Bahamas, manatee populations in Florida coastal waters and mariculture in the Gulf States with Texas A&M University.
He was appointed CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 2016. He oversaw operations, the development of a new comprehensive climate action plan, as well as numerous other global environmental and climate change initiatives.
The people who were involved in AltaSea’s creation hailed his recent appointment to lead the San Pedro Research Facility.
“We’re privileged that someone of Terry’s caliber and depth of respect in the environmental movement has agreed to be our next CEO and lead us into 2022, a year of action for AltaSea,” said Board of Directors Chairman Doane Liu. “Terry helped transform California into a global leader on climate change.”
Tamminen created the Santa Monica BayKeeper back in 1993.
He was appointed secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 and later appointed cabinet secretary and chief policy advisor to Schwarzenegger, becoming an architect of sustainability policies, including the state’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the Hydrogen Highway Network and the Million Solar Roofs Initiative.
“We’re an ocean planet, two-thirds of the planet is ocean and we’re harming it,” Tamminen said of the work AltaSea is dedicated to pursuing. “But it’s an amazingly resilient ecosystem.”