At about 9:15 each weeknight, the "Islander" barge rumbles toward the rocky shoreline of eastern Catalina Island — and on it, the daily essentials for 4,000 residents and an estimated 1 million visitors every year.
On a recent Tuesday evening, goods coming ashore ranged from the routine — pallets of milk jugs, kegs of beer — to the obscure: 50-foot steel beams needed to build a new Verizon cellphone tower.
"It's our lifeline to civilization," said Mayor Ann Marshall of Avalon, the island's only incorporated city. "It's survival."
But over the last year, a battle has been brewing over who will control Catalina's crucial commercial pipeline.