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Who Pays The Freight?

2008-07-03T03:01:25Z

On June 26, 2008, Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa signed into law a City ordinance, passed by a unanimous vote of the L.A. City Council, enacting the Port of Los Angeles Clean Trucks Program, the most progressive in the nation. If the ordinance is left undisturbed – litigation attacking the plan by the trucking industry may come as early next week – it has a very good chance of reducing deadly diesel particulate emissions from the Port of L.A. by 80 percent within five years.

The Port of Long Beach is a different story. As I’ve written before, the Long Beach trucking program continues the current, broken economic model of port trucking by forcing underpaid “independent” truckers to finance, maintain and replace new trucks on their own nickel. The reality of this misguided decision became crystal-clear at a Port of Long Beach meeting this week on financing new trucks.

The problem is this: money from the port’s container fees, state-sponsored incentive funds and other sources will not cover 100 percent of the cost of a new, low-emitting diesel truck. So, a portion of the cost needs to be financed by the (mostly low-income) drivers. To pay for their new, low-emission trucks, drivers will need to make monthly payments in the amount of $500-$700 even with a subsidy paying for up to 80 percent of the truck.

Long Beach asked three potential lenders to bid: Bank of America, GE Credit, and Daimler Trucking. B of A and GE declined to take on more than a small piece of the risk, presumably partly based on the grounds of risk related to providing financing to drivers who may not be able to meet payment schedules. Daimler, which did pony up to take on the full risk, explained that it expected about 40 percent of the drivers to (at some point) have problems paying their bills on the new truck, and touted its experience in repossessing trucks.

This sorry testimony from hard-headed businesspeople should be a wakeup call for Long Beach. The business plan that the Port of Long Beach wants to continue is risky because it has kept trucker incomes so low that they can’t afford new trucks, even if most of the truck is already paid for. And this doesn’t even consider paying for maintaining the trucks, or buying new ones when these wear out. This is exactly why the L.A. business model that Mayor Villaraigosa signed into law is better – it relies on well-capitalized private industry rather than poor truckers to pay the freight.

The Federal Maritime Commission Does the Right Thing

2008-06-17T00:29:01Z

On June 13, 2008, the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) wrote to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and stated that the FMC would “allow the early effectiveness” of the Ports’ agreement that authorized the Ports to cooperate in their Clean Trucks Programs. The FMC concluded that: “there was no basis at this time to determine that the Agreement is likely to result in an unreasonable increase in transportation costs or decrease in services.” In other words, the FMC has refused the trucking industry’s request to shut down the Ports Clean Trucks Programs.

Here’s the background to this letter. The trucking industry formally asked the FMC to block implementation of the clean truck programs enacted by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The FMC sent an onerous list of questions to both ports, which the ports responded to. Recently, FMC Commissioner Harold Creel was quoted as saying:

“So it would seem fairly clear from the divergent approaches taken by the two Harbor Boards that, although there may be strong agreement on the health benefits of their common environmental goals and emissions standards, the ‘employee mandate’ remains somewhat problematic.” These were encouraging words for the trucking industry, which had hoped to use the FMC as a tool to delay implementation of both Ports’ clean trucks programs.

Last week, 31 Members of Congress from Southern California penned a letter to the Federal Maritime Commission to support the LA Clean Trucks Program. The letter begins:

“We are writing to express our support for the Clean Trucks Program, a groundbreaking green growth initiative approved by the Port of Los Angeles on March 20, 2008. This program will produce sustainable environmental and public health improvements, enhance the efficiency and productivity of port trucking, and reduce congestion, while appropriately placing the financial responsibility for operating and maintaining a fleet of clean trucks on the trucking companies that negotiate haul rates instead of on the truck drivers who are trying to make ends meet. For these reasons, we are encouraging the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to give this important clean-air proposal full and fair consideration as it moves towards implementation."

The Representatives went on to say:

“The LA Clean Trucks program will actually strengthen competition within the port trucking industry as well as between port trucking and their retail clients. Since port trucking costs are a relatively small component of overall transportation costs, the increased operational costs required by this program will be far outweighed by the overwhelming public benefits.”

“As the FMC moves forward in its review of the LA Clean Trucks Program, we hope to work with you to ensure we avoid the huge economic, environmental, and public health costs that would result if this vital program is delayed.”

The letter was signed by Representatives (Loretta) Sanchez, (Linda) Sanchez, Miller, Lee, Fillner, Roybal-Allard, Harman, Baca, Farr, Berman, Solis, Eshoo, Woolsey, Waxman, Tauscher, Watson, Lofgren, Waters, Thompson, Schiff, Matsui, Speier, Richardson, Sherman, Cardoza, Napolitano, Becerra, Davis, Honda, Capps and Costa. Last month, Speaker Pelosi wrote to the FMC in support of the Port of LA plan. NRDC has also urged the FMC not to delay the Ports’ Clean Trucks Plans.

We don’t know which arguments convinced the FMC not to block the Ports’ much-needed Clean Trucks Plans. But the FMC did the right thing by siding with 31 members of Congress, NRDC, other leading environmental and public health organizations, labor organizations, and many others in declining industry’s offer to act as an obstructionist to cleaner air. We hope the FMC will continue to allow the Ports to clean up the trucks doing business in San Pedro Bay.

What He Said

2008-06-12T19:56:39Z

On Friday, May 16, 2008, Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster gave a talk that blew the roof off the business-oriented FuturePorts conference in Long Beach. The beautiful setting, right by the water (thank you, Nancy), was a strong contrast to the tough words that Mayor Foster directed at industry. He told them, bluntly, that if the environmental measures that his port has enacted are halted, port expansion will halt also. “I'll see to it,” he said. And he will.

I hope that trucking industry representatives were in the audience, because they were the focus of Mayor Foster's promise. As reported in the May 19, 2008 Journal of Commerce, the American Trucking Association contends that the Long Beach plan is "unacceptable" because it contains a "command and control structure in the concession plan." Curtis Whalen, executive director of the American Trucking Association’s (ATA) Intermodal Conference, is quoted as saying: "We're definitely moving toward a trigger date for a lawsuit." Well, if ATA pulls the trigger, Mayor Foster says he will pull the plug on Port of Long Beach expansion, something no group with economic investment in the port wants to see.

The ATA's "command and control" trope hides the silliness of their core position: that the ports cannot legally decide that some trucks can come onto their land and some can't. Industry interprets the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution to mean that because port-serving trucks are in interstate commerce, a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil driven by a terrorist could not be denied admittance to the ports. Their interpretation says that while the ports may own their property and oversee cargo delivery from ships, trucks, or trains, they do not have any legal authority on their property to say the trucks should be electric and the ships should use low-sulfur fuel. It's like having a neighbor with a dilapidated, oil-leaking truck who parks on your driveway. According to the ATA, even though it's your property, you can't tell him not to park there/to fix his truck/maintain the truck because he has his own standards of upkeep that supersede yours because he owns the truck.

This is not just silly; it is plainly wrong. The Cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles are landlords who can control access to their property - here, their ports. As high courts have emphasized in several decisions, there is a "market participant" exception to the usual Commerce Clause rules when a governmental body is acting to buy, sell or lease property, rather than as a regulator. That is precisely the situation at the ports of LA and Long Beach who must consider public health impacts, just as airports have used this same exception to say, ban smoking on the premises.

The more the port expands, the more money the port makes. Stalling expansion projects is not good for business, but it is essential that any expansion project consider environmental and community health impacts. Some companies understand this: Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, and Foss Maritime, which supplies tugs and barges on the West Coast and elsewhere, have already moved away from using heavily-polluting high-sulfur marine fuel. But the ATA doesn't want to play by those rules and Mayor Foster responded by saying he’ll just take the port expansion off the table.

We're committed to working with both ports to ensure community and environmental concerns are heard while the port develops. Mayors Villaraigosa and Foster, Councilwoman Hahn, and LA Harbor Commissioner Freeman are also committed to this goal. At the end of the day, it will be the trucking industry, not NRDC, stalling the clean trucks plan at both ports, a plan that would provide cleaner air to port residents beginning this fall. But, depending on how the federal court rules, they may have to wait a lot longer than that.

Clean Air Act Applies to All

2008-05-30T00:35:44Z

Southern California’s air quality woes are a well known fact, but not enough has been done to alleviate the problem. Today, NRDC filed a petition for review in the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging EPA’s approval of the South Coast Air Basin motor vehicles emissions budgets. These budgets are supposed to tell EPA how the South Coast Air Basin is doing on its federally-required roadmap to cleaner air.

In our view, the report that EPA approved simply doesn’t go far enough to address air quality problems for our region. Surprisingly, it leaves 1.5 million people who live next to diesel-clogged freeways to shoulder the worst pollution effects with little or no relief. This is unacceptable. It’s why we filed our lawsuit today.

Last week, California’s Air Resource Board (CARB) released a major new study stating roughly three times as many people in California could die annually as a result of the state’s air pollution problems. CARB estimates that a lethal combination of tailpipe and smokestack emissions could kill 24,000 people a year, compared to CARB’s previous 8,200 estimate. CARB estimates that up to 6,500 Californians die each year as a result of pollution from goods movement within the state.

Most of the people affected by the public health issue that CARB highlights live near goods movement routes: ports and freeways. NRDC has worked for years to clean up cargo-carrying diesel ships and trucks. We have had some success, but not enough. And now even moderate measures such as banning the oldest, dirtiest trucks from the ports are under legal attack by industry. If industry wins, the premature death numbers will increase, as will the need for a clean air plan that gets us where we need to go on schedule.

Alarmists are saying that NRDC’s lawsuit will stall cleaning up our air. Not so: we are not challenging the South Coast Air District’s plan, but instead the District’s rosy report on where we are on the plan’s timeline. And there are measures available right now to get us back on track, such as strengthening and accelerating CARB’s proposed diesel truck rules.

In the long run, NRDC would like to see more cargo carried by rail and less by trucks; we would also like to see the elimination of fossil-fuel powered “drayage,” meaning the transportation of cargo containers from ships to rail yards. The Port of Los Angeles recently demonstrated an electric cargo truck that it has been developing; that truck, or something like it, is where we need to be going to meet the timeline and targets in the South Coast Air District’s plan.

Telling the Wrong Story

2008-05-20T22:07:03Z

NRDC’s work to clean up the Port of Long Beach got sucker punched last week in the Wall Street Journal. It was truly a shock to see such a mischaracterization of our work and our motives represented in such a highly regarded paper like the Journal.

Today, I find myself going through the same arguments made more than three months ago when local publications tried to play up the “unholy alliance” link between NRDC and the Teamsters. Earlier this year, we met with local editorial boards and corrected their assumptions about the partnership, but to see a national publication run the same argument in their first piece on the port’s clean trucks plan and play up the same anti-labor sentiments does not reflect the high-caliber journalism expected from the Journal.

No, NRDC is not doing the Teamsters’ bidding by partnering with them to clean up the ports; we’re not opposed to global trade; and we’re not “watching and waiting” to see if the Port of Long Beach screws up their clean trucks plan just so we can sue someone.

In fact, all we want is to clean Southern California’s air. Surprise!

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, the Port of LA’s Harbor Commission President David Freeman, Councilwoman Janice Hahn, and numerous environmental justice and clean air advocates support the concession model for port trucking – the model that industry has attacked and we’re ready to defend at both ports. But you wouldn’t know any of that based on the WSJ article.

The article’s strong pro-industry bias, and its play on anti-labor sentiment, would have been understandable on the WSJ editorial page, but not as a purported news feature.

The WSJ is a widely respected paper, staffed by top-notch reporters. I consider the Port of Long Beach’s clean trucks plan a matter of life or death for thousands of residents living near the port and my hope is that the Journal’s future coverage reflects the gravity of the situation and the paper’s reputation.

Different Coasts, Same Schmutz

2008-05-12T22:54:05Z

I used to play basketball with a guy we called “Schmutzie,” a playground variant on the Yiddish word “schmutz,” which means dirt. I don’t know how he got the name – he wasn’t any dirtier a player than the rest of us.

Recently, I travelled across the country from the Port of Los Angeles to the Port of Newark, N.J., to meet with local environmental justice advocates about another kind of schmutz: diesel particulates from port-serving trucks, ships and trains. I learned that the Newark ports have many of the same problems as the L.A. ports, including reliance on a dirty, aging truck fleet driven by “independent”, low-income owner-operators who can’t afford to maintain or replace their trucks. And, like the L.A. ports, the Newark ports want to expand to bring in more business.

But unlike the L.A. ports, Newark has not realized that port operations with dirty trucks and high-sulfur marine fuels treat the air as a public sewer and carry a high price in public health. Expansion without a change in that attitude will only make matters worse. Newark is not alone in this – every major U.S. port has these problems to one degree or another.

I’m not here to say that Newark or any other port should slavishly copy the L.A. model or the organizing/legal strategy that has been effective here – but what L.A. has to offer is worth a serious look around the country. The Port of Los Angeles is the largest port in the country and port leadership has taken it upon themselves to set the bar high when it comes to cleaning up future port operations. NRDC stands ready to help in Newark and anywhere else where diesel pollution is sickening and killing people and causing irreversible damage to the physical environment. Allowing industry to profit from this situation in the 21st century calls to mind another Yiddish word: meshuggenah. It’s crazy.

Do you want fries with that?

2008-05-02T23:16:19Z

Last week, I attended a community meeting in Long Beach to discuss a potential intermodal rail yard expansion project. After the railroad representatives gave their presentation on why the expansion is good for the local community, good for business and good for the environment, they got an earful for the next hour and a half from a community that is overwhelmingly opposed to the project.

At the end of the night, it was clear the railroad reps had clearly underestimated their audience, expecting that they would sign off on plans to increase the number of trucks rolling through neighborhoods by 750,000 per year, pumping diesel exhaust into the lungs of residents.

Adding 750,000 diesel truck round trips per year through an already heavily-polluted neighborhood will increase the cancer risk less than eating one extra hamburger a week -- or so said the railroad representative trying to persuade a skeptical crowd that his client’s proposed intermodal rail yard expansion project is good for the environment. I like a good burger now and then, and find it pretty hard to believe that eating one is worse for me than having diesel trucks driving by my house 1,500,000 times (750,000 round trips).

The reasoning behind the railroad’s claim is that regulations by the State of California will clean up the truck fleet over time. That may be true -- but the trucks will be cleaned up whether the railroad project is built or not. Given this, the way to achieve the maximum reduction in diesel emissions at the current facility isn’t to expand it, but rather to leave it as is. Exactly the same analysis applies to the alleged reductions in emissions from diesel locomotives which, due to recent EPA rulemaking, will also occur whether the new rail project is built or not.

The Port of Los Angeles, assisted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, has been working on an electric drayage truck capable of hauling a 50,000 lb. cargo container 5 miles to the nearest intermodal yard where the container would be picked up and put on a train. The electric truck is expected to be in production within a year. David Freeman, President of the Los Angeles Harbor Commission, asked the hapless railroad speaker whether his client would commit to buying and using electric drayage trucks when they become available.

The railroad rep said “No.”

“No”?

Baloney. Intermodal rail yards have been shown to increase cancer risks for rail yard neighbors. A substantial portion of that risk is directly related to diesel particulate emissions from trucks that service the rail yards. Well, reasoned the railroad rep, the railroad can’t control the trucks that deliver containers to it.

Baloney. How about the truck driven by Osama bin Laden carrying a ticking bomb? Of course the rail yard can refuse entry. And to take a less extreme but also potentially lethal example, the rail yard can refuse entry to a heavily-polluting diesel truck whose emissions are known to carry enormous health risks, especially to children.So why not go electric and eliminate the diesel engine from the equation? The railroad rep could not answer President Freeman’s question. Given today’s prices for diesel fuel, electric trucks will be substantially cheaper to run than diesel on a per mile basis.

President Freeman wants the Port of Los Angeles to be the cleanest and most progressive in the world. So does NRDC. The railroads -- and the trucking industry -- need to get with the program and help the Port move away from diesel power and towards power from clean, sustainable electrical generation. If they don’t -- I guess we should all get used to more hamburgers.

An “Unholy” Alliance

2008-04-22T22:21:54Z

Roughly 5,000 people showed up to a rally I spoke at last week. The rally followed the aptly named, “Hollywood to the Docks March,” a 3-day, 28 mile march designed to highlight the struggle of workers and communities throughout LA.

While nearly 200 people participated in the entire three day march, the rally consisted of a veritable who’s who of community and environmental groups working to make the Port of LA a cleaner, safer place to work, both for employees and the port residents who live next door. At the rally, I found myself in the unlikely position of addressing the crowd right before James Hoffa, Jr., General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Labor and environmentalists have often clashed in the past, but when it comes to supporting the Port of LA’s clean trucks plan, we find common ground. NRDC’s interest in changing this situation is obvious: we want to eliminate the port-related diesel particulate pollution that hundreds of thousands of local residents breathe every day. Organized labor is concerned about the health of the port truck drivers, many of whom are exploited legal immigrants who are in effect minimum wage workers with no right to health care or other job benefits that most of us take for granted.

This partnership between NRDC and the Teamsters is not without controversy. NRDC’s view – for which we took huge criticism from industry and the local press – is that the independent contractor model of port trucking is broken and needs to be discarded because drivers can’t afford to maintain their trucks or buy new ones and, ultimately, that’s bad for clean air and bad for the environment.

We advocated for a different model originally proposed by both the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach where real trucking companies would be held accountable for buying and maintaining trucks and employ the drivers, in the belief that, under this model, the trucks will be better maintained and more quickly replaced. Organized labor wanted the same model because they will have the ability to organize the drivers -- drivers who want a better life in a sustainable economic model and who have as much interest as anyone else in putting an end to the environmental crisis that the ports have allowed to grow.

On March 20, 2008, the Port of Los Angeles adopted a port trucking plan that is based on the model that NRDC and organized labor wanted. However, NRDC could not have achieved this result on its own. Nor could labor. Last week, thousands of people from the Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, Farmworkers, Change To Win, the Los Angeles Alliance For A New Economy, NRDC, the Sierra Club Harbor Vision Task Force, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, and the Coalition for Clean Air rallied to show their support for the port of LA’s clean trucks plan and their desire to work together on future port expansion projects. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Port-area Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn joined the list of speakers.

Some have argued that the true “unholy” alliance is actually the partnership between some shipping, trucking, and other port related interests, companies that have profited for decades on deadly diesel pollution and poised to derail clean up efforts by the ports. The Port of Los Angeles has 16 major expansion projects in the pipeline to service what is expected to be a tripling of trade within the next 20 years.

There will most likely be more “unholy” alliances between environmental, community, and labor groups in our future, if that’s what it takes to keep the ports, shipping companies, trucking companies, and the railroads accountable to federal clean air standards and the health of port residents.

Career Day in West LA

2008-04-18T20:06:42Z

This week, I spoke at “Career Day” at a large, urban West LA high school. The listing for my occupation on the school’s schedule was “environmental lawyer” which is accurate, but meaningless to most high school kids.

The kids were pretty much what I remembered from my public high school in Los Angeles: some slept, many were bored and indifferent, and a few were active and engaged. I tried to explain what an environmental lawyer / litigator does and gave them some hypotheticals that I hoped would spark some discussion about the jobs vs. environmental protection issue that is often thrown our way. I started big and fuzzy – polar bears – and then went small and fishy – the Delta smelt. The smaller and less cute we got, the fewer kids thought it was worth protecting the critter. The concept of an animal as an indicator species for environmental degradation was a tough one for them to weigh against the everyday reality of job losses or a reduction in supplies of drinking water.

I wasn’t discouraged by this. The smart and active kids who took me on gave me hope that, as their education continues, they will come to understand the value, for humans as well as critters, of environmental protection. In fact, one of the “let the smelt die” advocates came up after my talk and asked about internships at NRDC. I shamelessly promoted law school to those who had any flicker of interest, in the hope that, when their kids are in high school, they can have careers as environmental lawyers and make us proud.

When Power Goes to Your Head, and Lungs

2008-04-08T18:14:42Z

Last week, NRDC delivered a 60-day intent to sue letter to the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) in Southern California, contending they’re giving regional polluters a free pass on pollution levels and distributing bogus emission credits – sometimes in return for a hefty profit. Unfortunately, this can’t be attributed to a momentary lapse by the air district, but state data confirms a murky 17 year history of giving away these emission credits to local developers, most recently to those proposing to build unnecessary power plants in minority neighborhoods.

In Southern California, before a new power plant, school, or any factory that might emit air pollution is designed, emission credits to offset the anticipated pollution from the new building or facility are needed. Valid emission credits are created from shutdowns of older facilities or reductions at existing facilities and require proof that the decrease in emissions is real, permanent, quantifiable, and enforceable. The whole point of the offset process is to ensure no net increase in pollution levels and air quality is upheld across the region.

There are several layers to the situation with the air district. Our suit requires the air district to review the credits they’ve distributed during the past 17 years and figure out which ones they can actually account for. We’re confident they will still come out with a huge deficit of credits, meaning they gave away more than they had to begin with. Once they figure out which communities were given the bogus credits, the air district will need to implement a program to reduce emissions equivalent to those unlawfully given out.

Exposing invalid emission credits isn’t the end of the story with the air district. They’re currently considering a proposal to facilitate 11 natural gas-fired power plants in or downwind of Vernon, East L.A., El Segundo, and Riverside. These areas are already home to power plants and dangerous contaminants other neighborhoods don’t want in their backyards. Just one of the 11 proposed power plants projected for the City of Vernon will likely result in killing anywhere from four to 11 people each year, causing hundreds of premature deaths over the life of the facility. The plant is planned for construction next to a heavily populated, majority Latino neighborhood.

Our solution to the 11 power plants is to invest in renewable energy and efficiency options, solar and wind have a promising future in California. In fact, a little over a hundred miles away in Southern California’s high desert is Tehachapi, a region that some call the “Saudi Arabia of Wind” because of its wind potential. While we work to get those sources of renewable energy on-line, the air district needs to abide by the Clean Air Act and stop doling out credits on the cheap to energy speculators. Until then, air pollution will continue unabated in the Southland and the state of emergency will only get worse until the air district accounts for their questionable credit system and takes responsibility for the air quality they are supposed to protect.

NRDC and Community Groups Reach Historic Agreement with Port of LA on TraPac Expansion

2008-04-03T22:59:22Z

Today, after tough and arduous negotiations with NRDC and a number of environmental and community groups, the Port of Los Angeles agreed to implement a long-overdue plan ensuring that as the port expands their operations, harbor residents breathe a little easier.

The agreement provides millions to the harbor community during the next five years to mitigate health impacts associated with expanding the existing TraPac terminal. When completed, the TraPac terminal will be the equivalent of adding the capacity of the Port of Houston to the Port of Los Angeles – in a single project. While TraPac is the largest project in the works, there are 16 additional major projects on the Port’s drawing boards.

NRDC led an alliance that, with the invaluable help of Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn and her staff, was first able to get the Port to the table and second help them to understand that any port expansion projects have environmental effects on neighboring communities. The Port has been ignoring these impacts for years through the stratagem of announcing that “overriding considerations” trump the surrounding community’s potential health impacts.

Today’s agreement sets up a non-profit agency that will be funded by $50 million or more from Port revenues. The non-profit is designed to advocate for harbor community interests by, for example, paying for the installation of particulate filters in neighboring schools and double-paned windows in nearby residences. The coup-de-grace is that funding for the non-profit is tied directly to the Port’s growth so that, the more the Port grows, the more money will be available for community projects. This is what “green growth” should require. It is a great day for the neighborhoods near the Port that have been ignored far too long.

LA Port Gives Green Light to Clean Trucks

2008-03-21T22:00:19Z

On March 20, 2008, after more than two years of advocacy, negotiation, drafting letters to the editor, meetings with public officials, a notice of intent to sue letter under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act sent to the neighboring City of Long Beach, and countless meetings and public exhortations by NRDC and its environmental and labor allies, the Port of Los Angeles enacted a precedent-setting program designed to clean up diesel particulate emissions from port-serving diesel trucks.

These trucks are the largest source of goods movement-related diesel pollution in California – pollution that kills as many Californians each year as die from homicides. The plan imposes a phased-in concession agreement that requires trucking companies (licensed motor carriers) who want to serve the port to own their own trucks, employ their drivers, and enter into agreements about the type and state of repair of their trucks. The employee requirement has been very controversial, but, in my view, is necessary for the plan to work because the current model, relying on low-paid, independent owner-operators (truck drivers) to repair and replace their trucks, has been an environmental disaster.

Those of us in NRDC’s Southern California Air Program hope that the L.A. plan can be a model for ports all over the U.S. The American Trucking Association has promised to challenge the plan, and we are ready to help defend it.

To Russia With Love

2008-03-14T22:41:03Z

Trofim Lysenko, a Russian biologist from a non-scientific background who rejected Mendelian genetics, was a favorite of Stalin because his theories of agronomy -- based on the (now discredited) concept of environmentally acquired inheritable traits -- promised vastly higher crop yields. ”Lysenkoism” was made an official doctrine of the Soviet state, and dissent was punished with dismissal from employment, or worse. The result of this was years of lower crop yields in a country whose agricultural sector was already in shambles due to forced collectivization. Lysenko’s influence extended from the mid-1930’s to the mid-1960’s, when physicist Andrei Sakharov had the guts to publicly expose him as a fraud.

The genesis of the ozone rule announced by EPA on March 12, 2008, makes me wonder whether Lysenko’s ghost is haunting the Bush White House. Once again, politics are determining scientific “truth” to the probable detriment of agriculture – this time, to U.S. agriculture.

There are two ozone standards reviewed by the EPA every five years. One is for public health and one is for public welfare. The public welfare standard is intended to protect the environment, including agricultural lands, food crops and forests. EPA scientists know protecting crops and ecosystems requires a lower ozone standard than the health-based standard. And, as the EPA told the White House, air quality criteria are to “accurately reflect the latest scientific knowledge useful in indicating the kind and extent of all identifiable effects on public health or welfare which may be expected from the presence of such pollutant in the ambient air.”

Unfortunately for us, our lungs, and future food supplies, this criteria was overruled – by politicians, not scientists. In a Soviet-style turn of events, the Bush administration intervened and disregarded the Clean Air Act and recommendations by EPA scientists who lobbied to set a stricter ozone level for agricultural lands and ecosystems in general. Every one of EPA’s scientific experts believed the standard for protection of the environment should be lower than the standard for protection of human health. By overriding the EPA’s decision to set stricter ozone limits, the administration chose to ignore science and instead, for reasons of pure politics, to set the public welfare standard at the same level as the public health standard -- much higher than EPA felt was justified.

Trofim Lysenko and Joe Stalin would have been proud of this decision. As my colleague John Walke explained and was covered today on the front page of the Washington Post and Associated Press: “Never before has a president personally intervened at the 11th hour, exercising political power at the expense of the law and science, to force EPA to accept weaker air quality standards than the agency chief's expert scientific judgment had led him to adopt.” Question is, will we be stuck 30 years from now still trying to recover from the impact of one man’s politically motivated decision to weaken ozone limits?

Breathe Deeply, Now

2008-03-11T21:48:10Z

People who live near the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach don’t need to study atmospheric science to understand that they have a problem. There is fine, black soot everywhere. They can clean it up – and the next day, it’s back.

This is more than an aesthetic problem. The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are the dirtiest in the country. The black soot that diesel engines produce in huge amount is killing and sickening people. The number of people killed by diesel pollution in California every year is as great as the number killed in homicides. Rates of childhood asthma near the Ports and the freeways that carry diesel truck traffic from the Ports are climbing. Diesel exhaust contains metals such as mercury and lead that are classified as hazardous wastes by the United States EPA and its California equivalent.

This pollution is essentially unregulated at the Ports. This picture is a scene that a Port neighbor might see on an otherwise clear morning.

Our air team in Santa Monica has been fighting to clean up the air every step of the way, but has also been villainized in the process by local media sympathetic to business interests who don’t want to pay more to clean up their diesel ships, trucks and trains. In fact, the price increase needed to clean up diesel pollution from oceangoing ships like the one pictured above is a fraction of a cent for something the weight of a pair of sneakers.

The business interests favoring the status quo are powerful. We recently lost a case in which we tried to support a State rule requiring ships to use less polluting fuel. This week, NRDC submitted comments in response to an American Trucking Association petition to the Federal Maritime Commission asking the FMC to rule against a clean air action plan designed to clean up Port trucking at both Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. We also anticipate litigation by retailers challenging the Ports’ innovative use of fees on shipping containers to fund the needed cleanup of the Ports.

So what’s next? Probably more lawsuits, which we stand ready to defend. We are also working with both local Ports to craft the strongest possible plans to clean up diesel pollution. The saddest part of this story is that every day of delay allows more deadly soot to fall on the hundreds of thousands of people who live downwind of our local Ports.