By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
If representatives of China Shipping are to be believed, their shipping company is the most eco-friendly imaginable, and its partnership with the Port of Los Angeles is a wonder to behold.
But those forced to live in the shadow of China Shipping have a different view, as was vividly illustrated at the July 19 public comment meeting on the supplemental environmental impact report, or SEIR, for the terminal. This was drafted as a result of the failure to implement a series of measures contained in the original EIR, approved in September 2009.
“We are proud that this facility is an early leader in environmental measures, such as the adoption of alternative marine power [AMP],” said Matthew Thomas, a lawyer for China Shipping,
Thomas was echoing Mark Wheeler, general manager of the terminal operator WBCT, who recalled that since 2004, Berth 100 and 102 were the first facilities to use AMP.
Those claims were even more sweeping.
“China Shipping holding and COSCO shipping lines company have long been environmental leaders in the shipping industry,” he said.
Others praised both China Shipping and the port, stressing the need to “balance” business and community concerns.
But community commentators were not impressed, given that POLA tried to build the terminal without first doing a project EIR only to be sued by local homeowners and environmentalists. This resulted in a settlement of more than $50 million, plus mitigation requirements in the EIR and the strengthening of the Port Community Advisory Committee, or PCAC, as an oversight body. The resulting delay led China Shipping to sue POLA, which resulted in another large settlement. But 11 mitigation measures in the 2009 EIR were never implemented, until exposed in 2015, which is why the SEIR is now being done.
“There was a lot of discussion in the very beginning here about a balance between the industry and the community, and the reason that we’re talking tonight about these impacts only because of a lawsuit [that came] from the community …that balance was so severely out of whack,” said Janet Gunter, one of three initiating plaintiffs in the suit.
Peter Warren, a long-time Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council activist and board member, criticized the SEIR’s soft-peddling of the subsequent record during his comments.
“What really happened was six years of lies and fraud,” Warren said. “The port had agreed to certain mitigation measures, many of the major ones were not implemented. The community — living, breathing adults, disabled people, children, sick people — suffered irreparable harm because of emissions that occurred while the port allowed China Shipping to waive its responsibilities.”
“In order for the port to intentionally and successfully, I might add, deceive the appellants and the public for so long, it had to involve detailed planning to do so,” said Chuck Hart, president of San Pedro Homeowners United. “Smoke screens and roadblocks had to be put in place to keep us off-guard, white papers produced, clean-air action plans and meetings with neighborhood councils instead of [the Port Community Advisory Committee] — troublesome PCAC, a group of informed citizens that became so knowledgeable about how the port operates they would have to be eliminated because they surely would have discovered and revealed early on in the process of the port’s failure to live up to the terms of the China Shipping agreement.”
Despite this history, Hart ended on a note of hope.
“Hopefully, by revealing the port’s maze of deceit regarding this matter, a more honest relationship between the port and the community will result, and justice will prevail in the final chapter of the civic tragedy,” he concluded.
Warren was more pessimistic.
“The SEIR contains no mitigation measures or reparations or funds to make whole or make up for the fact that tens of thousands of area residents were irreparably harmed in their health and outdoor activities, because the port willfully violated and engaged in a fraud on the community by violating the court-approved China Shipping settlement,” he said. “There should be reparations and mitigation money.”
Frank Anderson, Port Committee chairman of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council, ticked off several highlights from an extensive list developed by his committee.
“[The] project should meet and exceed the requirements of the San Pedro Bay Clean-Air Action Plan,” he said.
If needed, these requirements should include off-site mitigation measures, review and application of new technology regulations to ensure the highest level of emission standards, post-project validation of the emission reduction and formal reviews of new emissions control technologies to guide further emission reductions in the future, he said.
“No one wants this facility to close, but at the same time there are environmental laws that need to be dealt with,” said David Pettit, senior attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council, which argued the original China Shipping case. “The community is looking for some changes over and above the diesel truck system that seems to be what’s indicated in the current draft EIR.”
Jesse Marquez, founder and executive director of Coalition for a Safe Environment, provided more specific information. Within six months, the coalition’s research identified six zero-emission class VIII truck manufacturers who have zero-emission trucks available.
“There are four that do tractors, there are 14 near zero, and 11 near zero yard tractors,” he said.
The zero-emission goal was recently proclaimed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia. But the SEIR document “is not going to deliver what they claimed,” Gunter said.
POLA Executive Director Gene Seroka was standing next to the mayors when they made their announcement, Pettit pointed out in a follow-up interview. That was June 12.
“[On the] Friday of the same week, the China Shipping Supplemental EIR comes out [and] there’s nothing, zero in there in the drayage section the reflecting what the mayor just said,” Petit said. “I just don’t see how you can put out a document that does that.”
He knows what Seroka may argue, echoing past claims of “infeasibility,” but it won’t stand up under existing law.
“Using [near-zero] LNG trucks is feasible because there are LNG trucks in the port drayage fleet right now,” Pettit said.
Other issues in the SEIR such as AMP are distractions, he said.
“The port claims that it is near 100 percent use now,” he said. “So those are not real issues. The real issue is how fast to transition to zero-emission drayage, as both mayors have promised to do.”
The comment period has been extended through Sept. 29. NRDC and others are hard at work, developing detailed responses, which, given past experience, will likely end up in court.