Port Truckers, Residents Speak Out at Banning’s Landing Meeting
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
On Aug. 30, representatives from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach took public comments on their draft Clean Air Action Plan at Banning’s Landing. Unlike past versions, there was no broad mechanism for incorporating public stakeholder viewpoints into the plan. Dozens of local residents stepped forward to fill that gap. In the eyes of many, the CAAP’s first, and most obvious problem was simply how long it would take —18 years — to achieve its zero-emission goals.
“I have watched my brother and sister struggle with asthma and suffer. Watching someone you love suffer, it’s heartbreaking,” Veronica Salas said. “Waiting 18 years is way too long. We need to do it now.”
“The plan reads like a plan of deferred action, with goals set too far into the future — an approach which we know is not sustainable,” said Kathleen Woodfield, representing San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners Coalition.
For decades, protecting the environment has been portrayed as an elitist concern, for those who can afford it. But local residents see environmental neglect as a daily peril.
Sisters, Adriana and Angelica Vargas, spoke for many about how port pollution robs area youth of a normal childhood.
“I play softball at my high school and we’re supposed to practice every single day. But most of the time we have to cancel practice, because of the air pollution,” Angelica Vargas said. “Diesel trucks are one of the largest contributors to our dangerous air quality.”
“Clean air is a human right, and we are not being given that right,” Adriana Vargas added. “It needs to change now. We need zero emissions or near zero no later than 2023.”
But the theft of childhood starts much earlier than that, emphasized Andrea Rodriguez, a Long Beach mother of two, as she described the life of her 3-year-old daughter, who has suffered from respiratory problems since the age of 6 months.
“When she wants to go run in the park, or swim, or something, it’s terrifying for me to see her actually run out of breath, and it actually hurts me to tell her, ‘Oh no, hija, you can’t do that no more,’” Rodriguez said. “When I tell her, she actually starts crying. Because a toddler, all they want to do is just run around, go swimming, do different things that a child should be doing at that age.”
“I don’t want her to be suffering,” Rodriquez concluded. “I know that we need that change now, instead of later, because I want her to be a child.”
“I was raised in South LA, right next to the 110 Freeway, so I don’t even think I know what clean air is,” Louie Flores said. “Why do we have to wait so long? People’s lives are on the line.”
“I’ve been a resident for 31 years. I raised my son here. He is away at college breathing clean air for the first time in his life,” Woodfield echoed.
Truck drivers had similar tales about how their families have been affected as well because of how — as illegally misclassified owner-operators — they’ve been forced to pay for the lion’s share of the cost for clean trucks that the industry likes to take credit for.
“I had to work 20 hours a day, six days a week. I could only see my children on Sundays,” Renee Flores said.
“I live in Palmdale, but I work here in Long Beach,” Hector Zelaya said. “I sleep in the truck. I see my family once a week, on the weekend.”
“I had to work 12 to 14 hours a day,” said Manuel Rios. “I had to work those hours because I had to support my family and pay the truck expenses. And that affected my family, and that affected me. In 2013/2014, I had a heart attack and a brain stroke. And what happened, after five years of paying my truck, I lost it,” he said. “So my question is. ‘Why do the truck drivers have to pay for clean air?’”
“We really need a change,” said Carlos Ordas of Wilmington. “Our lives are at risk — everybody that’s here, everybody that’s outside, my family, your family, the family of every driver that’s here…. We don’t need the change in 2023. It’s 2017 now,” he said. “What else are we going to see if we wait six years? We need the change as soon as possible.”
Many of the dozens of community residents who spoke up referenced the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, which has been deeply involved in local air quality policy for more than a dozen years. Speaking for the alliance, Sylvia Betancourt first expressed support for the zero-emissions goal articulated by the mayors of Los Angeles and Long Beach, then said, “What we need is a plan for how to get there. We need to know what are some interim goals for zero-emission trucks, and also for cargo-handling equipment. We need to be sure that all public monies are spent toward zero emissions technologies and nothing less.”
“If we’re looking at natural gas, that’s a detour, as far as we’re concerned,” Betancourt continued. “It’s a detour from what our goal is and will ultimately cost more money. [It] will also be a continued burden on our community…. It’s extremely important that we take into account and we prioritize health — health for our children, health for our families. We can have both a healthy community and good-paying jobs…. They’re not mutually exclusive…. We can have both.”
The CAAP’s shortcomings had one simple explanation, according to Jesse Marquez, founder and executive director of Coalition for a Safe Environment.
“The reason it’s not as strong in the new update is because both Port of LA and Port of Long Beach eliminated the advisory task force committee,” Marquez said. “Our organization was part of that. LBACA was part of that. East Yard Communities [for Environmental Justice] was part of that. The USC Keck School of Medicine — Andrea Hricko and Dr. Ed Avol — were part of it. So there was no real outside public participation in this go-around.”
Several such groups are now members of a coalition, GASP, or Green and Sustainable Ports, including San Pedro coalition, the alliance and the Natural Resources Defense Council, all of which were represented in the meeting.
Speaking for NRDC, senior attorney Melissa Lin Perrella made three main points. First, “The CAAP needs to create zero emission percentage targets for 2020, 2025, and 2030, and these targets must be laid out in the plan,” Perella said. “If we are serious about attaining ZE goals, we can’t be ambiguous about the path to getting there.”
“Second — contrary to statements in the draft plan — we do not believe that SB1 precludes the ports from banning older trucks,” Perrella stated. The move would “potentially tie its hands and the hands of future boards from implementing what has been the most effective strategy the port has adopted for reducing emissions from trucks,” she warned. “I would request that you reconsider your legal analysis and keep all strategies on the table, including truck bans, fees, and incentives, in the final CAAP.”
Finally, Perrella cited the ports’ recognition, in the original CAAP, “that it is in their business interest to attract trucking companies that can meet environmental, safety, security and labor standards,” an aspiration that’s only been partially realized thus far.
“In that vein,” Perrella said, “We ask that the CAAP explicitly commit to developing a clean trucks program that is sustainable for both workers and the community.”
Peter Warren, speaking for the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, but also for the coalition, as a member of GASP, specifically endorsed Perrella and Betancourt’s comments, adding some more of his own.
“The senate bill prohibition on ports regulating trucks is fake news. It’s not what’s in SB1,” Warren said. “CARB has said so.
“The ports’ pollution baselines in the CAAP are outdated and distort the truth. Both ports track container traffic on a year-to-year basis, rather than compared to an arbitrary past year. The CAAP requires the same approach, he argued. “The ports must stop relying on data points that compare current reductions in air pollution factors to a baseline in 2005…. You’ve got the easy fruit from 2005 and 2011, and did a really good job, but basically since then it’s been standstill and since then some air quality measures have worsened.”
“Funding is required,” he added. “We need real sources of funding identified in the CAAP, not amorphous ideas for where money will come from.”
And finally, Warren cited the need to assess health risks. “To improve public health and reduce industry practice of placing extraordinary externalized costs on the community, the CAAP must include a health risk assessment tied to the CAAP measures. This assessment would include the present and analyze the cost of legacy and continued pollution on the community as well as the health benefits of required emission reducing technology.”
Air Quality Management District Board member Joe Lyou expressed some similar concerns. “I’d like to express my appreciation for all you’ve done,” he said, “but it’s not enough. The way I look at this you happen to be the largest source of air pollution in the most polluted air basin in the country, so we have to do more, and we have to do more sooner.” He specifically cited the need to “protect the truck drivers,” and to correct their misinterpretation of SB1. “If you can use incentives in 2023, you can use incentives now, so move ahead with the incentive program now, rather than later.”
Adding more detail about what could be done immediately, Marquez summarized what his organization had researched about existing technology. They have identified six zero-emission trucks and four zero-emission tractors currently available, as well as 14 near-zero-emission natural gas trucks and 11 near-zero-emission tractors.
“So don’t say they’re not available. Because they are available,” Marquez said. “You can place an order today.” They might not all be capable of doing everything a diesel truck can — going over the grapevine and back — “but the ICTF terminal is local. All the container storage yards are local,” he said. So they could be put to work today, as part of a well-crafted plan.
“Electric zero emission trucks are more cost-effective,” he pointed out. “You pay $3 for diesel fuel now, it costs 35 cents [for] electricity. Since you don’t have a motor with pistons, the maintenance costs are significant.”
The cost of electric trucks is likely to be a considerable portion of the plan’s total costs. The plan has a total cost estimate of $7.3 to $13.9 billion, of which $2.9 to $8.3 billion are for zero-emission trucks and just over $1 billion for near-zero trucks. In addition to the local residents, there were also industry representatives on hand, many pushing for near-zero technologies, arguing that they could help clean the air faster. But that would mean replacing the current truck fleet twice — and given the ports’ failure to act so far, it would mean forcing truck drivers to pay the lion’s share. This underscores the importance of putting all options on the table, rather than allowing certain powerful actors to continue exercising de facto veto power, and preventing some options from even being considered, as well as preventing certain kinds of evaluations from being made.
The high cost of the plan was raised by several industry representatives, most notably Thomas Yellenich of PMSA, who repeatedly argued “technology that does not exist,” and criticized the supposed high costs of implementing it.
“The health costs of inaction are greater,” Perrella told Random Lengths afterwards. “A strong CAAP will result in enormous savings by reducing health impacts, avoiding healthcare costs for residents and lost school and work days, and job creation benefits as zero-emission technologies are developed.”
Community involvement has always been necessary to protect public health and the environment. In 2001, Mayor James Hahn first announced his policy of “no net increase” in port pollution in response to activists who secured pledges from multiple mayoral candidates.
POLA’s initial report that it would meet the goal without any new initiatives was intensely criticized by community members, and with leadership from the Port Community Advisory Committee, a formal planning process was eventually instituted with full community participation. NRDC attorneys Gale Ruderman Feuer and Julie Masters played a key role in that process, bringing well-established methods for counting externalized health and mortality costs into the analysis.
Replacement of high-sulfur bunker fuel in ship engines was another idea that came from PCAC members but was initially rejected as not even worth considering. It is now an international standard. Thus, it seems both perverse and anachronistic that the public has played such a limited role in the latest iteration of the CAAP.
It also seems perverse and anachronistic that port truckers are still being expected to carry the burden. “I was obligated to buy a truck in 2010, for the Clean Truck Program, I paid my truck last year, but I don’t want to pay for the same thing,” port trucker Guillerima Velasquez said. “I don’t want to be a slave, I’ve been slaving to pay money for a clean truck.”
“We certainly support zero emission trucks,” Teamster representative Barbara Maynard said. “But I am here to say the ports of LA and Long Beach have become the embarrassment of this country. Why? Because of the way these drivers have been treated. It’s now a national story, and there’s no stopping it…. The exploitation of these drivers must stop,” she said. “We cannot let this Clean Air Action Plan go forward without some real meaningful solutions to the exploitation, the indentured servitude, the slavery that these drivers are suffering. So please, do something about it.”