POLA Passes $10 Clean Truck Fee

Coalition for Clean Air calls it “woefully insufficient”

On Nov. 4, the Port of LA, belatedly, became the first port in the world to implement a container fee to incentivize a transition to zero-emission trucks. It is scheduled to go into effect in April 2022. European ports, such as Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, have long been served by electric trains, and a state-wide container fee was first passed by the legislature — and then vetoed — more than a dozen years ago.

But even with these caveats — and the low $10 fee, which Chris Chavez of the Coalition for Clean Air called “woefully insufficient” — it was still a significant step forward, in part because of how activist pressure has influenced the port, as well as because of what could come next. This was suggested in multiple individual public comments along with a  letter from members of the Trade, Health, and Environment (THE) Impact Project coalition — including Earthjustice, San Pedro & Peninsula Homeowners Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, and East Yards Communities for Environmental Justice, among others.

The letter stressed the opportunity to create strategically targeted programs, tap newly-available loans to front-load investments, and noted that the Port of San Diego now has a more ambitious clean trucks plan: 100% zero-emission by 2030, with an interim target of 40% by 2026. It urged POLA “to develop a comprehensive long-term plan that will finally bring communities a step forward to the zero-emission future and the clean air they deserve.”

In presenting the plan to the board, Director of Environmental Management Chris Cannon highlighted some of the significant points that emerged from the recently-held stakeholder outreach meetings. First, “We heard that low NOx trucks should have a limited exemption,” Cannon said. “The majority wanted zero emissions trucks to be the focus of funding.” In addition, “We heard that ports should do everything in their power to ensure the truck fleets properly classify drivers and that no funds be given to trucking companies that treated drivers improperly,” he said. “And then we heard that the $10 rate was too low.” This last point was clearly heard — but not acted on. But the others were.

In the new tariff language, the fee was set to $10 for “containers with an outside length of 20 feet or less” and $20 for those longer. Exemptions for low NOx trucks were limited to those registered by the end of 2022, with the exemption ending at the end of 2027, and the rate “shall be paid by the cargo owner, or its authorized Agent, which shall not include Drayage Truck Operators.” [Emphasis added.]

Calls to do more

Calls to do more ranged from increasing the fees, to both widening the overall effort and developing strategic initiatives to accelerate change.

Eli Lipmen with Move LA asked the commissioners to “think back more than a decade to 2008, when [state] Senator [Alan] Lowenthal — now Congressmember — introduced SB 974; it was passed in the legislature, it would have had a $30 container fee and generated $350 million per year,” but was vetoed by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (the so-called “green Republican”). “We really need to make up for this lost revenue and the lost decade by immediately accelerating this plan. So we would support a much higher TEU fee,” Lipmen said.

Looking beyond trucks, NRDC attorney Heather Kryczka called for “putting a fee on all cargo entering the port and using it for cleaner technologies,” and Mandeera Wijetunga, representing Pacific Environment, posed the question of what the port was doing to “phase out fossil fuel ships,” noting they’re the largest source of port pollution, and that others are taking action. “Last month a coalition of the world’s largest retail companies including Amazon, Unilever, and Ikea committed to only using zero carbon ocean shipping by 2040,” he said. “This means these private corporations now have more ambitious plans than the Port of Los Angeles and the state of California or the U.S. federal government.”

Local industry called for doing more as well. Jack Symington represented the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which convenes a regional partnership of 30-plus private and public sector entities devoted to advancing LA-region zero-emission transportation. “Together this partnership in consultation with the ports of LA, Long Beach set a target for 40% of all drayage trucks serving the ports to be zero emission by 2028,” he said. “While it is an aspirational target, it is imperative that we achieve the interim target on our way to 100% zero emission by 2035.”

Low-NOx question confronted

There were opposing views arguing for low-NOx trucks in the short-term, couched in terms of both cost and public health, but, as THE Impact Project noted in its letter, “Methane gas trucks emit significant levels of ultrafine particles and ammonia, contributing toxic health-harming pollution to port-adjacent communities,” a problem that’s more severe in the real world than certification standards indicate, according to a recent Air Resources Board study, and which worsens as vehicles age.

“A near-term influx of gas trucks and associated infrastructure in the harbor area would present new health threats and risks for residents, while simultaneously being an unsound investment that will lead to stranded assets,” they concluded. When it came down to decision-making, the latter point about stranded assets — reinforcing the port staff’s position — prevailed.

“Our feeling is our investment should be limited to zero emission trucks. It avoids replacing trucks twice,” Cannon said in his presentation, and Commissioner Diane Middleton emphatically agreed. “I am persuaded by the obsolescence question,” she said. The board voted unanimously to approve.

Outstanding issues loom

But the decision leaves much to be decided, including several issues THE Impact Project addressed. These include: A focus on funding and building charging stations for zero-emissions trucks, the aforementioned use of future fees to leverage loans to front-load project funding, and the strategic use of funding “for more catalytic projects that could work with well capitalized and responsible companies to deploy hundreds of zero emissions trucks through a franchise system” —  a version of a fleet-based approach mentioned by others as well.  In support of this last point, they wrote, “As commissioner Middleton noted at a prior meeting, the port trucking system is broken, but the Port has significant authority in deciding how to spend the money it generates.”

This ties into one final point: while everyone agreed that port truckers should not bear the truck fee, there was persistent confusion regarding the ability to ensure this outcome. “There is no way for us to directly have an influence” on the contracts involved, Cannon said in response to questioning. But several commentators in effect argued otherwise, that POLA had the power to exclude law-breaking companies. So the question of justice for port drivers endures as a critical concern.