Public/Private Responsibility Split Erupts At CAAP Update Meeting

“Ten years ago my father died in my arms desperately gasping for air, he paid with his life the profits of Home Depot,” Carlos Ovalle, Long Beach architect and former city council candidate.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars from multiple public sources to help them transition to a zero-emissions future, and could be getting more than $2 billion more in the future. That’s one of the most basic messages port staff presented at the 18th Clean Air Action Plan, or CAAP, update held on Zoom Nov. 8.

But the private companies that profit at the expense of public health are paying virtually nothing in comparison, a $10/twenty-foot equivalent, or TEU clean truck fee, “The price of a pizza,” as long-time port activist Peter Warren put it, “That’s $10 or $20 for a container that the shipper is paying $3 to 4 thousand (up to $25,000 during the pandemic) to move a container from Asia to SoCal.” And thus the pathway remains uncertain, with near-term funding to accelerate zero-emission truck purchase that remains woefully inadequate, and the continued lack of timelines for progress.

“The POLA has failed at its commitment as trustee under the Tidelands Trust to act in the interest of all stakeholders under CAAP,” Warren said in his comment. “As the judge in the China Shipping trial said in his ruling early this year, the POLA prioritizes profits over the health and well-being of workers and people in the community.”

“The bedrock principle behind CAAP should be to stop shippers from externalizing their costs onto the community,” he argued. “POLA must be a fiduciary trustee for ALL stakeholders, not just the Goods Movement industry.”

As it stands, “CAAP has failed at cleaning the air,” he said. “Currently, it is largely a PR campaign with a lot of gaslighting and lies about intention to improve air quality.”

Harsh words. But they are supported by the ports’ own data, contained in the recently-released inventory of air emissions, showing that long-term progress reducing air pollution remains lethargic, if not stalled, since around 2012 — a full decade. This makes the lack of a progress timeline for reaching zero-emission goals all the more troubling. There were significant gains last year — but only compared to the COVID-congested anomaly of 2021.

That’s not to say nothing’s happening. A great deal is — as staff laid out in four presentations — but it’s a question of high-level coordination, commitment, and willingness to make the companies who benefit pay for the enormous health costs they impose, and the clean air transition to end them.

Health And Mortality Costs

“Ten years ago my father died in my arms desperately gasping for air, he paid with his life the profits of Home Depot,” Long Beach architect Carlos Ovalle said. “Fifteen years ago my mother died in my arms vomiting blood, she paid with her life the profits of Amazon.”

He was hardly alone. “We are losing our lives behind the delay,” said Theral Golden, of West Long Beach Neighborhood Association. “We need honesty. Honesty is the main thing. Right now your credibility is zero, because there is a lack of transparency.”

“I grew up in LA County in a community that is in the 80th percentile for diesel particulate matter,” said Marisa Garcia of Move LA. “I have also suffered from asthma for as long as I can remember, so I am all too familiar with the harms that pollution can cause to those who live near pollution sources such as the ports.”

“This week I talked with a doctor who treated communities in the Wilmington and Harbor Gateway communities,” said Dori Chandler, from Coalition for Clean Air. “She related the devastating number of children who came in with asthma on her shifts and how she saw how air quality directly impacted her clients.”

“Communities near the ports, which are predominantly working-class, Latino communities, are exposed to the highest percentile of diesel particulate matter in the entire state,” Garcia added. “Due to their proximity to the ports, people who live near the ports have an average life expectancy that is up to eight years shorter than the average life expectancy in LA County.”

Progress? Or Stagnation?

Against that stark background from community commentators, the ports’ narrative of progress was striking. A slide comparing 2022 emissions to 2021 was impressive: diesel particulate or DPM down 30%, nitrogen oxides or NOx down 31%, sulfur oxides or SOx down 36% and greenhouse gasses down 19%, while TEUs were down just 5%. Comparisons to 2005 were even more impressive, with SOx down 97%, DPM down 90%, NOx down 63% and greenhouse gasses or GHG down 3%, while TEUS were up 34%.

Yet, “We are still not meeting our federal and state air quality targets, so there is a disconnect,” Chandler said. And things look far less rosy with a critical look at the record laid out in the ports’ recently-released inventory of air emissions, from which that data was drawn, as Peter Warren drew attention to in an after-meeting email.

Figure ES.1: shows NOx emissions falling from around 15,000 tons in 2005 to just under half that in 2012, around 7,000 tons. But it’s only fallen modestly in the decade since, to just under 6,000 tons, a 10-year reduction that’s the same size as the two-year reduction from 2010 to 2012.

DPM reductions, shown in Figure ES.2, were even sharper, from just over 800 tons in 2005 to just over 100 tons in 2012. A decade later, it’s just under 100 tons — a ten-year reduction that’s substantially less than the 2010 to 2012 reduction.

“In the 18 years since it was adopted, CAAP accomplished the vast majority of the pollution reductions in the first 9 years, and almost none 9 years since,” Warren summed up.

The Public/Private Money Split

More than $360 Million in grant funding has been secured by the ports to implement zero emission demonstration projects, POLA’s supervisor of air quality grants/tech development, Jacob Goldberg, explained, in the cargo-handling equipment update. And the

grant advocacy and strategy, and the ports will be seeking more than $2 billion in grant funding from local, state and federal sources to implement additional zero-emission deployment projects in pursuit of the CAAP’s 2030 goal, including a sizeable chunk of $3 billion dedicated to ports in the Infrastructure Reduction Act.

But funding from private sources — specifically, the companies like Home Depot and Amazon — is lagging far behind. The ports have collected approximately $116.1 million since they finally began charging the fee on April 1, 2022, and they’ve allocated approximately $74 million to ZE trucks and infrastructure. But there are only 154 ZE vehicles in the truck registry, 0.7% of the total. In contrast, just a single demonstration project for ZE locomotives is projected to bring in $50 million in 2024. If container fees were raised to $50 or $100, the funds available to subsidize early ZE truck purchases would at least start to match the interest in buying them.

Concerns about loss of cargo with a higher fee aren’t credible, Warren argued. “You can raise the fee and shippers will not flee. They have nowhere else to go. That was proven in the pandemic, when sometimes more than 100 ships waited to unload here,” he said.

“The twin ports are the cheapest, most efficient way to move cargo. There are no better alternatives. Going East from Asia adds thousands of miles and a risky passage through the Suez Canal.”

“The Panama Canal is another alternative used to scare the public, build fear about job losses and keep profits high for shippers,” he noted. But, “The Panama Canal now has a daily ship limit because of a shortage of the fresh water needed to operate its locks. The shortage has cut daily ship traffic by more than 20% since July and further reductions under 30 ships per day are expected.”

Another concern Warren and others raised was the lack of target timelines. “It’s about metrics — targets along the way. When are you going to have metrics? Targets so you can judge progress?” He asked. Port staff responded that they were working on it, but it was difficult, in part because “We fully acknowledge the transition may not be linear, especially with regard to trucks and infrastructure.

And it’s not just the trucks that are underfunded.

“The ports are not currently on track to build out sufficient infrastructure to support the transition to zero-emission trucks by the 2035 goal,” Garcia pointed out. “We urge the ports to act now by working with utilities to build out infrastructure to ensure it is possible to transition to 100 percent zero-emission cargo handling equipment by 2030 and 100 percent zero-emission drayage trucks by 2035,” she said. “This important work must be done to improve not only the quality of the air in port communities, but also the quality of life in these communities, so that those living near the ports are able to breathe easier, and live longer, healthier lives.”