Appeals Court Orders End To POLA Lawlessness

For the second time in 20 years, an appeals court has ruled that the Port of LA must obey the California Environmental Quality Act. If it doesn’t, it risks closure of the China Shipping Terminal — the port’s largest. The case concerns mitigation measures in a 2019 supplemental environmental impact report or SEIR, created to remedy the failure to enforce 11 mitigation measures in the original 2008 EIR. That, in turn, was mandated by 2003 appeals court ruling in a case filed in 2001.

In early 2023, a trial court found that the port was in “profound violation of CEQA” for failing to ensure that pollution-reducing mitigation measures were enforceable, but claimed it was powerless to intervene, and allowed terminal operations to continue while the port tried again. On Dec. 29, an appeals court reversed that decision. It ruled that “ the trial court erred … and thus mistakenly limited its options for fashioning a remedy that reinforces CEQA’s environmental protection purposes.”

“The Port has been violating the law and prioritizing profits over people for over two decades now,” said Margaret Hsieh, a senior attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), who argued the case on appeal. “The court’s opinion makes clear that this must come to an end. Rather than continuing to defy the law and delay implementing much-needed pollution-control measures, the port should take leadership in innovating and implementing clean technologies.”

“We are living in a Diesel Death Zone,” said Peter Warren, of San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, one of the original plaintiff groups. “Finally, after decades of public outrage, our communities are offered the promise of relief from the pollution that has contributed to a public-health failure resulting in chronic illness, school and work absences, hospitalizations, emergency room visits and death. We will remain vigilant until the pollution stops.”

“The court decision is a huge step in the right direction,” said Chuck Hart from San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners United, another original plaintiff. “Now it is the port’s turn to do the right thing and update their operations.”

“No one is above the law — not the Port of Los Angeles and not a wealthy international shipping company,” said Joe Lyou, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, also a plaintiff in 2001. “Everyone has a right to breathe clean air and our port communities have been robbed of that for decades.”

There were also rulings on six specific mitigation measures. 

RLn will run an in-depth story on the decision in our next issue.

–Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor