Post by hubcap on Jun 5, 2009 6:49:52 GMT -5
Authorities, Trucking Companies Clash Over Big-Rig Emissions Rules at Calif. Ports
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
Cancer is caused by hereditary and environmental factors. Little can be done about the former. But quite a lot can be done about the latter - and the American Trucking Association doesn't want to hear another word about it.
Just when the political climate seemed right for air-quality regulators and others to protect the millions of people who live downwind of America's seaports, the self-proclaimed "advocacy organization for the U.S. trucking industry" stepped forward and crushed that presumption with lawsuits.
At the heart of the conflict are old big rigs that haul goods from the seaports inland, spewing thousands of tons of carcinogenic diesel particulates annually as they go.
But the greatest concentration of their microscopic toxic emissions exists at the ports, where the trucks congregate, engines running, awaiting turns to load up and move out to destinations throughout California and beyond.
That their emissions contribute to abnormally high numbers of asthma, bronchitis and cancer victims in and around the ports is irrefutable. Studies have shown that like an atomic bomb detonated in a populated area, the casualty count is greatest at ground zero and decreases with distance from it.
For this reason, the state's air-quality regulators, port authorities, environmental groups and others have sought to reduce the amount of lethal emissions leaving tractor-trailers at the state's various seaports.
They had initial success last year with the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where for a time they were initially able to require trucking firms to use new cleaner-burning diesel trucks or trucks fueled with natural gas.
Authorities say the two ports spew more soot and smog than half a million cars, an oil refinery and a power plant combined. Port trucks produce 30 percent to 40 percent of that pollution, with the rest produced by ships and locomotives at the ports.
Then thanks to the truckers' advocacy group, lawyers entered the fray and cried foul. Ultimately, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the ATA's favor, calling the ports' requirement unconstitutional on the grounds that it interfered in interstate commerce.
The ATA claimed the ports' requirement placed a tremendous financial burden on trucking firms. Doesn't matter that the ports - the nation's busiest - offered to help with a $20,000-per-truck incentive for trucking operations that bought clean rigs.
Despite the ports' defeat in court, the Port of Oakland this week tried to pass an air-quality plan aimed at cleaning up one of the dirtiest industrial areas in the country.
The port's commissioners voted 3-2 for a truck management rule that would ban many old haulers and require others to retrofits to reduce diesel pollution. The tally was a vote shy of the four needed to clear the proposal.
June 16 Vote
But because a commissioner was absent, the port scheduled another meeting for June 16 to revisit the issue, and you can count on us to cover it. Interest groups monitoring the process say they expect the board to pass the measure at that time.
"We are optimistic," said Doug Bloch, director of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports.
Commissioners at the Port of Oakland have kept a watchful eye on the trucking association's clash with the seaports of L.A. and Long Beach.
Indeed, the commissioners did not include an owner-operator provision in their plan that existed in the blueprints of the Southern California ports, with hope their exclusion will undermine the ATA's position that politics, and not health issues, were responsible for the provision.
That provision requires that the truckers be company employees, instead of freelancers. Its advocates say trucking companies prefer to pay independents on a contractual basis, instead of hiring them outright, as a way to deprive the truckers of medical and other benefits and to keep their pay low.
Backed by Teamsters
Bloch, whose coalition is partially funded by the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO and has pressed the owner-operator prohibition in favor of a provision pressuring trucking firms to hire independent owner-operators, has accused the ATA of intentionally stalling.
"There's not a lot the port can do in the wake of this litigation," Bloch said. "Everything's tied up right now by the trucking industry."
The group has also been talking tough about the ATA through press releases and staged protests that accuse the trucking organization of blocking air-quality improvement at the expense of public health.
A press release from coalition issued this week said "the ATA's legal roadblock puts more children, drivers, residents and workers ... at risk for asthma, cancer and other illnesses."
But Clayton Boyce, vice president of public affairs at ATA, called that assertion "an outright lie."
A Hidden Agenda?
"They're not an environmental group. They're a union-promotion group," Boyce said. "There's nothing that requiring a driver to be company-employed will do to clean up the air in Oakland."
Boyce insisted that the ATA supports cleaning up the California ports, which are among the most polluted in the world, but he took issue with what he described as a cozy relationship between the labor unions and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The blocking of independent contractors, Boyce said, was inserted into the ports' plans only after the mayor cut a deal with the unions to help route jobs in Southern California to established, unionized trucking companies.
"It's just a move to get people that care about the environment, to dupe them into helping the unions," Boyce said.
Block countered that the ports are acting because the state is unable to touch much of the deregulated trucking industry. He believes Congress needs to intervene to undo parts of an industry deregulation law that was passed more than three decades ago.
One in Five
"I don't think Congress' intent when they deregulated trucking was to create a system where one in five kids in Oakland has asthma," Bloch said.
Yet Boyce estimates that trucks cause about 10 percent of the air pollution at ports, with more than 70 percent coming from ships.
"I feel for people who live in that area [in West Oakland], and we need to clean it up," Boyce said. "But the trucking industry is not standing in the way."
At the state level, in the meantime, the California Air Resources Board has passed regulations that go into effect next year on installation of clean air filters and replacement of older diesel engines.
However, there is some question on whether the state rules would stand up in federal court.
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
Cancer is caused by hereditary and environmental factors. Little can be done about the former. But quite a lot can be done about the latter - and the American Trucking Association doesn't want to hear another word about it.
Just when the political climate seemed right for air-quality regulators and others to protect the millions of people who live downwind of America's seaports, the self-proclaimed "advocacy organization for the U.S. trucking industry" stepped forward and crushed that presumption with lawsuits.
At the heart of the conflict are old big rigs that haul goods from the seaports inland, spewing thousands of tons of carcinogenic diesel particulates annually as they go.
But the greatest concentration of their microscopic toxic emissions exists at the ports, where the trucks congregate, engines running, awaiting turns to load up and move out to destinations throughout California and beyond.
That their emissions contribute to abnormally high numbers of asthma, bronchitis and cancer victims in and around the ports is irrefutable. Studies have shown that like an atomic bomb detonated in a populated area, the casualty count is greatest at ground zero and decreases with distance from it.
For this reason, the state's air-quality regulators, port authorities, environmental groups and others have sought to reduce the amount of lethal emissions leaving tractor-trailers at the state's various seaports.
They had initial success last year with the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where for a time they were initially able to require trucking firms to use new cleaner-burning diesel trucks or trucks fueled with natural gas.
Authorities say the two ports spew more soot and smog than half a million cars, an oil refinery and a power plant combined. Port trucks produce 30 percent to 40 percent of that pollution, with the rest produced by ships and locomotives at the ports.
Then thanks to the truckers' advocacy group, lawyers entered the fray and cried foul. Ultimately, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the ATA's favor, calling the ports' requirement unconstitutional on the grounds that it interfered in interstate commerce.
The ATA claimed the ports' requirement placed a tremendous financial burden on trucking firms. Doesn't matter that the ports - the nation's busiest - offered to help with a $20,000-per-truck incentive for trucking operations that bought clean rigs.
Despite the ports' defeat in court, the Port of Oakland this week tried to pass an air-quality plan aimed at cleaning up one of the dirtiest industrial areas in the country.
The port's commissioners voted 3-2 for a truck management rule that would ban many old haulers and require others to retrofits to reduce diesel pollution. The tally was a vote shy of the four needed to clear the proposal.
June 16 Vote
But because a commissioner was absent, the port scheduled another meeting for June 16 to revisit the issue, and you can count on us to cover it. Interest groups monitoring the process say they expect the board to pass the measure at that time.
"We are optimistic," said Doug Bloch, director of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports.
Commissioners at the Port of Oakland have kept a watchful eye on the trucking association's clash with the seaports of L.A. and Long Beach.
Indeed, the commissioners did not include an owner-operator provision in their plan that existed in the blueprints of the Southern California ports, with hope their exclusion will undermine the ATA's position that politics, and not health issues, were responsible for the provision.
That provision requires that the truckers be company employees, instead of freelancers. Its advocates say trucking companies prefer to pay independents on a contractual basis, instead of hiring them outright, as a way to deprive the truckers of medical and other benefits and to keep their pay low.
Backed by Teamsters
Bloch, whose coalition is partially funded by the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO and has pressed the owner-operator prohibition in favor of a provision pressuring trucking firms to hire independent owner-operators, has accused the ATA of intentionally stalling.
"There's not a lot the port can do in the wake of this litigation," Bloch said. "Everything's tied up right now by the trucking industry."
The group has also been talking tough about the ATA through press releases and staged protests that accuse the trucking organization of blocking air-quality improvement at the expense of public health.
A press release from coalition issued this week said "the ATA's legal roadblock puts more children, drivers, residents and workers ... at risk for asthma, cancer and other illnesses."
But Clayton Boyce, vice president of public affairs at ATA, called that assertion "an outright lie."
A Hidden Agenda?
"They're not an environmental group. They're a union-promotion group," Boyce said. "There's nothing that requiring a driver to be company-employed will do to clean up the air in Oakland."
Boyce insisted that the ATA supports cleaning up the California ports, which are among the most polluted in the world, but he took issue with what he described as a cozy relationship between the labor unions and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The blocking of independent contractors, Boyce said, was inserted into the ports' plans only after the mayor cut a deal with the unions to help route jobs in Southern California to established, unionized trucking companies.
"It's just a move to get people that care about the environment, to dupe them into helping the unions," Boyce said.
Block countered that the ports are acting because the state is unable to touch much of the deregulated trucking industry. He believes Congress needs to intervene to undo parts of an industry deregulation law that was passed more than three decades ago.
One in Five
"I don't think Congress' intent when they deregulated trucking was to create a system where one in five kids in Oakland has asthma," Bloch said.
Yet Boyce estimates that trucks cause about 10 percent of the air pollution at ports, with more than 70 percent coming from ships.
"I feel for people who live in that area [in West Oakland], and we need to clean it up," Boyce said. "But the trucking industry is not standing in the way."
At the state level, in the meantime, the California Air Resources Board has passed regulations that go into effect next year on installation of clean air filters and replacement of older diesel engines.
However, there is some question on whether the state rules would stand up in federal court.
