The San Pedro Bay ports’ Clean Trucks Program continues to phase in slowly among what has now become a veritable blizzard of lawsuits. I won’t attempt to enumerate them all – whether that leaves you disappointed or relieved! – but I will talk about a notable one today.
One aspect of the truck program that has gone unchallenged (thank goodness) is a ban on pre-1989 trucks, which were likely to be the higher-emitting members of the port trucking fleet. That ban took effect on October 1 and does not seem to have disrupted terminal operations. It should have had an immediate positive impact on port-area air quality. According to this Press-Telegram article, the ban retired about 2,000 trucks and cut 30% of the port truck fleet’s emissions. (For NOx and particulate matter, trucks today represent roughly one-quarter of the port emissions, with the rest coming from vessels, cargo handling equipment, locomotives, and harbor craft.) According to the Journal of Commerce, these trucks have been replaced by a like number of new models meeting today’s low emission standards.
Trucking companies and operators have also continued to sign up for concession agreements, which allow them to continue to operate at the two ports. A few weeks ago Long Beach port staff reported to the City Council in a study session that several hundred concession applications were being processed and that well over nine thousand individual trucks had been registered in the port’s drayage truck registry, a database that will be used to manage various aspects of the ports’ truck program.
Beyond these relatively simple elements, however, the rest remains in doubt. The Federal Maritime Commission has filed suit to stop several aspects of the ports’ program, saying it is motivated by concern about anti-competitive effects. The Federal Maritime Commission was established in 1961 for the purpose of “regulation of oceanborne transportation in the foreign commerce of the U.S.” At the time, the FMC was split from another body that retained the mission of promoting the U.S. Merchant Marine. It’s worth noting that two of the Commission’s five seats are empty, and that of the three remaining Commissioners, one dissented from the decision to file the complaint.
The Commission has asked that the Port of Los Angeles drop its requirement to phase-in employee-only drivers (a requirement Long Beach does not have). It has asked that both ports reconsider eligibility rules for incentives being offered for new clean truck purchases. FMC has also asked the ports to reconsider the rules for paying or being exempt from a $35-per-container fee for trucks that don’t yet meet current emission standards. (The fee will be $70 for containers over 20 feet, which is most of them.)
The per-container fee was to have begun October 1, then November 17, and now has been deferred indefinitely. This means a loss of revenue to the ports amounting to about $1 million a day – revenue that was to have been used to help finance and purchase new, cleaner trucks. Moreover, the absence of this fee may leave some operators that have invested in cleaner equipment out on a competitive limb, so to speak.
Another consequence of delay to the Clean Trucks Program is an additional potential threat to port projects now undergoing environmental review. Some of the current projects have explicitly relied on the Clean Trucks Program to mitigate truck emissions from their operations over time. If the program is not proceeding as planned, these projects may have to find other ways to mitigate truck emissions. One option is to make a commitment to using ever-cleaner trucks that is independent of the ports’ program.
Of course, the most severe consequence of delay in the truck program is the doubt it casts on the likelihood of further, and still much-needed, emission reductions. It continues to be my hope that the parties can reach a speedy resolution and that the program will proceed to replace older trucks with newer ones.
Disclosure: The Port of Long Beach is an advertiser of the lbpost.com