The newly formed Wrigley Area Neighborhood Alliance (WANA) held an evening meeting October 4th that included a panel on the port and related issues of concern. Here’s a quote from one of the meeting handouts:
“Environmental justice is the concept that all citizens deserve a healthy environment in which to live and work – and access to the decision-making process[es] that affect their environment. WANA is forming the Wrigley 2030 Visioning Task Force to ensure that our needs, desires and goals are met as the City of Long Beach moves forward with its plans for the future. Our immediate priorities are Air Quality Improvements, Workforce Housing and Recreational Opportunities for a growing community. The strategy that WANA will follow to ensure environmental justice in our community is collaborative brainstorming.”
As a professional practitioner in the environmental justice arena, I like this definition. It gets right to the two main points: environmental quality shouldn’t be worse in minority or low-income neighborhoods, and communities should have a say in decisions that affect environmental quality. Many environmental justice activist groups have coalesced in areas that historically had little power to influence land use decisions.
The panel began with a presentation by Long Beach Harbor Commission President Mario Cordero. He emphasized that the Port of Long Beach’s Green Port Policy, as well as the Clean Air Action Plan adopted by the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, are groundbreaking steps that have received notice around the country and the world. He urged Wrigley residents to get involved in support of the Clean Air Action Plan, particularly in light of the opposition parts of the plan are receiving from industry. He said he felt the real issue was democracy: our ability to make decisions that balance the good of the few with the good of the many. It’s clear that he believes we can have both prosperity and environmental quality for the many.
7th District Councilmember Tonia Reyes Uranga facilitated presentations by the remaining panel members. Susan Zoske, Project Director for the Long Beach RiverLink Project, spoke about the many benefits of tree planting. Trees can serve as a buffer between neighborhoods and intensive land uses such as ports or freeways. Moreover, she said, they can remove particulate and gaseous pollutants from the air. They also reduce “urban heat island” effects, such as gasoline vapor emissions from cars in hot asphalt parking lots. And of course their shade reduces energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. (You can find out more about RiverLink here.)
Former Long Beach resident Joe Linton (now with the LA non-profit housing developer Livable Places) urged residents to find ways to leave their cars at home. (This is one of my own favorite things to do – stay tuned.) He also mentioned the opening of Olive Court, a new development on Long Beach Boulevard just north of the Pacific Coast Highway Blue Line station meant to encourage transit use by residents. The complex includes affordable homes that range from one to four bedrooms.
The last speaker was West Long Beach resident John Cross, who spoke passionately about the impacts of port-related truck traffic on residents and particularly schoolchildren in that area. He urged attendees to oppose expansion of the existing Union Pacific Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (just north of Sepulveda and east of Alameda) and the new Southern California International Gateway intermodal facility proposed by Burlington Northern Santa Fe (which would be just to the south of the Union Pacific site). He said the community has no problem with rail yards – as long as they are inside the port.
Councilmember Reyes Uranga wrapped up the panel by briefly observing that the ports, notwithstanding their location, are an issue of regional concern and reminding the audience that Southern California experiences over fifty percent of the national burden of particulate matter in the air. She helped field questions from the audience on the status of the Alameda Corridor, trees on the I-710 freeway, and the prospects for a net decrease in emissions from the ports. To this question, Commissioner Cordero responded that a net decrease is the goal and that electrification – in the form of shoreside power for ocean vessels, for example – is the way to achieve it.