Victories for San Pedro Bay

Chair, Harbor Vision Task Force

The Angeles Chapter's Harbor Vision Task Force participated in two historic victories in March and April. One will help clean up stinky trucks and provide for trucking improved jobs. The other will create a $51 million trust fund to help communities endure negative impacts caused by the ports. The two victories are intertwined and are just the beginning of much work ahead.

Settlement Creates $51 Million Trust Fund

It started and finished with an emergency meeting. The first was of the Chapter's Harbor Vision Task Force held on December 9, 2007. The last of the Los Angeles Harbor Commission held on April 3, 2008. The time in between involved extensive negotiations between appellants, from a number of environmental, labor and homeowners groups, and the Port. The negotiations were deftly guided by Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn.

Photo courtesy Tom Politeo Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn scolds a visiting commissioner from Long Beach about his port's weaker clean truck program.

Photo courtesy Tom Politeo Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, speaks to Los Angeles Harbor Commission in support of its Clean Truck Program.

Photo courtesy Tom Politeo Sierra Club life member John Miller asks the Los Angeles Harbor Commission to bring an end to the latter-day sharecropping system which abuses truck drivers.

Photo courtesy Tom Politeo Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn points toward Long Beach and asks its harbor commission to join Los Angeles in a stronger clearn truck program. Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa and Harbor Commission President S. David Freeman (white Stetson) look eastward toward Long Beach.

Photo courtesy Tom Politeo Los Angeles County Federation of Labor leader Maria Elena Durazo celebrates with truck drives and their families after a groundbreaking vote reforming trucking in the Port of Los Angeles.

In the end, neither the port nor the appellants got everything they hoped for. However, the agreement did provide a loose framework to improve cooperation between the two and provides for a $51 million, five-year fund, to be managed by a new non-profit.The fund will help mitigate for cumulative community impacts caused by port operations. It will help pay for double pane windows, indoor air filtration systems, and asthma treatment and may improve coastal access.

On Decmeber 6, 2007, over objections raised in public comments from Los Angles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, from community members, organized labor, environmental, public health and faith-based groups, the Los Angeles Harbor Commission unanimously approved 'as is' the final environmental impact report for a container terminal expansion project in Wilmington without any amendments that may have addressed some of the voiced concerns. Known as the TraPac EIR, the approved project would increase the capacity of the Wilmington facility as much as the entire Port of Houston.

The EIR created two nagging concerns. One was with the cumulative environmental impacts experienced by Wilmington, including air pollution, noise and loss of access to a natural coastline. The second, but no less important, was that the port was moving forward with this EIR prematurely, before it finished its work on a much-delayed Clean Trucks Program. An effective Clean Trucks Program would help reduce the impacts of the TraPac and other container terminal projects.

On December 9, the Chapter's Harbor Vision Task Force held an emergency meeting to discuss its response to the approval of the TraPac EIR. The meeting was also attended by the members of some allied groups. Under city charter, commission decisions aren't final for thirty days, allowing the city council time to overturn or send back a decision. In that time, individuals or groups can appeal the decision to the council. In an effort to have its concerns heard while avoiding a lengthly lawsuit on a 6000 page EIR, the Task Force decided to go forward with a City Council appeal.

The appeal became a blue-green alliance including labor allies in Change To Win, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy and the Teamsters, public health groups, including the American Lung Association, homeowners groups and other environmental groups including the Coalition for a Safe Environment and the NRDC. Most of the heavy lifting in the appeal language was done by the NRDC, which has been watching port cargo container terminal projects carefully since a ground-breaking court victory over an earlier port project.

Most importantly, the appeal had the support of Councilwoman Hahn. Early on, Hahn said she would hold the appeal in her committee at least until the Clean Trucks Program was resolved with employee status for truck drivers. She stood firm against strong pressure from some business and labor groups who wanted to see the TraPac project move forward immediately.

Negotiations were not easy. The appellants and the Port started with what seemed irreconcilable differences, but it seemed, determined to forge an agreement. Hahn was vital in reinforcing the appellants viewpoints and later in helping to bring acceptance to the port's final offer. In his April 3 remarks, Harbor Commission President S. David Freeman repeatedly referred to Hahn's actions during the negotiations as 'tough love.'

In her statement to the commissioners at the Harbor Department's special meeting, Dr. Geraldine Knatz, the Port's Executive Director, said 'the EIR process leads us to finding no significant impact in some areas because we mitigate below the baseline condition, and that concept is hard for the people of Wilmington to comprehend. It has led me personally to conclude that the EIR process does not provide the mechanism to solve community issues. Yet, from their perspective, its the only leverage they have.' Kantz continues to argue why this leads to the conclusion do form a port community benefit trust fund.

Harbor Vision Task Force co-chair, Jesse Marquez, points out that almost all the baseline condition in WIlmington are already to high. This echos statements Commission President S. David Freeman said about 'not net increase' for air quality when he joined the commission two years ago. Freeman said simply reducing conditions to an earlier baseline isn't good enough, since the baseline itself was unacceptably poor.

As large as the $51 million amount may seem, it is far short of port's externalized health costs which will total somewhere between $4 and $7 billion over the next five years, without considering in growth. According to Dr. John Miller, an emergency room physician from San Pedro and Sierra Club member, the health costs run about $100 to $200 per 20' long cargo container. The settlement will pay from $2.50 to $6.00 per container out of port general funds. The South Coast Air Quality Management District recognized Dr. Miller last with an award for physicians that work on air quality issues.

Payment into the fund could also be jeopardized by an uncertain economic future which may reduce or flatten volume growth in the ports, on which the payments are based. They could also be held off if there are strong difference between the port and any of the appellants that delay port projects-something which still remains likely for at least some of the upcoming EIRs.

The goal must be to eliminate negative impacts at their source, by getting rid of toxic emissions, noise and greenhouse gasses, as well as providing for a more balanced natural environment, coastal access and recreation. At best, the community mitigation fund is a bridge between a dirtier past and a cleaner future.

The agreement doesn't spell out some important details, such as the composition of the governing board for the non-profit and the mechanism by which the funds will be disbursed so that disbursement meets the acceptance of the State Lands Commission. These are both important, because a bad governing board may not work well for the community's best interest. The State Lands Commission has also refused to release most of the funds on a previous settlement with the port and could do so again.

State Land's refusal to release funds puts the port in a curious position of not having to carry the financial responsibility of the negative impacts they create. Some consider this inadvertent racism, since the most impacted communities are those of color.