LOS ANGELES – Toxic pollution from 16,000 dirty diesel trucks at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles is already a major health problem for Southern California, and the profitable goods movement business is projected to explode over the next ten years. So the Ports’ proposed Clean Truck Program will only work if it includes two key elements: Higher environmental standards to ensure the cleanest available technology, and the stability and accountability of a modern trucking system with an employee workforce.

That was the message delivered to the Long Beach Harbor Commission today by Communities for Clean Ports (CCP), local residents, port truck drivers themselves and a broad coalition of environmental, community, worker and faith groups – and by the more than 11,500 residents and Port truck drivers who’ve signed one of the two petitions that CCP and the other groups presented to commissioners.

More than 6,500 Californians have signed the CCP-led petition urging the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to pass a Clean Trucks Program that includes an employee workforce and higher environmental standards than in the Ports’ draft plan. Specifically, the petition demands:

• “A real ‘clean truck’ standard, which means the cleanest available individual truck, at the time of purchase – based on the truck’s toxic, criteria pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. (The Program should not rely on “averaging” or allow other loopholes.)
• “Explicit criteria that ensures 50% of the trucks falling in the ‘frequent and semi-frequent’ visit categories are replaced with clean alternative-fuel trucks as proposed in the Clean Air Action Plan.
• “Employee status for truckers to ensure trucking companies are accountable for environmental and safety maintenance.”

Also today, the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports – a group of more than 30 community, environmental, public health, faith and worker groups – presented the Long Beach Harbor Commission with a similar petition signed by more than 5,000 drivers, a significant portion of the truck driver workforce at the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach. For more information on this petition, visit www.cleanandsafeports.org.

Both petitions will be presented to the Los Angeles Harbor Commission at its regular weekly meeting on Thursday.

Said CCP Outreach Director Rupal Patel: “If you’re in Southern California, you’re part of the L.A.-Long Beach port community. The Ports of L.A. and Long Beach anchor an exploding $300 billion a year business, and are already the largest single source of air pollution in Southern California – responsible for more deadly diesel soot and smog each day than all of the 6 million cars in the region. But while the goods movement industry profits, Californians have been footing the bill for their toxic pollution – and the smog, cancer, lung disease, childhood asthma and other health problems it leads to. The Clean Trucks Program – if it includes higher environmental standards and an employee workforce – can finally change that.”

For more information, and to read – and sign – the full text of the CCP petition, please visit http://www.cleanports.org/ctppetition.

About Communities for Clean Ports

Communities for Clean Ports (CCP) is a non-profit public education campaign to end the port-related pollution that poisons people, fouls the environment and costs billions of dollars – and that is about to explode as port-related trade quadruples.

Ending port pollution – and the unjustifiable health and economic tax it levies on innocent working people in port communities – is a moral imperative. Cleaner technologies, equipment and alternative fuels are affordable, viable and available – and would immediately and drastically reduce Port Pollution Poisoning. All that’s lacking is immediate, significant action by the port-related and goods movement industries that have increased their profits for years by shifting the massive economic and health costs of their port pollution to their fellow Americans living and working in port regions.

Starting in Southern California, there is a historic opportunity for long-term, paradigm-shifting public education and mobilization that will reverberate across the country. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the two largest container ports in America, sit side-by-side and historically have generated a “Diesel Death Zone,” much of the L.A.-area’s dangerous smog, and higher rates of cancer, lung disease and dangerous childhood asthma. Nowhere is port-related pollution a bigger problem – or major pollution reduction more possible, especially in the wake of the Ports’ recent Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP).

Communities for Clean Ports (CCP) is non-partisan, and focuses on public education to maximize effective public support for policies that are consistent with our mission of significantly and immediately reducing port pollution. For more information, please visit www.CleanPorts.org.