Southern California air quality regulators are reneging on their promise to enact long-delayed rules to curb health-damaging and planet-warming pollution from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by the end of this year.
By doing nothing once again, the South Coast Air Quality Management District has failed to do its only job, cowering in the face of opposition from unions and powerful business interests that have worked together in a campaign to end with the proposal aimed at cleaning up the largest source of smog-forming pollution in the region.
It is clear that the opposition has been successful. The air quality agency and its 13-member board of directors have backed down, reneging on a promise from its president, Vanessa Delgado, who in May committed adopt a standard before the end of the year.
Instead, the district is now raising a much weaker alternative: requiring ports to plan for zero-emissions infrastructure, an ineffective approach that does not include emissions reductions and is not expected to be considered until late next year.
This is not a way for regulators to respond to the serious and ongoing health threat posed by port pollution. A large concentration of soot-spewing diesel trucks, ships, trains, and cargo-handling equipment worsens smog across the region and contributes to elevated cancer risk in port-area communities. Southern California can't clean its air to federal health standards without drastic cuts to pollution at ports, and failure to meet those standards is responsible for at least 1,500 premature deaths a year, according to the air district, as well as thousands of hospital overruns and emergency room visits for asthma, heart attacks and other health crises.
There is no doubt that air quality officials face formidable adversaries, including the Pacific Merchant Marine Association, the International Dockworker and Warehouse Union and other labor and business interests that have been working together to end clean air standards in the country's busiest port complex. Union workers have joined forces with transportation industry lobbyists, appearing at public meetings as part of a coordinated opposition campaign to stoke fears of “devastating impacts” to California's supply chain and economy.
There was “strong sentiment,” said Air Quality Management District spokesman Nahal Mogharabi, “some in favor and many against any effort to regulate ports.”
While some opponents have valid concerns about the new regulations (the effects on jobs would be analyzed and addressed in the rulemaking process), others clearly have a profit motive to obstruct and delay.
Terminal operators, shipping companies and other industries that depend on the movement of cargo argue, falsely, that these port pollution rules are really just limits on economic activity. They claim there is no way to accelerate emissions reductions at ports without reducing cargo movement and diverting shipments to other, less environmentally friendly ports, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.
We don't buy it. For decades, California has relied on strict air quality standards to force and accelerate technological change in many industries. We have cleaned the air and grown the economy at the same time, as evidenced by the ports' own data showing a decline in emissions over time even as cargo volumes increase.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson are also to blame. While they spoke in favor of a zero-emissions infrastructure plan, neither Bass nor Richardson said whether they support an air district rule that would actually reduce port pollution. Everything indicates no. The city-owned ports, which Bass and Richardson control, have long opposed local air quality standards for them, even those as modest as forcing ports to comply with their own clean air plans and zero emissions promises.
Gabby Maarse, a spokesperson for Bass, said the mayor “is committed to improving the lives of Angelenos who live near the port, especially when it comes to prioritizing improving public health.” Richardson said his commitment to reducing port emissions had not wavered.
Most troubling of all is the endless, cowardly abdication of the Air Quality Management District board, made up of local elected and appointed officials from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, whose sole job is to clean up the air to protect public health.
If board members lack the courage to stand up to labor and business interests and regulate the biggest polluter in the smoggiest region of the country, what hope is there that they will do so in the more challenging landscape ahead? They will soon be operating under another Trump administration that is expected to try again to take away the state's authority to clean the air. Local leaders must step up and do more.
The next time you look at the horizon and see the brown haze that pollutes Los Angeles' air for much of the year, remember that Southern California could be experiencing clearer skies, fewer cancers, less asthma, and longer lives. These are benefits that people in other parts of the country already enjoy, but we don't, because those with the power to fix it are too afraid to act.
