With the volume of cargo moving through the ports of L.A. and Long Beach expected to grow exponentially over the next decade, current tension between port-area residents and the two port administrations is likely to become even more pronounced. In an effort to induce/force both Ports and, more importantly, their clients to conform to stricter environmental standards, Assemblyman Alan Lownthal (D-Long Beach) introduced three bills (AB 2041, AB 2042, and AB 2043)earlier this year. In this interview, Assemblyman Lowenthal discusses how these bills fared in the legislative session, and the next steps that must be taken to ensure that quality of life and economic development don't become irreconcilable interests in Long Beach and San Pedro/Wilmington.
Alan Lowenthal
As the Assemblyman representing both the Long Beach and Los Angeles Harbors, you've attempted in this legislative session to balance and mitigate goods movement growth in the two ports with the growing environmental and livability concerns of the ports' adjacent residents. Accordingly, you introduced three bills to help find a balance. Give us a summary of those three bills, and their status.
Two of the bills, AB 2041 and AB 2042 were designed to stabilize what I considered an out of control situation. The third bill, AB 2043, seeks to begin a long r long-term planning process.
AB 2041, which will extend gate hours at the ports, had its nexus a little over a year ago when I was invited to address a conference of the Pacific Merchants' Shipping Association (PMSA), the Ports of Long Beach, Port of LA, and the Waterfront Coalition. Myself, Janice Hahn, and others had been working with them for years on extended gate hours, but it was very hard to build a consensus. Part of the problem was that unless everyone bought into it – all the terminal operators and shipping lines – they were frightened that they were going to be undercut and be at an economic disadvantage.
At an address I gave to that conference I said, "Enough is enough. Within a year I will introduce a bill to extend the gate hours. It will have an incentive based system; it will be a system in which there will be a public agency that collects premiums during the daytime hours, and that money will be allocated back to make this system work. But you have a year to come up with a private sector solution. If you do that within a year, this bill goes away. I have no intention of pushing a bill forward when the private sector can solve this problem much better."
The private sector really stepped up to the plate. I have to commend the PMSA, the Waterfront Coalition, and others. We had a joint press conference two weeks ago to announce the bill was going away in the last week of session. They came up with a solution, and I'm very pleased that we're going to see extended gate hours for the first time in North America.
So, AB 2041 has worked as you hoped. What about your other two bills?
AB 2042, which would cap pollution levels at the ports, was driven by a South Coast Air Quality Management District study of air pollution. The results were shocking – 70% of the particulate matter, and the most noxious kinds of toxins, were due to diesel emissions. The particulate matter in the air was mostly from mobile sources –trucks, trains, ships – and a significant percentage of that was due to truck activity. The level of toxins was 1,200 to 2,000 deaths per million along the freeway corridors from the port inland, far greater than anyone had ever suspected. All the cities around the port were just shocked at this data.
Our ports provide great jobs and economic development, but we have to live here too. If we don't become proactive, we're going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. People are not going to want to stay in this region. Our kids can't go to school. We have the highest asthma rate in the nation. We run twice the national average and well above the state average in absenteeism from school due to asthma.
We have to be able to balance economic development with public health and quality of life. Three years ago, Mayor Hahn called for the Port of Los Angeles to have no net increase in pollution. They have not come up with a solution; there is no plan or program in place.
AB 2042 will set a baseline based on current levels of air pollution. We're not regulating or requiring extra permits. We're just saying that when the ports begin to move towards future development they need to keep pollution under that 2004 baseline. Every single city around the ports –the Gateway Cities COG, the Los Angeles City Council, and the City of Long Beach, endorsed 2042. They all want to see the jobs, but they know that we've got to address the pollution problem, and we've got to become accountable and set real limits. The industry is concerned that this would limit development, but this is to really do smart development.
We've already begun to demonstrate that the Carl Moyer Program, which is not yet fully funded, can help to provide incentives to replace old trucks. Now we're beginning to focus on cold ironing. There's a lot of things that the Ports can do to make sure that they just run a cleaner operation. This is just going to keep them accountable, and let the community know that we are watching it real closely, and that we're going to solve this. AB 2042, moved through both the Assembly and the Senate, and is currently on the Governor's desk.
The third bill is AB 2043, would charge the Marine and Intermodal Transportation Systems Advisory Council (CALMITSAC), with devising a plan to deal with how we're going to move goods in the future. The bill would not create a new agency, but just require CALMITSAC to make a report back to the legislature on what they see as the future, and how to plan for it.
When we began planning the Alameda Corridor 15 years ago we did not forsee the staggering growth that would occur, or the need to develop inland distribution centers. The large retailer which have dominated the last ten years – retailers like Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Sam Club, and Costco – want their goods moved to a distribution center in the Inland Empire, repacked there, and then shipped. The Alameda Corridor wasn't designed for that, so we now have a system that's kind of dysfunctional and doesn't meet the needs of the community. Hopefully AB 2043 can begin to come up with another plan and begin to address what I see as the future of California – goods movement, international trade, and how we're going to promote that and at the same time maintain livability in California. Right now 30% to 40% of the nation's goods go through these two ports. We serve the rest of the nation and, independent of the jobs, we bare the brunt of all that. We need to do a better job.
Alan, we've often commented that perhaps this region has a competitive advantage in that it has two public ports that actually compete with each other, and force innovation, incubate experimental practices, and market best practices. Has this competition between Long Beach and the Port of L.A. been an advantage?
Absolutely. We've seen that having two ports each can force the other to upgrade their systems and to compete for tenants. The result of this competition is that Long Beach-L.A. are not only the largest combined Ports in the nation, but they dwarf all the others. We now move over 13 million containers a year through these two ports. The next largest one on the West Coast does about 2.5 million. We are so much larger than everyone else now, and the growth is just staggering. Competition has helped to spur that growth, and to provide the facilities, workers, environment and climate to be allow us to deal with this tremendous growth.
But with that growth comes tremendous challenges, and the competition between the ports has not always focused on these challenges, because they've not really had their feet kept to the fire. Are they concerned about these issues? Absolutely. The Port of Los Angeles, which has now engaged in a settlement with the NRDC and the community to do cold ironing on China Shipping; and Long Beach is also looking to upgrade and to not pollute as much. But the incentives right now are to move goods as cheaply as possible and to provide space and facilities as cheaply as possible. There are few incentives to do this as cleanly as possible, even though everyone agrees that that's a worthy goal. We've got to translate that worthy goal into accountability. We can't just fix pollution and toxins at the end of the day – we have to plan for them at the beginning. If we do this, we will be able to sell this to the rest of the world. This is not just a Southern California problem – this is a problem that has been growing and building because mobile sources have been overlooked as a source of pollution around the world. Everyone is experiencing these same problems, and everyone is watching us.
Last question. Share with our readers the legislative challenge you have re finding a balance between the demands by the business community for more jobs and economic development and the countervailing environmental concerns and challenges brought on by the exponential growth in goods movement through the ports-the latest being UCLA's health risk assessment of the Gateway Cities.
It's very difficult. We're at a point in which we are experiencing great changes in our economy. People are very concerned about the loss of American jobs, the weak job creation in the United States, and where we're going as a nation. When you see this one area – international trade and goods movement – that is growing, people in the legislature are very sensitive to the argument that you don't want to hurt the one industry that is growing. I am very supportive of that. I have watched and participated in the growth, first as a city council and now as a legislator. When I first came on the council ten years ago we had 3 to 4 million containers per year, and now we have 13 million per year. And I've been a big supporter, and I've worked with the industry. I think I've developed credibility with the industry, that I really am concerned about their issues too. But, on the other hand, I think that the environmental concerns are so great now that my message – that it's not a question of protecting the environment versus economic development – has gone out to the legislature. We've got to sit down and seriously come up with a solution. This is my first step. You can't put your head in the sand. You can't deny that this is going on. On the other hand, you want to craft legislation that does not hurt the industry. I believe that AB 2042 accomplishes that, and allows us to move forward.
I think more and more legislators are sensitive to those issues and struggle with this. It was very difficult getting it out of the legislature. There was tremendous pressure put on legislators, especially the more moderate legislators and those identified as business friendly, but there are enough of those that said, you know, this is not anti-business. We've got to stop defining things as business versus the environment. This is an issue that needs to be worked out, and we're going to take a chance and move this forward. I was very pleased to see the support that I received from those that typically do not want to support what they consider legislation that can hurt the economic climate. They recognized that this bill was just going to create parameters for how new development will occur in California, which we need to do. There was no running away from this the issues addressed by this legislation.
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