NRDC aborts tort against Long Beach port

NRDC aborts tort against Long Beach port The National Resource Defense Council has said it will not follow through on an early threat to sue Long Beach officials over port pollution.
   The NRDC issued an ultimatum to Long Beach port and city officials on Feb. 6, warning that the port had 90 days to take immediate action to reduce port pollution or face a federal lawsuit calling for federal oversight of port pollution programs.
   With just days left before the 90-day deadline, NRDC attorney senior attorney David Pettit told the Cunningham Report the group has 'worked out their issues with Long Beach,' and that the group sees no reason to file a suit at this time.
   The original 13-page threat, addressed to Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, Long Beach Harbor Commission President Mario Cordero, and Port of Long Beach Executive Director Richard Steinke, claimed the Long Beach port is violating federal law by disposing of toxic waste in the form of diesel truck exhaust. Calling the port an 'imminent and substantial endangerment to public health,' the group also charged the port with ongoing failures to remedy the emissions.
   The NRDC letter, co-signed by Southern California environmental group The Coalition for a Safe Environment, called for Long Beach officials to immediately implement programs within 90 days to cut diesel exhaust emitted by ships, trucks and trains used in port operations. If not, the NRDC would ask a federal court to appoint a 'port czar' to force the port to immediately address the diesel pollution. The NRDC also threatened to ask a federal court to halt all port development, cap port throughput to existing levels, and order the port to cap emissions to current levels.
   Despite the fact that the neighboring ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are universally considered one port by labor and industry, and that diesel emissions from one port are indistinguishable from those generated within the other, the NRDC letter was only sent to Long Beach port and city officials. Copies of the letters were forwarded by the NRDC, but not addressed directly, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.
   The NRDC claimed that it only targeted Long Beach because the environmental group was in negotiation with Los Angeles officials over environmental impacts regarding a proposed port of Los Angeles container terminal expansion project.
   Numerous industry groups and local media outlets, including a Los Angeles Times editorial, accused the NRDC for singling out Long Beach with the threat, tying it to a Teamsters-supported employee-only provision in the two ports' $2.2 billion drayage overhaul program.
   Announced early last year, the truck plan seeks to replace the ports' drayage fleet with 2007 or newer model year trucks by 2012. The plan also seeks to re-regulate the local drayage industry by setting up a licensing plan allowing the ports to determine which truck firms can do business with the ports and a labor component that mandates that trucking firms only hire per-hour employee drivers instead of independent owner-operators.
   The NRDC sent its letter to Long Beach officials shortly after the Long Beach port commission approved a version of the truck plan minus the labor component, but before Port of Los Angeles had voted on its version of the plan. Los Angeles port officials eventually approved a separate version of the truck plan that included the employee-only labor component.
   While the NRDC maintains the threat to sue Long Beach had nothing to do with the truck plan, Pettit told the Cunningham Report that in retrospect the NRDC should have sent a similar letter to Los Angeles port officials.