Clean port campaign moves east

Clean port campaign moves east Teamsters, environmentalists expand efforts on clean air initiatives for ports, truckers.

By Chris Dupin

      Efforts to reduce air pollution at U.S. ports are spreading.
      In late March, the United States, along with Canada, announced plans to create a 200-nautical-mile buffer zone around their shores within which ships must comply with the most stringent air pollution standards.
      Lisa P. Jackson, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, called the proposal 'an important and long overdue step to protect the air and water along our shores and the health of people throughout the country.'
      The plan would make the U.S. and Canada coasts only the third region to be designated as Emission Control Areas under Annex VI of the International Maritime Organization's International Convention on the Pollution from Ships. (The other two are in the North Sea and Baltic Sea)
      The standards go beyond current ones planned for ships operating in California coastal waters. California ports already have a program that offers incentives to carriers who switch from high to low sulfur fuel 20 to 40 miles from the coast. The state also has a pending law, to take effect July 1, that would require oceangoing vessels within 24 nautical miles of California's coastline to use lower-sulfur marine distillates.
      Even as Jackson was making the announcement at a press conference at the Port Newark-Elizabeth complex of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, environmental and labor activists were calling for more to be done.
      'Individual ports need to move faster ' we are huge supporters of the IMO, but it should be seen as a floor for the future rather than a ceiling,' said Richard Kassel, a senior attorney director of the clean vehicles and fuels projects at the National Resources Defense Council. He said NRDC would like to see the California rules for ships go ahead as planned in July, noting the IMO regulations will not come into effect until 2010 and gradually tighten emission standards through 2020.
      The NRDC said there are clean air initiatives aimed at reducing port truck pollution in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and other cities.

Goldsmith

   Amy Goldsmith of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, and one of several representatives of a group called the Coalition for Healthy Ports, said they were encouraging Jackson 'not to stop here, and to take aggressive steps to curb pollution from diesel trucks, but not on the backs of the drivers.'

Larrabee

      Richard M. Larrabee, port commerce director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said his agency, in consultation with federal, state and local officials, is developing a comprehensive clean air strategy that will address not only pollution from ships, but emissions from trucks, rail and yard handing equipment.
      In a press conference in early April, environmental activists like Goldsmith and Teamster representatives indicated that changing the drayage industry's heavy reliance on independent owner-operators to move containers to and from marine terminals in New Jersey and New York was one of their goals as it has been in Southern California.
      Los Angeles and Long Beach have implemented plans that require drivers to obtain concessions to operate as draymen. The plan in Los Angeles has been particularly controversial because it requires workers to transition from independent owner-operators to employees.
The American Trucking Associations has been battling the concession agreements in court, and in late April, a district court was to rehear its request for an injunction against the plan. ATA's position was bolstered in late March by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that ordered a district court to reconsider ATA's request for an injunction. The appeals court said it believed the concession plans of the two ports would 'likely be preempted' by federal law.
      But environmentalists in the New York area are undeterred in targeting the use of owner-operators as an underlying cause of port pollution.
      'The broken port trucking system is a major source of pollution,' Goldsmith said. 'We need to change the way we do business here in the port because of the air pollution. What we are calling for is good jobs and clean air and the way that we are going to do that is by making sure we have clean trucks on the road and have the drivers working for companies that can in fact install the right equipment or buy the right trucks.'
      At a press conference held in a Teamsters office at a truck stop in South Kearny, N.J., Teamsters and other activists tried to bring home the need for better equipment by retrofitting a 1998 diesel truck ' which they said was about the average age of trucks operating in the port ' with a diesel particulate filter and a closed crankcase ventilation system which performs much the same way as a PCV valve in automobiles.

Hill

      Bruce Hill, a senior scientist with the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, said the retrofit had reduced fine particulate emissions ' one of the most dangerous pollutants from diesel fuel ' from about 500 to 700 micrograms/cubic meter to about 12 micrograms to cubic meter, similar to rigs built after 2007.

Fredrick

      But Fredrick Potter, a Teamsters international vice president, said independent owner-operators can't afford the $9,000 cost of putting filters on rigs or the cost of buying new trucks.
      Independent owner-operators have little pricing power, he said. They are dependent on brokers to book cargo to haul, and they cannot act collectively for fear of being charged with collusion under antitrust laws.
      Independent draymen are not paid for delays at the ports and often waste hours waiting to pick-up and deliver cargo, he said.
      Potter said he wants the port authority to 'accept responsibility' and create a clean truck program, saying the agency is not supposed to just be a landlord and provider of infrastructure, but to provide economic stimulus and create jobs in the region.
      The Teamsters and the coalition cited a recent report by David Bensman, a professor of labor studies and employment at Rutgers University, who along with law student Yael Bromberg conducted a survey of 299 of the port's 7,000 or so draymen that found independent contractors net an average of $28,000 per year.
      The Rutgers study found 73.5 percent of the families of independent contractors and half of employee drivers are medically uninsured, and as independent owner-operators, the drivers are likely to rely on public hospital for charity medical care.

Bensman

      Bensman said as independent businessmen, the truckers do not receive contributions for social security, workers' compensation nor pension contributions.
      He contends the logistics industry is transferring many of its costs on the general public by depending on independent contractors. He also said reliance on independents makes logistics less efficient, because there is little incentive to make terminals improve turnaround times when the independent drivers are absorbing the cost of delays.
      Bensman's study has been slammed by organizations such the New York area Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers, who questioned whether sufficient numbers of truckers had been interviewed.
      Clayton Boyce, vice president of public affairs for the ATA, complained that Bensman is a 'far-left union backer.' But his research has also been cited by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who called on the New York-New Jersey port authority and the governor of New Jersey to 'push for new regulations that would require the trucking industry to absorb the total labor and environmental costs of doing business in our region.'
      And in 2007, according to a letter distributed by the Teamsters and Coalition for Healthy Ports, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama wrote to the mayors of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland making many of the same arguments that Bensman does, saying 'trade, labor and the environment are not separate, but linked issues, that draymen were treated 'poorly and receive few benefits.'
      Obama said he supported efforts by the cities to work with their harbor commissions to adopt programs that promote 'the cleanest available technology and a transition away from ports relying on trucking companies that act as brokers to ones that treat their personnel as employees. Both steps are necessary to meet emissions reductions targets and ensure that jobs at our ports are middle class jobs'
      Writing in a port authority newsletter last year, Larrabee said the agency was looking at a wide variety of strategies to fight air pollution from using yard hostlers with electric motors to subsidizing loans for new or modified truck engines. The port has also spent $600 million improving its on-dock rail facilities, which it said will result in more cargo moving on and off the docks by train, rather than truck.
      In some cases 'there's enough incentive to do things on an almost voluntary basis,' he said, because using more efficient equipment will help offset the cost of more expensive low-sulfur fuels and technological modifications.
      He said the agency wanted to curtail emissions so there isn't the kind of outcry and governmental intervention that occurred in Los Angeles. 'In that case, it becomes a crisis, and you lose control of it,' he said.
      Jackson said while ports help drive local and global economies, 'the constant traffic of oceangoing vessels has brought with it some very serious challenges.'
      In the New York area, she said more than 6.5 million people are exposed to elevated concentrations of diesel fuel emissions.
      Goldsmith said that trucks built before 1994 should be banned from the port, and 'we are researching whether we can retrofit the ones built between 1994 and 2007. If the retrofits don't address the air crisis we have, they should be replaced with new.'
      She said similar policies should be implemented throughout all ports so that they compete on an equal basis.
      Christina Montorio of the Teamsters said there is also a group pushing for a clean air policy in Miami, and Goldsmith said there is some preliminary organizing going on at ports such as Savannah and Norfolk.
      Kassel of the NRDC said his group is concerned that with the expansion of the Panama Canal, there may be a surge in cargo delivery through East Coast ports like New York.
      John Martin, a port consultant based in Lancaster, Pa., said that could be especially important because many East Coast ports move a higher percentage of cargo in and out of ports by truck rather than rail, in part, because of large local populations. As more cargo moves through East Coast ports, the increase in truck traffic could mean more pollution than if the cargo moving through ports was served more heavily by rail.