Long Beach says truck pollution down 80%

Long Beach says truck pollution down 80%    California's Port of Long Beach said its clean trucks program will have slashed air pollution from trucks in the port by nearly 80 percent from just more than a year ago, by requiring the replacement or retrofitting of the port's trucking fleet.
   The port said 6,000 new, clean trucks are registered in its drayage truck registry and that about 1,300 more being purchased are on the way. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, at the request of the state, have given a grace period to those owners of older trucks who have a binding purchase order on a new vehicle or an approved application for grant fund assistance.
   As of the new year, about 8,000 older trucks will have been banned forever from port service under the program.
   'We didn't think the trucking industry could replace its entire fleet until 2012. But by Jan. 1, 2010, it will have almost reached that goal. The clean trucks program is nearly two years ahead of schedule in improving air quality,' said Robert Kanter, the port's managing director of environmental affairs and planning, on Monday.
   The port also said a new study shows that air pollution from ships, locomotives, trucks and other port-related sources dropped significantly from 2005 to 2008, including a 21 percent decrease in diesel particulate matter.
   “The biggest part of the improvement came thanks to cleaner technology, not from a slowdown in cargo,” the port said. It attributed the decrease to initiatives such as its clean trucks program which began in October 2008, a program reducing the speed of ships calling the port, the use of low-sulfur fuel for ships, and the use of shore power, or “cold ironing,” for ships at berth.
   The port’s Clean Air Action Plan, adopted in 2006, set a goal of reducing air pollution by 45 percent by 2012, and the port said the study “hints that the goal could be met even sooner,” said Nick Sramek, president of the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners.