LA and Long Beach Ports Update Clean Air Action Plan

  

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With all the shipping vessels, marine terminal equipment, trucks and trains it’s hard to think of ports as environmentally friendly. However the Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports are trying to at least minimize the negative affects that these equipment have on the environment and the people who live around these large ports. This past week, the two neighboring ports of released the final version of the 2010 update to the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) from 2006 setting even stricter goals for reducing toxic air contaminants than were contained in the original CAAP.

The CAAP’s primary goal is to dramatically reduce emissions and their associated health risks for the Southern California region. It outlined an aggressive plan to reduce air pollution from the two ports by 45% before 2011 affecting all aspects of the port production from ocean container shipping vessels to trucks and trains. To help achieve these goals it included a range of air pollution control initiatives including the ports' clean truck programs, vessel pollution reduction programs, and a Technology Advancement Program (TAP) that fosters the development of ‘clean technology' applications, such as the world's first hybrid-electric tugboat, all-electric Class 8 port trucks, and the nation's greenest short-line railroad. Many considered the plan the most comprehensive strategy to cut air pollution and reduce health risks ever produced for a global port complex.

The original document was planned as a “living” document with regular updates to be proposed inorder to continue to improve and meet new goals. This 2010 update is the first of these planned.  With the two neighboring ports on their way to meet or even exceed the original CAAP goals before the 2011 deadline the proposed update includes various long-term goals and short term goals, including an 85% reduction in cancer risk from port-related diesel pollution by 2020.

The points outlined in the 2010 update include:

• By 2014, reduce port-related emissions by 22% for NOx, 93% for SOx and 72% for DPM.

• By 2023, reduce port-related emissions by 59% for NOx, 93% for SOx and 77% for DPM

• In addition, the ports have developed a “health-risk reduction standard” that will aim by 2020 to lower the residential cancer risk due to diesel particulate pollution by 85% in the port region and communities adjacent the ports.

There has been much praise of the positive effect from this project and hope for the future.  Like they say “As goes California, so goes the nation,” Let’s hope in this case it’ll be “so goes the world.”