It's bad PR to be against clean air, so recently the industry has tried to convince the Ports the labor requirement is the only provision of the Clean Trucks Program that will draw a lawsuit and hold up other elements of the policy. [Note: LA and Long Beach voters would like their clean air to be served up with good jobs too.]

Of course the entire port trucking business model needs to be turned on its head if the Ports intend to be successful in meeting their emissions-reductions goals - and hence, expand - but the threats are a red herring because the associations representing the shippers and the trucking companies aren't going green. The Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports has warned that the industry isn't ready to take responsibility for pollution, and will sue over any clean-up mandates or policies that force them to pay.

But don't take it from us. The shippers' alliance rattled their sabers at the container fees in Wednesday's Pacific Shipper story "Piling On." (subscription required):

Robin Lanier, executive director of the Waterfront Coalition, which represents retailers and large shippers, said the ports' program would encourage free riders because it focuses only on containers. "There's this insistence on having to have a container fee, like there's some kind of magic in container fees," she said. Furthermore, the plan will invite litigation because it raises fairness issues under the Shipping Act, and possibly constitutional questions if it is judged to be a tax on exports.

Is the Waterfront Coalition front-woman known for her lack of discipline blabbing the shippers' litigation strategy, or is the publication known for its curious lack of sourcing reading tea leaves again?

Well, if you were looking for a more pointed threat, the industry comes out to the same reporter in "The Coming Storm," found in yesterday's Journal of Commerce.

The American Trucking Association has not decided whether it will sue to block only the employee-mandate provision, or whether it will try to scuttle the entire plan, including the clean-air requirements and the proposed fee that would support the subsidies. The ATA believes the ports' proposed $35-per-TEU fee may be without legal foundation, but because it didn't want to block the ports' environmental efforts, the ATA didn't initially object to the proposal.

The Ports should be careful not to get suckered here. The ATA has gone on the record repeatedly that it will sue over the Clean Trucks Program, period. "If the ports actually implement this plan," Curtis Whalen, executive director of the ATA's Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference told the recent Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT) Northeast Cargo Symposium, "ATA will litigate."

Meanwhile, the California Trucking Association bullies the Ports with charges they are courting "legal jeopardy."

What is the only plan that would not draw an industry lawsuit, Alex? Status quo regulation with subsidies for drivers. But that won't clean the air and it won't appease angry Southern Californian taxpayers: In ten years, those beautiful new trucks will be a decade old, driven by impoverished independent contractors, and ill-maintained by the llanteros with their hot knives.