Dozens of Dirty Diesel Trucks Caravan AroundLong Beach City Hall as Port Commissioners Move on Adopting Clean Air Action Plan

Media Contact: Barbara Maynard
Office:  (213) 387-0780
Cell:  (323) 351-9321

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 20, 2006

Demonstrating the need for reforming the ports' broken trucking system, more than 25 port drivers formed a caravan and drove their pollution-spewing trucks around Long Beach City Hall as L.A. and Long Beach port commissioners discussed the landmark Clean Air Action Plan. The port drivers are part of a broad-based coalition called the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports that includes drivers and environmental, labor, faith-based, community, and public health groups.

The drivers' caravan was meant to illustrate pollution problems and highlight the elements that the Coalition has put forward as necessary to any permanent solution.

The Coalition emphasized that a successful plan must be comprehensive, addressing a number of problems in the trucking system; accountable, with clear, enforceable standards for motor carriers; and sustainable, generating ongoing revenue to fund green development of the ports and keep trucks up to new standards.

More than 16,000 mostly old and poorly maintained trucks-operating through more than 600 often fly-by-night and unregulated trucking firms-produce 30 to 40 percent of port air pollution. One study found poorly-paid drivers spend up to 50 percent of their time waiting to transfer loads with engines idling and emitting soot. Meantime, with the nation's seaports considered vulnerable to terrorist attack, the ports of L.A. and Long Beach lack any way to monitor the hundreds of trucking firms and thousands of drivers-whose annual turnover rate exceeds 130 percent-routinely moving cargo in and out of the harbor.

The Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports believes port clean air goals can't be met without changing the trucking system. As currently structured, drivers - mostly immigrants - earn so little that they can't afford to maintain and repair their trucks. Any solution that revolves around merely buying new vehicles for the drivers is just a band-aid approach. Other changes making the system more efficient would mean drivers spending less time waiting and spewing exhaust.

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Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports * 1714 Franklin St., Suite 325, Oakland, CA 94607

The Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports is committed to working with Port stakeholders to develop a lasting solution to the crisis in port trucking. The Coalition includes environmental, labor, faith, public health and community organizations that are promoting sustainable economic development at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

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