Panel Backs Plan to Curb Pollution at Port

A sweeping plan to slash air pollution caused by the Port of Los Angeles was endorsed Thursday by a blue-ribbon panel in what some experts are calling a historic first step in controlling pollution from the ships, trains and trucks serving California’s fast-growing cargo industry.

The draft plan created by air-quality experts and regulators is a response to public concerns about the damaging health effects of diesel fumes and other contaminants generated by the nation’s largest seaport and by increasing rail and truck traffic crisscrossing the Los Angeles Basin.

The experts said they believed that the blueprint could help drive a nationwide cleanup of ships, trains and trucks, much as California has led the country in other clean-air measures since the 1960s.

“We are out front. These really will have pretty significant impacts nationally,” said Daniel E. Donohoue, chief of the emissions assessment branch of the California Air Resources Board, which helped formulate the plan.

Matt Haber, deputy director of the regional air division for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said the approach used in Los Angeles might become the “gold standard” for cleaning up ports nationwide.

“We want to do what we can to have it replicated at other West Coast ports,” he said.

The preliminary plan approved unanimously Thursday consists of 65 proposed methods to clean the air, including such measures as requiring low-sulfur fuel for ships and trains, subsidizing truckers’ purchase of cleaner-burning vehicles and making ships calling at the port plug into onshore power sources instead of idling their diesel-burning engines.

Some measures would rely on cleaner-burning ship and rail technology that is not yet commercially available -- what engineers call “technology forcing” measures.

The task force still needs to study how much the measures will cost and how they can be implemented.

The preliminary plan of technological measures will be forwarded to Mayor James K. Hahn, and a final plan incorporating costs and legal steps will go to the mayor’s office this spring.

Deputy Mayor Doane Liu said Thursday evening that as Hahn moves to implement the plan, he will need to look at funding sources and possible new legislation as well as meeting with industry.

The mayor “has met already with a number of shipping lines and rail lines. They knew this is coming, it’s going to take cooperation on their part,” Liu said. The plan could spur new businesses focused on environmental technology in the area, he said.

The task force was appointed by Hahn last summer to carry out his 2001 pledge to hold the line on pollution at the port, which, together with the Port of Long Beach, has become the single worst air polluter in Southern California.

But the port has grown so rapidly that even the lineup of measures developed this winter will not reduce the two pollutants of most concern -- particulate matter and nitrogen oxides -- until 2010 or later.

Barry Wallerstein, chief of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, attended the two-day session in San Pedro and took an active role in shaping the plan.

Without it, he warned, “the region will be doomed to dirty air for the next 10 to 15 years.”

The task force includes representatives of the shipping industry, railroads, unions and environmental and community groups, as well as the three regulatory agencies -- the state air board, EPA and AQMD -- that helped draft the measures reviewed during a two-day meeting.

The most vocal opponents of the plan have been two railroad giants, Burlington Northern and Union Pacific, who say it depends too much on costly and untested technology for things like new locomotives that have yet to be developed.

“It’s a real stretch when you consider these things don’t exist,” said Union Pacific attorney Carol Harris.

Task force member Michele Grubbs, vice president of the Pacific Merchants Shipping Assn., said the group still had work ahead to deal with the financial and legal implications.