Boat Cleanup Plan May Be Falling Short

A multimillion-dollar drive to reduce heavy smog around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach may be missing the mark, officials concede, because boats undergoing the cleanup are frequently gone from Southern California.

California air quality officials have spent $25 million over the last four years on clean technologies for tugboats, ferries, commercial fishing boats and “yard hostlers” that move cargo containers. New engines, which burn diesel fuel more efficiently and cut smog-forming emissions by up to 80%, have been installed in 139 vessels.

Boats that have been equipped with the new engines are supposed to operate near the Los Angeles coast most of the time, but many don’t, air quality officials acknowledge.

Moreover, officials say they do not keep close track of where the vessels are. Boat operators are required to keep logs and submit annual reports for review, but so far the South Coast Air Quality Management District has not looked closely at the records, said Chung S. Liu, the district’s deputy executive officer.

The adjoining ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach make up the largest single source of air pollution in the region and the least regulated.

Boats and cargo ships release about 50 or more tons of smog-forming emissions daily--more than one-fifth the amount emitted by all the cars in the region. Pollution is expected to increase in the next two decades as ship traffic grows by an estimated 70%, air quality officials say.

“The ports are clearly one of the largest sources of air pollution in our region,” said Barry R. Wallerstein, the AQMD’s executive officer. “Cleaning them up is one of the most difficult and complex environmental challenges in the nation.”

Keeping tabs on vessels based at the port is part of that challenge.

Some of the seafaring tugboats are deployed to haul sand from Baja California or steel parts from the Pacific Northwest.

One tugboat, the Larcona, has spent much of the last year in Ventura helping to build a new breakwater at the mouth of the harbor there. Another, the Kahu, hauled sand-filled barges to San Diego and pushed barges along the coast near Lompoc last year, though it is required to “be used within the Long Beach/Los Angeles port area” under a provision of a contract with the AQMD that paid $459,000 for new engines on the vessel, AQMD and Coast Guard records show.

When air quality officials held a news conference Tuesday in Long Beach to tout the program, they had to schedule the event to coincide with the arrival of the clean-running tugboat Joe Sause from San Francisco Bay. Officials say the boat is permitted to spend up to 25% of its time outside of California waters.

Dale Sause, president of Oregon-based Sause Bros. Ocean Towing Co., said his six tugboats that were refitted with new engines through California clean-air programs operate only in California waters and mostly in the Los Angeles area. However, officials at the nonprofit Marine Exchange of Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbors, said Sause Bros. tugboats are open-ocean tugs, used not for pilot work in harbors, but for pushing barges of lumber, heavy equipment and raw materials along the West Coast.

“They don’t do any assist work. For the most part, they are doing offshore work, towing up and down the coast. They are in the port of L.A. and Long Beach less than 10% of time,” said Dick McKenna, deputy executive director of the exchange, which monitors vessel traffic at the harbors.

Unlike traditional regulatory approaches, the current cleanup strategy relies on incentives, voluntary cleanup and public-private partnerships, because state and local agencies have limited authority over the ports.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has primary authority over ship exhaust. Although the EPA has recently enacted emission standards for the first time, they apply only to new vessels and won’t begin taking effect until 2004.

Sometimes, area businesses pay for the cleanups in lieu of funding carpool programs for their employees, and in some cases businesses earn smog credits for their efforts. Some of the cleanup is funded by penalties that energy companies have paid for producing excessive air pollution during the energy crisis.

Environmentalists, who criticize California’s smog-fighting programs for relying more on incentives than regulatory edicts, say the boat cleanup program needs improvement.

“It’s a very good program that has some very big flaws,” said Todd Campbell, policy director of the Coalition for Clean Air.

“I don’t believe the district can adequately monitor these boats. They are doing the best they can with the resources they have, but it’s not easy to enforce a program this complex.”

Wallerstein, the AQMD chief, acknowledged the boat cleanup program is “a work in progress.” But he defended the program, saying California air quality benefits whether the vessels operate near Los Angeles Harbor or elsewhere along the coast.

Ships and boats burn a grade of diesel fuel that contains about 40 times more sulfur compounds than allowed in fuels for trucks and other heavy-duty equipment used in California.

An AQMD study two years ago showed that diesel exhaust poses a cancer risk for harbor area residents 1,000 times greater than regulatory standards typically allow.

Air quality officials are beginning to take steps to strengthen the boat cleanup program.

On Aug. 2, the AQMD governing board rescinded $1.8 million in funds for marine cleanup projects because of concerns about where and how vessels would operate and how emissions reductions are calculated. The money instead will be spent to replace diesel-powered irrigation pumps primarily in the Inland Empire.

About one-third of the vessels that have been cleaned up have been equipped with tracking devices to record their hourly movements, and more vessels will be required to carry the device in years ahead, Liu said. And in October, the AQMD is scheduled to consider rule amendments to require the destruction of dirty, old engines once they are removed from a boat.