New Harbor Panel Aims to Cut Pollution While Expanding Port

Los Angeles harbor commissioners zeroed in Wednesday on what promises to be one of the toughest challenges facing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: how to expand the nation’s largest seaport while slashing air pollution that threatens the health of residents who live near the port.

The panel’s new president, S. David Freeman, sternly told port managers to accelerate efforts to pinpoint new ways to cut emissions from ships, trains and trucks serving the port.

“Start acting like our lives are depending on it, because our lives do depend on it,” he said.

Commissioners are grappling with a Pandora’s box left by former Mayor James K. Hahn: a report concluding that 2,200 premature deaths from port-related air pollution could be avoided by 2025 through technological fixes and other measures to reduce pollution.

But those improvements could cost more than $11 billion, and shippers fear that they would bear much of the cost. Hahn, who set up a task force to craft the report, left office before acting on its recommendations.

The new commission asked the port staff at its first meeting Sept. 14 to report back Wednesday night on which measures in the Hahn plan could be put in place now.

In response, port environmental director Ralph Appy promised that the staff would start looking at all new technology -- including fuel cells on ships and biofuel-powered trucks -- to achieve dramatic emissions reductions.

The port also may be able to speed up current plans with more conventional technology, such as using cooler-burning dock tractors and powering ships with electricity while at shore, Appy said. The port could increase its spending from $17.3 million to $23 million this year and budget an additional $53.4 million for next year to move those plans forward, he said.

This was only the second meeting of the five commissioners picked by the new mayor and headed by Freeman, a former general manager of the city Department of Water and Power.

In the last decade, emissions have transformed the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex into the single largest air polluter in the Los Angeles Basin. People who live near the ports and related transportation corridors -- especially the Long Beach Freeway and rail hubs in the Inland Empire -- have grown increasingly angry about pollution, which many blame for cancer, asthma and other illnesses in their neighborhoods. Recent scientific studies have found evidence that pollution near freeways may be linked to higher levels of asthma and stunted lung growth in children.

Some shippers, skittish about a possible repeat of a major 2004 cargo logjam, have rerouted freight to Seattle and other ports. Others warn that they are increasingly troubled by recent turnover among port senior staff and by the prospect that environmental concerns have trumped the port’s commitment to cargo growth. That situation alarms business leaders who call the port an integral economic engine for the region.

Freeman has promised a “green-green” agenda for the port, reducing pollutants and simultaneously promoting new business.

Hahn charged a 28-member task force with crafting a blueprint to make good on his 2001 promise to hold the line on port pollution. That plan, completed in June, is designed to reduce emissions to 2001 levels.

But with the boom in Asian imports, port emissions have soared 60% since 2001, a point that Freeman has raised repeatedly as commission president. He said the city should insist on further rollbacks..

A detailed study prepared by the state Air Resources Board to determine the public health benefits of reducing Port of Los Angeles pollution to 2001 levels found that in the next 20 years the proposed “no net increase” plan would curb particulate matter pollution enough to prevent 2,200 premature deaths.

Particulate matter from diesel fumes is a carcinogen and has been tied to exacerbating respiratory illnesses.