Year in Review: California Takes Steps to Curb Emissions

By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Dec. 22 & 29 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Southern California port officials and state environmental regulators continued pressing their campaign to reduce heavy-truck diesel emissions, approving several controversial measures during 2008 that some truckers said will lead to severe economic hardships.

At the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, officials made good on their long-standing promise to toughen regulatory requirements aimed at improving air quality. In addition, the California Air Resources Board ap-proved its new statewide private fleet rule and greenhouse gas regulations — measures expected to cost the industry more than $5 billion to comply.

Although the aggressive measures won praise from environmental watchdog groups, not everyone was breathing easier.

The ports’ unprecedented clean trucks plans drew legal protests from American Trucking Associations, the Federal Maritime Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice and other stakeholder groups, which all took issue not with the idea of cleaning the air but with the way the ports decided to do it.

There also was a negative reaction within the trucking industry to CARB’s new requirement mandating that all carriers reduce diesel particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions by either installing add-on emission control devices or replacing their older heavy-duty trucks with newer cleaner-burning engines, beginning in 2011.

The California heavy-truck greenhouse gas reduction plan will phase in a mandate to equip California trucks with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay-approved aerodynamic equipment technologies, such as trailer side skirts and low-rolling-resistance tires, beginning in 2010.

At the ports, the initial phase of the clean trucks plans was implemented on Oct. 1, when the ports began turning back all 1988 and older trucks. A ban on all 1989 to 1993 trucks, along with 1994 to 2003 trucks that are not retrofitted, will take effect on Jan. 1, 2010, and a prohibition on all trucks that do not meet the 2007 federal clean-truck emissions standard will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2012.

Though the trucking industry did not oppose the truck ban itself, some industry stakeholders regarded the idea of a plan to phase out all independent drayage operators in the Port of Los Angeles as anticompetitive, illegal and going beyond the notion of cleaning the environment.

Soon after harbor commissioners in Los Angeles and Long Beach approved the ports’ diesel emissions reduction plans, ATA filed a lawsuit on July 28 in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The clean trucks plans have “the effect of regulating the prices, routes, or services of motor carriers,” ATA said in its lawsuit.

ATA also argued the concession provisions contained in the plan were nothing more than a scheme to make it easier for company drivers to unionize.

On Sept. 11, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder of Los Angeles denied ATA’s request for a temporary injunction to block implementation of the ports’ clean truck plans. Then on Sept. 24, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also denied ATA’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

ATA filed a subsequent appeal citing different legal arguments with the 9th Circuit, but the federal appeals court has yet to rule. No trial date is scheduled yet in the ATA lawsuit pending in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Officials with both ports said that, despite the controversy, they have received enough concession applications that they don’t anticipate any cargo movement disruptions or drayage operation shortages.

Meanwhile, Jim Ganduglia, owner of Ganduglia Trucking, Fresno, Calif., claims CARB’s new regulations not only will put some small carriers out of business but also will drive up shipping prices and even may force trucking companies to modify their business plans significantly.

Ganduglia said he’s received state grants to retrofit 15 of his 27 trucks at a cost of about $300,000. Without the public funding, he said he would have had to raise his rates significantly, essentially pricing himself out of the business.

He also suggested the new tough regulations will scare carriers away from doing business in the state.

“There are trucking companies already that are saying, ‘We’re not going to come into the state of California,’ ” said Ganduglia, chairman of the California Trucking Association’s environmental policy committee.

CARB officials said they don’t want to put any carriers out of business, but they admit they have the worst air quality in the nation and say they are under severe pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency to bring the state’s air into compliance with federal air quality standards.