Important steps to clean up air

Published in www.dailybulletin.com on 3rd Aug 2008.

Thanks to state regulators, ships calling at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are going to have to switch to less-polluting fuel within a year. Still, that's not soon enough.

The new state regulations, approved by the Air Resources Board, require ships to use cleaner-burning fuel when they are near the coast, starting in July 2009. Much to their credit, ARB officials persisted even after a federal judge ruled last year that the ARB had no authority to set emission standards. Instead, the ARB regrouped and announced it was setting fuel standards, not air standards.

Smart thinking, but residents downwind of the voluminous pollution won't have to wait a year for cleaner air. The ports have gone ahead on their own.

Rather than penalties, the two ports are using incentives. If ship operators agree to reduce speed to 12 knots and switch to cleaner, low-sulfur fuel within 24 to 40 nautical miles from shore, the ports will reimburse them for the difference in cost. This amounts to as much as $9.9 million a year for the Port of Long Beach and $8.6 million for the Port of L.A.

Four weeks into the program, 14 carriers operating 136 ships had signed up. Thousands of tons of the worst kinds of pollution, diesel emissions and potentially carcinogenic particulates, will be removed from Southern California's air.

That's good news for Inland Valley residents, who because of prevailing westerly winds have to breathe what's emitted in and around the ports. Particulate matter from diesel exhaust has been implicated in causing reduced lung function among inland children, who are more likely to develop asthma than those who breathe cleaner air.

Air pollution affects adults, too. The Air Resources Board estimates that nearly a million workdays a year are lost to pollution-related illnesses.

International shipping organizations have opposed local regulation, and they are right about one thing: these rules ought to be imposed worldwide. But that's not an excuse for doing nothing.

Californians, especially those residing downwind of the nation's busiest port complex, don't have to wait for the rest of the world to wake up to this menace. They deserve cleaner air now.

When rules and penalties don't work or are too slow in coming, the ports should act on their own. That's what both Long Beach and L.A. have done with ships' bunker fuel, which is the dirtiest in the world.

Next are trucks and trains. The benefits of the ports' $2 billion Clean Trucks Program will be felt within a matter of months, and trains should be not far behind.

Published in www.dailybulletin.com on 3rd Aug 2008.