Whitney Amaya of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (Left) and Maya Golden-Krasner of the Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity
The Port of LA was proud of approving a new addendum to its cooperative agreement with the Air Quality Management District [AQMD] on Aug 14. Its press release featured Mayor Karen Bass calling it “another bold, historic step toward putting sustainability at the forefront of everything we do at the Port of Los Angeles.”
But on the ground, Theral Golden, president of the West Long Beach Neighborhood Association, has a very different view. The cooperative agreement itself “is not a rule, what the community wanted and pushed for from AQMD,” Golden says. “It’s not a rule that you can enforce, that’s the most important thing to me.” As a result, “The missing piece to me that no one actually looks at” is that “it’s going to be 80 to 100 years from now” before port communities get full relief from port pollution. “It won’t be today.”
As things stand, “We lose over 1,200 people a year directly related to the ports… every year, that’s the number of deaths they cause,” Golden says. “They refuse to recognize that as important. That’s more than one mass shooting a day.”
Dozens of organizations worked for more than a decade to get AQMD to adopt an indirect source rule for the ports, like the one that was adopted for warehouses, but a last-minute backroom deal last August resulted in the “cooperative agreement” between AQMD and the ports instead.
“Our communities have been advocating for a port indirect source rule for more than a decade,” said Whitney Amaya, T.H.E. (Trade, Health and Environment) Impact Project Coordinator, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. “The process for the cooperative agreement was not collaborative — AQMD and the ports had their own meetings that excluded community and they had the ultimate say as to what would be included.”
“The District rushed through a toothless voluntary agreement that dodged its requirements to maximize environmental protection and ensure public safety and proper oversight,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Angelenos deserve better from their air pollution agency.” CBD is suing to challenge AQMD’s final approval of the agreement as violations of both state and federal environmental law.
Among other things, the suit argues, “The Voluntary Agreement constitutes an unlawful abrogation of AQMD’s police powers…AQMD, which has the statutory power and duty to regulate air quality, may not contract away that power.”
The rationale for avoiding direct regulation is questionable at best, Amaya stressed.
“It’s been proven that regulations have helped to drive down emissions, but unfortunately there’s a lot of misinformation that regulations will somehow lead to the economy collapsing,” she said. “Regulations have been implemented and it hasn’t negatively impacted the economy. Warehouses keep expanding, and the ports keep growing. But at the end of the day, our communities continue to experience public health impacts because the pace of growth severely exceeds the action to reduce emissions.”
And without regulation, “The cooperative agreement has no actual goals for emission reductions,” Amaya said. “There are measures that will hopefully facilitate emission reductions, but it’s all aspirational without any goals and benchmarks. There’s no transparency.”
While none of the organizations are happy with it, their perspectives vary, in part reflecting how close to the ground they are, and how many other battles they’re fighting.
The ports, of course, are quite pleased with themselves.
“Today, the Port of Los Angeles has the lowest pollution footprint per container move since measurements began more than two decades ago,” said Executive Director Gene Seroka. “This next phase of the Cooperative Agreement builds on our success by focusing on the infrastructure and incentives that will accelerate the transition to zero-emission goods movement.”
Under the update, POLA “will enhance incentives for the cleanest ocean-going vessels, establish new incentives to increase the use of zero-emission trucks, and invest $20 million toward regional charging and fueling infrastructure for zero-emission drayage trucks,” according to its press release.
It may sound like a lot, but $20 million is less than 1% of POLA’s 2025-2026 budget.
“It’s a drop in the bucket,” said Amaya. “It’s clear that they are more motivated by economics, than protecting public health. The ports can invest a lot more to ensure that they are reducing and eliminating the harm to communities, but instead they choose to focus on increasing the amount of cargo that’s coming through the ports.”
“Our South Bay/San Pedro & Wilmington most impacted neighborhoods need more guarantees for our children & elderly who are at risk if the Twin PORTS/LA/LB don’t live up to its said expectations,” said Ricardo Pulido, with Coalition For A Safe Environment. “We must keep the POLA/LB feet to the fire and make sure industry keeps its commitment for now and forever more!”
Others took a softer tone, while still stressing the need to do more.
“We’re glad to see the San Pedro Bay Ports and South Coast AQMD commit to enhancing incentives that’ll attract the world’s cleanest vessels,” said Cristhian Tapia-Delgado, climate campaigner for Southern California at Pacific Environment. “The cancer-causing emissions from these diesel vessels and harbor craft are felt deeply by those living near the port. The Cooperative Agreement must be a start, not an end, to strategies by the state agency and ports to clean up our air.”
“The community still wants real and quantifiable emissions reductions. Without the state and federal regulatory frameworks which were responsible for historical port emissions reductions, the ports must now prove that their words speak truth and their actions demonstrate it,” said Dori Chandler, policy advocate with the Coalition for Clean Air. “Profits should be put back to protecting people — let’s follow the money on where POLA’s actual priorities lie.”
“While encouraging to see the ports coordinating with SCAQMD to clean the air and reduce emissions, it is problematic that on-dock rail is missing from the cooperative agreement,” said Alison Hahm, a staff attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) “This is a missed opportunity and step back from SCAQMD’s initial [ISR] rule concept. Port communities should not be forced to choose between good health and economic activity. We can have both. I hope the Ports and SCAQMD quickly shift from planning to achieving emission reductions. Everyone has the right to live and breathe with dignity.”
Amaya drilled down into specific concerns.
“There are no measures that are addressing the emissions coming from on dock rail. There’s also nothing to address the emissions coming from cargo handling equipment or from harbor craft,” she said. “We were hoping to see an expansion of the clean truck fund rate and have a Clean Freight Fee in order to collect incentive funding going towards electric zero-emission harbor craft, locomotives, cargo handling equipment, ships, and for supporting infrastructure. Currently, incentives are only for trucks, which is great, but we need action on more than just trucks.”
In addition, “Having electric on-dock rail and also funding for electrification of the Alameda corridor were some of our other asks,” she said. “It was designed to be electric, but unfortunately there hasn’t been any investment into the actual electrification of the Alameda corridor.”
And of course, ‘We also wanted to see periodic public health impact assessments so that there is transparency into the health impacts our communities are experiencing and how that’s changing over time.”
Summing up, Amaya said, “It’s hard to see how this will lead to emission reductions when there are so many different development and expansion projects going on at the ports where we’re expected to see bigger ships, more cargo, which in turn leads to more trucks, more trains, more warehouses in our communities…. The ports at a certain point stop factoring emissions into their emissions inventory, but that pollution doesn’t disappear — we’re still left to breathe polluted air in our communities.”
Golden put it more bluntly. “Its not a smart move when it comes to protecting the health and welfare of this community,” he said. “We should not have to give up our lives.”
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