California Apparel News

If 2004 was the year of congestion at L.A.’s port complex and 2005 was the year of solution, what does that make 2006?

If longshoremen, politicians and community activists have their way, it will be the year of balancing the environment to adjust to years of double-digit growth in ocean freight arriving in Southern California.

The environment and the ports was the main theme of the 8th annual “State of the Trade and Transportation Industry Town Hall Meeting” organized by the Center for International Trade and Transportation at California State University, Long Beach0 on March 15.

Cargo volume at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest port area in the United States, could triple by 2020. That means more trucks will be moving up and down the freeways, more ships will be emitting diesel fumes into the atmosphere and more trains will be moving in and out of the ports, increasing pollution by 60 percent if unchecked.

Two trends portend years of growth at the two ports, which handled 14.1 million 20-foot containers last year, an 8 percent increase over 2004.

More manufacturers, particularly apparel companies and electronics firms, are producing their goods in Asia. And more megaships handling twice the volume of normal ships are being built to bring in 10,000 20-foot containers at a time. These massive ships need deeper channels to sail in, taller bridges to sail under and more acreage to store offloaded containers. Those amenities are more likely to be found at the Los Angeles ports, which either have deeper channels or are in the process of dredging deeper channels than most West Coast ports.

A panel of experts tried to tackle the environmental problem and suggest ways to pay for it. Some of the solutions included having ships use cleaner diesel fuel, replacing aging commercial trucks that transport cargo around the ports and using more electrically powered equipment on the docks. Some suggested that shippers should be charged some kind of fee on their cargo to offset the cost of improving the environment.

Joe Gasperov, president of Local 63 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, noted that local dockworkers not only labor in the polluted port environment but often live in the neighborhoods surrounding the ports. “A recent study said that 70 percent of the cancer in our area is linked to diesel emissions and most of that is coming from vessels,” Gasperov said. “Our goal is to reduce ship emissions by 20 percent by 2010.”

With that in mind, the ILWU in late January launched a green initiative for West Coast ports. The longshore union is asking ships to use cleaner burning fuels, retrofit engines, use better technology, reduce vessel speeds when entering the harbor to lower emissions and plug into electrical outlets when docked, a procedure called cold ironing, instead of running on diesel engine power.

“We are going to reach out and get the support from longshoremen unions throughout the world such as the ITF [International Transport Workers] to get on board to clean up the vessels and strengthen the international policies out there,” Gasperov noted.

The Port of Long Beach has taken several steps to clean up its environment with its Green Port Policy adopted in early 2005. The program calls for the port to reduce its fossil-fuel dependence by using hybrid vehicles on the docks. Also, the port wants to provide shore power to all new and existing container terminals so all ships can plug into the terminals once they are retrofitted.

Patty Senecal, speaking for the California Trucking Association (CTA), said the Sacramento-based industry group has proposed phasing out all trucks manufactured before 1993 to improve air quality around the ports.

The initiative, which would have to be approved by California’s Legislature, could be implemented as early as 2007. It lets truckers register their pre-1994 trucks for three years before taking them off the road.

“Trucks need to be more efficient. They need to be processed faster at the ports and at our customers’ docks,” said Senecal, who is also vice president of sales and marketing at Transport Express Inc., a Los Angeles trucking company that serves the port region.

Senecal noted that 10,000 to 12,000 individually owned trucks operate at the ports, which makes it increasingly important to improve the performance of commercial trucks serving the complex. “This is the largest concentration of trucks anywhere in the world in such a small footprint,” Senecal said. “So it is a very fragmented market, which is very difficult to move into a future forward concept.”

The CTA’s proposal complements a truck-replacement program proposed last year by the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, a joint powers authority that encompasses 27 cities around the port complex. Gateway Cities’ program is targeting pre-1983 trucks that serve the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. The voluntary program provides monetary incentives averaging $25,000 for owners of old trucks to purchase trucks made after 1993 whose cost averages $32,000 to $35,000. Truck drivers must come up with the rest of the money. The program is funded through grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Cleaning up pollution costs money. Several experts wondered if shippers might be willing to pay an additional fee, ranging from $60 to $200 per 40-foot container, to have their cargo processed at the ports.

John Ficker, president of the National Industrial Transportation League, a freight transportation group in Arlington, Va., said shippers would only be willing to pay an additional fee if they saw their goods processed efficiently and effectively. “It comes down to value,” Ficker said. “That value has to be clearly demonstrable to the user. It can’t be putting a new fee that goes into a general fund. It has to be money specially directed to the movement of those goods.”