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Clean air is not only an environmental issue, but also a quality of life issue. Under Mayor Villaraigosa, Los Angeles has made considerable improvements in air quality, especially around LA's Port – the largest point-source polluter in the region – by securing passage and implementation of a landmark clean air plan.
The cornerstone of the world’s most comprehensive, sustainable plan to clean up a major port, the Clean Trucks Program requires all 16,000 dirty diesel trucks at the Port of Los Angeles – trucks that cause some of the worst pollution in the Harbor area – to meet some of the toughest environmental standards in the nation.
In November 2007, the Mayor and Harbor Commission set a five-year timetable for the greening of the 16,000 trucks now serving the Ports, requiring all trucks to be replaced or retrofitted to meet 2007 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency diesel truck emissions standards by 2012 and cutting truck diesel emissions by 80 percent.
In June 2008, the Port laid the financial groundwork to pay for the retrofitting by collecting a $35 fee for every container entering or leaving the Ports on a truck, and officially launched the Clean Trucks Program on October 1, 2008.
Together, the neighboring Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – which handle 44 percent of all container goods entering America – are the world’s fifth busiest port complex by container volume and are expected to see container volumes triple by 2020. The Ports account for more than 20 percent of the toxic air emissions in the South Coast Air Basin – and more smog and particulate-forming nitrogen oxide emissions than all 6 million cars in the region, according the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
In order to address health and environmental issues, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, under the leadership of Mayor Villaraigosa, adopted the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) in November 2006. This is a comprehensive plan to address and curb emissions from port-related sources - ships, trains, trucks, terminal equipment and harbor craft.
The CAAP will cut port-related emissions by 45 percent or more over a five-year period, including: 47 percent reduction in diesel particulate matter; 45 percent reduction in nitrogen oxides; 52 percent reduction in sulfur oxides.
The CAAP relies on pollution-based impact fees, ensuring the worst polluters pay their part to improve air quality. It encourages ships entering and exiting the harbor to reduce speed limits and use low-sulfur, clean-burning fuels to minimize diesel emissions in the area. It calls for cargo ships to shut down dirty diesel-powered auxiliary engines while docked and instead use shore-side electricity by 2016. It also commits to eliminating dirty trucks by helping finance a generation of clean big-rigs.
The CAAP is well underway to cleaning the air around our port and has become a model for port cleanups around the world.
Los Angeles was the first city to incorporate fuel-cell vehicles into its fleet and owns the nation's largest municipal alternative-fuel refuse truck fleet. The Mayor's strategy is to convert 85 percent of all City fleet vehicles powered by alternative fuels by FY 2012-2013 and to have 100 percent of all refuse collection trucks and street sweepers converted by 2010.