Tomorrow, the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) will hear, in closed session, a report from its staff that may urge the Commissioners to approve filing a lawsuit against the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to enjoin the entire or parts of the ports' clean trucks programs.  As has been written before, the programs will help improve the awful air pollution problem in the neighborhoods surrounding the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.  The NRDC, the Coalition for Clean Air, and Sierra Club are currently helping to defend against a lawsuit by the American Trucking Associations that seeks to kill the clean-air efforts.

The FMC claims jurisdiction over various agreements that the ports enter into, including the trucking programs.  NRDC, the Coalition for Clean Air, and Sierra Club petitioned the FMC, cautioning not to take any action that would attempt to destroy the environmental benefits of the ports' trucking plans without first complying with several environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Clean Air Act, and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.  In response, the FMC staff claimed that potential actions that the FMC may take to interfere with the Ports implementation of the clean trucks programs is exempt from NEPA.  It failed to address the other laws.  For these reasons, we are concerned that an agency based in D.C. may be attempting to impair the health of the hundreds of thousands of people impacted by port trucking.  In addition to port trucking, this newly founded policy position of the FMC has immense consequences for future environmental mitigation programs that ports may adopt.

Because of this, NRDC, Coalition for Clean Air, and Sierra Club filed an appeal of the FMC staff's dismissal of the environmental groups' comments on environmental laws. The health of port industry workforce, children and residents across Southern California is at stake: We would hope that this federal agency would seriously consider the gravity of our appeal and the scientific evidence we presented demonstrating the need to clean up deadly trucking pollution. 

If the Commissioners and Commission staff don't, federal judges may be asking them why not.