Rush for Clean Air In Long Beach

I have always admired the Port of Long Beach's award winning media outreach team. They were recently awarded several prestigious honors at the "Excellence in Communication" awards hosted by the California Association of Public Information Officials (CAPIO). Their media team is especially effective at promoting Port of Long Beach operations. While some components of the port are easy to promote -- e.g. jobs, its position as one of the busiest ports in the world, and several other key components of its commerce -- there are several aspects of its operations that are hard to spin. Specifically, the immense public health impacts resulting from the ports' operations are a hard pill to swallow. For example, according to CARB's estimates, approximately 10 people die prematurely from pollution associated with the ports and good movement system each day in California (approximately 3,700 premature deaths from fine particulate matter from goods movement in 2005). Keeping people distracted from this hard fact is not an easy task. And, this recent award shows the Port of Long Beach's cunning skill at doing so.   

Now, I am not going to dispute that this is a different port than the one residents, NRDC, the Coalition for Clean Air, California Earth Corp, and several others went up against in 2004 when it tried to present a completely inadequate expansion plan (i.e. Pier J) that did little to anything to mitigate the serious impacts on residents in Long Beach and the region in general. Under the leadership of the Boards of Harbor Commissioners, the ports have come a long way, but this movement only resulted because the social imperative is so great. 

Environmentalists and community advocates are often criticized by goods movement industry lobbyists for "changing the goal line" in demanding too much protection for the public from deadly port pollution. This football analogy must be a bullet point on some set of widely distributed media talking points because I hear it at least once a month from different people. However, these cries from industry and the ports fail to incorporate the fact that the ports just entered into the stadium. Even though, getting the ports into the stadium was a huge effort full of blood, sweat, and tears, they have not even fielded the ball yet. The work needed to prevent the approximately 10 people dying prematurely each day is immense. And, it is my job to push the ports and other goods movement polluters to reduce that impact. The goal line is air that meets federal clean air standards, and until the ports and industry are willing to come to the table to discuss meeting that goal, we will continue to push until that goal is a reality. There has been recent movement to achieving clean air by the ports, but we are far from a place where harbor area residents will breathe clean air.      

This is all relevant because the Port of Long Beach recently approved the Middle Harbor Development Project. Surely, proponents of this project will likely send their media attack dogs after us for appealing this project to elected leaders on the Long Beach City Council. They will likely say we hate puppies and have other horrible attributes. This tactic will be designed to distract from the substance of the appeal. We are simply asking that the port protect public health, reduce its impacts in the harbor area and beyond, and take the challenges of global warming more seriously. The fact of the matter is that the port has a lot more work ahead of it to reduce its immense impacts. Our goal is not to delay this project, but rather to make it better. Instead of relying on its award-winning media team to fight us in this effort, we hope the commission and port staff will work with us to create a win-win solution. I invite the port to work with us to get a first down.