FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 28, 2010

CONTACT: Paul Karr, 917-208-5155, [email protected]; Mike McKeon, 917-270-8652, [email protected]

New York Environmental, Labor Advocates Call For Enforceable Clean Air Standards to Make Polluting Industry Pay to Clean Up Port Operations

NEW YORK –The local chapter of a coast-to-coast coalition of thousands of port truck drivers and 145 environmental, public health, labor, faith, business, community, and consumer advocacy organizations today intensified calls for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to scrap a plan that forces taxpayers and truck drivers to foot the bill for replacing dirty trucks come January, instead of giant shipping and trucking companies.

“Even the most minimal clean truck standards will not work if the Port Authority downgrades them to voluntary,” said Amy Goldsmith, the head of the New Jersey Environmental Federation and chair of the coalition. “We are incredibly disheartened that industry polluters are standing in the way of the most effective and sustainable clean truck initiative possible.”

The urging came after news broke last week that a local arm of the American Trucking Associations, the nation’s largest trucking lobby, has challenged an environmental enforcement mechanism in a limited plan to dole out $28 million in public and federal dollars to low-income truck drivers to replace a mere 8% of the 7,000 polluting port vehicles. According to Land Line, the Port Authority responded by revising their truck monitoring plans.

The nationwide coalition is seeking to replicate a comprehensive EPA-award winning Los Angeles Clean Truck Program in East Coast ports. A federal judge recently rejected the trucking association’s bid and ruled the program legal, prompting hopes it can be a model as part of a broad effort to reduce toxic diesel pollution at major container ports around the country.

To help port officials avoid future costly legal hurdles, advocates have also worked to amend federal law so that local port agencies have the explicit authority to adopt and enforce environmental regulation to comply with federal clean air standards, and pave the way for future expansion projects, critical for green job creation. Mayor Bloomberg has endorsed the bill, H.R. 5967, and emphasized his support in a letter to the New York City Council at a hearing on the issue today.

“Today, it’s more important than ever to pass the Clean Ports Act, legislation I introduced in order to clarify once and for all federal law on clean truck programs,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), whose bill has attracted 90 House co-sponsors. “In order to protect thousands of truck drivers and port workers, and the millions of Americans who live near ports, we need to ensure that ports and cities across the country can enforce tough pollution-reducing emissions controls.”

Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) agreed. “Keeping our ports clean is critical not only to ensure the sustainability of this critical New York industry. It is also our responsibility to the men and women who work at the ports every day and those who live in the surrounding areas to ensure working conditions are safe and promote a healthy environment.”

Without federal legislation, environmentalists and workers’ rights advocates argue that the powerful trucking and shipping industries, with ties to Big Oil, will continue waging legal battles to force the cost of clean trucks onto the backs of low-income truck drivers, and ultimately weaken clean air goals meant to protect the public from the dangerous consequences of dirty diesel trucks.

The trucking lobby’s efforts to skirt responsibility for the cost of cleaner commerce is also undermining forward looking businesses ready to compete responsibly in the green economy. “If these drivers were in a position to purchase and care for environmentally-friendly trucks with their current wages, the air pollution that threatens to impede our growth and efficiency wouldn’t be an issue in the first place,” said Matt Yates, Director of Commercial Operations at American Stevedoring. “Modernizing the port is a long-term investment that merits real capital and real commitment between port authorities and private businesses – not workers behind the wheel.”

“I need a clean truck because my two children need a healthy dad, not a sick dad,” said Raul De La Cruz, a resident of the Bronx and a six year veteran of the port trucking industry. “But the Port Authority’s clean truck plan won’t work because it makes individual port truck drivers like me pay for the cost of newer, cleaner trucks – and not the trucking companies that we work for.”

At issue for Raul and 110,000 port drivers nationwide is the controversial market structure and profit-maximizing strategy that has dominated port trucking in the three decades since deregulation, in which trucking companies and their retail shipper clients transport imported goods via a contracted driver workforce who own and operate their own rigs. Individual drivers – labeled “independent” by the firms they haul for and impoverished according to several credible studies – must assume all costs and liability associated with port trucking. Given the age of vehicles these low-wage workers can afford, U.S. seaports are dubbed “the place where old trucks go to die.”

“Affordable clean truck technology exists,” says Soledad Gaztambide Arandes, from UPROSE, an environmental justice organization working in Brooklyn’s port adjacent communities. “But technology doesn’t do us any good if trucking companies force $10-an-hour workers like Raul to purchase and properly maintain emissions-compliant vehicles that run upwards of $100,000. The Port of Los Angeles gets it, leading economists and elected leaders get it, and now it’s time for the Port Authority to get tough on these industry polluters so they take responsibility for clean fleet investment.”

In March the New Jersey chapter of the American Trucking Associations also publicly threatened to sue the Port Authority over its truck ban. Advocates point out this obstruction is crippling environmentally sustainable, economically sound clean truck plans. Rather than replicate Los Angeles’ success, port officials coast to coast are developing piecemeal plans to avoid litigation – making the urgency for the Clean Ports Act greater.

“The Port of Los Angeles has fought to protect their program from the trucking industry,” said the Sierra Club’s Tom Politeo, a port resident in Southern California. “And the facts are clear – in less than two years Los Angeles put 8,500 clean trucks into service and cut emissions by 80%. It’s a sustainable program worth fighting for.”