Tuesday’s Long Beach Harbor Commission approval of a five-year plan to clean up diesel truck pollution by 2012 will forever change the faces of the truckers hauling your food, flat-screen TVs and furniture.
The question, as the Port’s first deadline for potential polluters looms–Oct. 1, the date when pre-1989 rigs will become verboten–is how.

People finally seem to have had it up to here with the Port of Long Beach, which has been excreting toxins into the local environment with ever-more-tragic consequences for decades. Lately, they are counterattacking from every direction that the pollution spews.
Today it’s from the air. Two environmental groups have written a 12-page letter [to read it, click here] to [...]

Port cargo container fees to pay for cleaner-running trucks
The Long Beach Harbor Commission has approved charging fees of $35 or $70 on every container entering or leaving the Port of Long Beach by diesel truck, starting next year.
The money–an estimated $1.6 billion per year by the measure’s end in 2012–will help pay for cleaner-running, short-haul [...]

Air pollution and the port
The Port of Long Beach adopted new rules regulating truck emissions earlier this week. It’s part of a joint effort with the Port of Los Angeles to limit vehicle-produced air pollution.
But the trucks, of course, are just one source of air pollution at the ports– what about the ships? A new [...]