In Major U.S. Ports, the Cleanup Begins
Every day, thousands of decrepit diesel trucks carry containers of goods from giant cargo ships at the Port of New York and New Jersey to warehouses and distribution centers scattered across the sprawling metropolitan area. For decades, communities adjacent to these ports have had to bear the burden of the pollution from the antiquated trucking fleets and the consequent health effects, including increased rates of asthma, cancer, and heart and lung disease. David Pettit, director of NRDC's Southern California air program, has called the nation's ports places "where old trucks go to die."
Meanwhile, every ship that sails into port uses fuel that contains 3,000 times as much sulfur as those dirty diesel trucks, creating region-wide pollution problems. Rich Kassel, director of the clean fuels and vehicles project at NRDC, describes these ships as "floating smokestacks." They burn a low-grade form of oil called residual bunker fuel, which contains up to 45,000 parts per million of sulfur, and almost all of the vessels lack even the most basic pollution controls. With the inevitable increase in global trade, these problems will only get worse: container volume at the Port of New York and New Jersey is expected to double by 2020 and triple by 2030.
"We all want what we want, when we want it," Kassel says, "but we rarely think about the pollution involved in getting us that new pair of shoes or that flat-screen TV."
In seeking to alleviate these dual health threats -- hazardous emissions from cargo ships and from the trucks that service them -- NRDC recently played a leading role in two major breakthroughs.
As of January 1, 2011, the oldest, most polluting trucks servicing the New York and New Jersey ports will finally be laid to rest, thanks to the Clean Trucks Program, a collaboration of the Port Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NRDC, and industry and labor groups. (A similar program was recently implemented successfully at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.) Under the terms of the plan for the Port of New York and New Jersey, all pre-1994 trucks servicing the port -- about 636 vehicles -- will be replaced by newer, cleaner models. This step alone will reduce soot pollution from trucks by two-thirds and smog-forming nitrogen oxides by half. To facilitate the transition, the Port Authority and the EPA will provide truck drivers with $28 million in direct grants for up to 25 percent of the purchase price of new vehicles, as well as low-interest loans to cover the remaining costs.
"Nobody drives an old truck because they like the fumes," notes Kassel, who co-chaired the negotiations that led to the new program. "They drive them because they can't afford to buy newer ones."
The plan also stipulates that by 2017, all trucks at the port will be required to meet 2007 standards. The trucks' new engines, which are 95 percent cleaner than older models, are certified to meet the most rigorous pollution standards in the world.
Replacing old trucks at the ports is crucial to protecting the health of nearby communities, but to address the larger regional impacts, something had to be done about the shipping industry itself. For several years, Kassel urged the EPA to focus on ship emissions, and in 2008, the agency adopted new rules regulating pollution from fishing boats and tugboats. But it would take international action to address the problem of cargo ships.
On March 26, the International Maritime Organization, the only body with the authority to regulate international ship pollution, adopted a proposal by the U.S. and Canadian governments to create an emissions control area (ECA) around the two countries. The plan, which begins in 2015, requires all oceangoing vessels within 200 nautical miles of the nations' coastlines to use fuel with 98 percent less sulfur and to be outfitted with pollution controls to cut smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 percent and cancer-causing particulate emissions by 85 percent.
The EPA calculates that implementing the ECA will prevent as many as 14,000 premature deaths in the United States each year by 2020 and provide relief to five million people who suffer from acute respiratory symptoms. The financial benefits of implementing this measure are projected to exceed the costs by a ratio of 34 to 1.
"This is a major public health victory," says Kassel, a member of the U.S. delegation, "and a huge move forward in developing a system that will continue to get Americans what they want, when they want it, but in a cleaner, more sustainable way."