WASHINGTON, DC, May 29, 2008 (ENS) – Two of the largest U.S. ports are among 11 winners of this year’s U.S. EPA Clean Air Excellence Awards honoring innovative efforts that make progress in achieving cleaner air.

“This year’s Clean Air Excellence Award winners’ dedication to creating a cleaner tomorrow is truly a breath of fresh air,” said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, announcing this year’s awards on Wednesday.

“From local to state governments, companies to citizen groups, these award-winners are helping EPA deliver healthier air and healthier lives to all Americans,” Johnson said. They will be recognized by the EPA at a ceremony in Washington, DC.

The awards were established in 2000, at the recommendation of the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, a senior-level policy group that advises tne EPA on implementing the Clean Air Act. There are four categories of awards: clean air technology, community action, education/outreach, and regulatory policy innovations, with one special award for individual achievement.

This year’s Southern California winner is for regulatory policy innovations at the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles, which share San Pedro Bay.

The ports developed the five year San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan outlining strategies to reduce air emissions and associated health risks from heavy-duty vehicles, oceangoing vessels, cargo-handling equipment, harbor craft, and railroad locomotives involved in port operations. The plan will serve as a model for other ports to follow in the future.

Container ships at the Port of Los Angeles (Photo
courtesy Environmental Health
Perspectives)

Both ports now have berths equipped with cleaner shore-power so ships can turn off their engines while docked. They have committed $10 million to replace all Pacific Harbor Line locomotives with cleaner units this year.

The ports are encouraging vessels to slow to 12 knots when they are within 20 nautical miles of Point Fermin, which reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.

Their Clean Trucks Program requires that all trucks calling at the ports meet the 2007 on-road standard by 2012.

Earlier this month, the Port of Los Angeles debuted the world’s most powerful electric truck. The heavy-duty electric short-haul drayage truck – the first of its kind at any port worldwide – can pull a 60,000-pound cargo container at a top speed of 40 mph.

Future widespread application of a fleet of electric trucks would be especially useful at the Port of Los Angeles because more than two million truck drayage trips take place between the port terminals and rail and warehouse facilities within five to 10 miles of San Pedro Bay every year.

On Wednesday, as their award was announced, the ports were sponsoring the first San Pedro Bay Ports Technology Conference, bringing together entrepreneurs, financial and legal experts, officials from the two ports and other stakeholders to talk about technological challenges and opportunities in the fields of air quality and energy efficiency, which go hand-in-hand.

“Implementing new clean-air technologies can’t happen without strategic partnerships,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Richard Steinke. “This conference will help create those partnerships, and in turn produce a greener goods-movement system to benefit the entire maritime industry and our local communities.”

A related Clean Air Award for innovative technology goes to the Foss Maritime Company for introducing the first hybrid diesel-electric tugboat.This hybrid tug will reduce emissions of hazardous and toxic air pollutants by combining modern batteries and an active power management system to minimize engine use.

The hybrid tug’s modular design can be applied as a retrofit to existing tugboats and the tug can incorporate future energy storage improvements in battery technology and hydrogen fuel cells.

Foss Maritime Company began constructing the hybrid tugboat in August 2007 and will deliver it to San Pedro Harbor in 2008.

The other Clean Air Award Winners are:

Technology
Texas Instruments, Texas, and Matros Technologies, Missouri – These companies pioneered the use of catalytic materials for improved abatement of volatile organic compounds in the semiconductor industry

Regulatory/Policy Innovations
Gila River Indian Community Air Quality Management Plan, Arizona – The Gila River Indian Community is the first tribe in the country to develop a multi-program Air Quality Management Plan. The tribe’s Department of Environmental Quality Air Quality Program Team created the most comprehensive plan developed by a tribe to regulate air quality under the Clean Air Act. The Plan was enacted into tribal law in December 2006.

Community Action
Project Green Fleet – The Minnesota Environmental Initiative reduced children’s exposure to school bus diesel emissions by retrofitting hundreds of buses.

Northern Wood Power Project – Public Services of New Hampshire reduced coal consumption and air emissions by changing a coal-burning boiler for a wood-burning boiler.

Education/Outreach
Life is a Breath of Fresh Air, Alabama, Auntie Litter, Inc. – This performance initiative has educated the community on the harmful effects of low-level ozone and particle pollution through youth-targeted outreach, such as children’s rap music and skits.

Spare the Air in Greenville County, South Carolina – Greenville County’s education outreach has implemented a campaign to improve air quality through multiple media outlets, such as public presentations and booths at festivals.

Drive Clean Across Texas Campaign – A partnership between the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality promotes improvements in air quality through behavioral changes of drivers. The campaign, focusing on nine urban areas in Texas with poor air quality, has five simple messages: maintain your vehicle; drive less; buy a cleaner vehicle; drive the speed limit; and reduce idling.

Georgia Radon Education Program – The University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences prevents radon-induced lung cancer through education, testing, and the reduction of radon in indoor air.

Thomas W. Zosel Outstanding Individual Achievement Award
The late Dr. Joseph T. Ling is being celebrated for his holistic approach to environmental management.

In 1975, Dr. Ling launched 3M’s Pollution Prevention Pays program, which seeks to eliminate pollution at the source through product reformulation, process modification, equipment redesign, and the recycling and reuse of waste materials.

Since its introduction, the program has prevented more than 2.6 billion pounds of first year pollutants with more than 565 million pounds coming from the prevention of emissions to air, according to the EPA.

Dr. Ling’s work has had an international impact. After first presenting his ideas in 1976 at a conference sponsored by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Sweden adopted pollution prevention as a formal part of their environmental policies.

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BOULDER, Colorado, February 6, 2008 (ENS) – Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping are bad and getting worse, finds a new study of U.S. ports. Yet, cleaner fuel programs to counteract the pollution problem are progressing now at several of the ports under study, particularly in California.

Oceangoing container ships make more than 10,000 visits to ports in the United States each year, burning heavy bunker fuel that pollutes the air around port facilities. As goods move along the transport chain, diesel powered trucks and cargo handling equipment belch more pollution into the air.

In fact, U.S. ports are among the biggest sources of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in their cities, and progress toward reducing harmful emissions has been slow, according to a study conducted by Energy Futures, Inc., a private company based in Boulder.

Titled “U.S. Container Ports and Air Pollution: a Perfect Storm,” the report on the study presents findings of a 10 month effort in 2007 that assessed air pollution control efforts at America’s top 10 container ports.

A container cargo vessel leaves
the Port of Long Beach, California.
(Photo courtesy Port of Long Beach)

Study author and Energy Futures President James Cannon made on-site research visits to each of the ports, which together handle about 80 percent of all U.S. imports.

Ports included in the study were the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland in California, New York and neighboring New Jersey; Savannah, Georgia; the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; Hampton Roads, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Houston, Texas.

Container ports are one of the fastest growing business sectors in the United States, with container shipments rising 80 percent in the last decade alone. Nearly 45 million container units were unloaded or loaded at U.S. marine ports in 2006.

Each step of the goods movement process is powered by diesel fuel, which releases greenhouse gases and toxic, smog-forming air contaminants.

But Cannon found that all 10 container ports in the study have diesel emission reduction programs in place, collectively spending millions of dollars in public and private funds.

Cannon found the ports using newer diesel engines that pollute less, installing of pollution control equipment and switching to grades of diesel fuel containing lower sulfur content.

Still, ports pose “grave health risks” to millions of people living in metropolitan coastal areas, especially those living nearest the ports, Cannon reports.

“The combination of growing U.S. port activity, the densely populated regions where most ports are located, and the prevailing onshore wind patterns that accumulate rather than disperse port air pollution create a perfect storm of threats to public health,” he said.

“We’ve concluded that the best way to lower air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and diversify fuel supply at U.S. container ports is to use alternative fuels or advanced technologies to replace diesel,” Cannon advises.

The study found that natural gas is currently the leading alternative fuel for goods movement, and six projects are currently underway in California to deploy fleets of natural gas-powered cargo handling vehicles.

The largest port in the country, the Port of Los Angeles, has taken a proactive position to recognize and reduce the impacts of greenhouse gases in the port area, says Geraldine Knatz, the port’s executive director.

That attitude has been recognized, On January 30, the Port of Los Angeles announced it has earned the designation “Climate Action Leader” from the California Climate Action Registry, the first port in the state with this distinction.

The Leader status was granted the Port of Los Angeles upon acceptance of its 2006 baseline greenhouse gas emission inventory by the California Climate Action Registry, a non-profit public-private partnership that serves as a voluntary greenhouse gas registry to protect, encourage and promote early actions to reduce global warming emissions.

“The Port of Los Angeles voluntarily tracked greenhouse gas emissions and created a baseline from which we are able to gauge changes in the gases going forward,” said Katz. “This is just one more step to show the region, state and country how serious we are about greening and growing the Port of Los Angeles.”

A project to develop a new, low-emission, liquefied natural gas-fueled truck engine will receive a $250,000 grant from the Port of Long Beach and an equal amount from the Port of Los Angeles.

The funds will support a project by Westport Power Inc. to create, test and certify a heavy-duty liquid natural gas engine by late 2008 to meets strict 2010 emission limits on smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Westport estimates that each LNG truck will cut nitrogen oxides by half a ton a year compared to diesel trucks of the same model year.

To clear the air around the nation’s ports, alternative fuels are a good start, says Cannon, who also recommends development of a national port cleanup strategy at the federal level supported by a national funding mechanism.

But neither of those measures is in place, and today, frustrated with “empty promises to clean up port operations” the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, and the Coalition For A Safe Environment, CFASE, announced plans to file a lawsuit against the Port of Long Beach.

In a letter delivered to the port today, the two environmental groups give port officials 90 days to take enforceable steps to clean up the diesel pollution generated by its operations, or face the lawsuit.

“We are tired of listening to the port authorities saying all the right things, but doing very little,” said David Pettit, a senior attorney with NRDC and director of NRDC’s Southern California Air Program. “It is time for a new approach, so the kids can breathe without inhalers and the elders can live to an old age.”

“Port-related diesel emissions cause thousands of preventable hospital visits for asthma, heart attacks, strokes and other ailments every year, including many that prove fatal,” said Jesse Marquez, chair of CFASE. “But because the victims of pollution die quietly, nobody pays attention to them. This has got to stop.”

The lawsuit would be brought under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a federal law that allows a federal court to order a polluter to stop causing harm to the public and to the environment if an imminent and substantial endangerment can be shown.

According to the California Air Resources Board, the current health impact associated with port-related goods movement and other port activities in California is close to $19 billion a year, in 2005 dollars.

The groups point to official data showing that each $1 invested in cleaning or preventing pollution returns between $3 and $8 in avoided costs for healthcare and lost workdays.

To view the report, “U.S. Container Ports and Air Pollution: a Perfect Storm,” visit www.energy-futures.com.

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