Shortly after the Port of Los Angeles agreed to require air quality improvements at one of its busiest terminals seven years ago, top port officials privately began rolling back pollution-cutting measures they promised, according to government records obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The city-owned port gave China Shipping North America permission to ignore some of the emissions-reduction requirements the city agreed to impose as part of a highly publicized legal 2004 settlement with environmentalists and homeowners near the complex, The Times reported.
As a condition of allowing the company to expand its terminal in 2008, the port had pledged to transform it into a “green” operation through a series of measures to reduce harmful emissions from diesel trucks, container ships and cargo-handling equipment. In September, the port disclosed it has failed to carry out several requirements.
Port records obtained by The Times under the California Public Records Act show that just a few months after the city approved the expansion, Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the port at the time, assured China Shipping that it would face no consequences for violating a major requirement: Instead of idling diesel-powered engines while docked, at least 70 percent of its ships would have to plug into shore-based electricity, known as Alternative Maritime Power.
“The Port will not hold China Shipping responsible for any outcome as a result of not meeting the 70 percent AMP requirement,” Knatz wrote in an April 2009 letter to the company, according to The Times.
Subsequent letters from Knatz show the port formally waived the shore power rules as they became more stringent in 2011. The port extended the waivers until state regulators began requiring the practice in 2014. The letters and other documents show that top officials at the port were for years aware of the shortcomings at the 130-acre terminal near the Vincent Thomas Bridge and leased to China Shipping, according to The Times.
Staff members kept track as the company violated a series of mandates to deploy cleaner natural-gas fueled trucks, less-polluting yard equipment and to slow down ships as they approach to cut emissions of diesel particulate matter, a carcinogen, and other lung-damaging pollutants, The Times reported. Port employees also tallied the tens of millions of dollars it would cost the company to fully comply.
