By Dr. Jim Fawcett; Seaport Specialist and USC Sea Grant Director of Extension
Published February 27, 2019
The air quality polices developed jointly by the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have been at the forefront of a worldwide move toward cleaner seaport operations. Since almost all equipment, including ships, in modern seaports operate on diesel powered internal combusion engines, the exhaust from those engines degrades air quality in regions around ports. In the case of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the problem is exacerbated by the ring of mountains surrounding the Los Angeles basin that trap emissions blown in from the ports by the prevailing westerly winds.
Los Angeles and Long Beach is the busiest port complex in the U.S. with close to 45% of all marine freight entering the county here. The ports are the largest single source of air pollution in Southern California and pollution from port operations such as deisel ships, trucks, trains, and cargo handling equipment leads to lower local and regional air quality and increased health risks including asthma and lung cancer.
In the early 2000’s, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the twin ports negotiated an agreement that the ports would develop an air quality plan for their operations. The Clean Air Action Plan includes a clean truck program, vessel pollution reduction programs, and new emission-reduction technologies (learn more here.) Since 2005, these policies have resulted in significantly lower emissions of key pollutants from port operations (sources: 2017 CAAP Update, 2017 Inventory of Air Emissions and 2017 Air Quality Report Card).
The Clean Air Action Plan specifies responsibilities for the ports as well as for terminal operators and for the myriad of ships that call the ports home from all over the world. As a result, other seaports have studied the plan to envision how they might develop similar plans to reduce emissions.
Among countries developing similar policies, the Chinese government released its air pollution plan called, “Three-year Action Plan for Winning the Blue Sky War,” the most far-reaching environmental policy in recent memory. Although the plan applies to the entirety of the nation, seaport managers, especially from the busy seaports on China’s southeast coast at Ningbo-Zhoushan, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are similarly challanged by air emissions from diesel–powered equipment and ships. A few hundred kilometers north lies the world’s largest inland seaport located on the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province at Nanjing along the east central coast of China and it, too, struggles with the same air quality dilemmas.
Accordingly, in mid-January 2019, the port in Nanjing sent a delegation of a dozen high ranking officials from a variety of regulatory bureaus to California to study how our seaports have managed to tame the dragon of air pollution. I was part of a suite of seaport management experts from the ports and academia that met with the officials to explain the process of air quality management and show them results on the ground.
Through a translator, I explained the governance of the twin ports and the process of managing air quality. What evolved was a marvelous and spirited cross-cultural discussion of what could be done to make similar policies function in Nanjing. In this global industry, it was clear that the same questions and dilemmas face port management experts regardless of location. The nature of the industry defines the issues and the discussion included how port managers could negotiate with the industry to lessen the impacts of operation. The participants emerged from the discussion with an appreciation of the shared challenges and opportunities to reduce air pollution in dense urban areas.
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Dr. James Fawcett has conducted extensive research on seaports and coastal management and teaches in the Environmental Studies Program and the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California.