Bridges over Troubled Politics
The day Antonio couldn't find a friend
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's last-minute objections last week to a port cleanup bill deemed a "top priority" by environmentalists and a tax burden by the business community shows just how hard it can be to reduce pollution at the ever-expanding port.
On the eve of an important vote in the Appropriations Committee, Villaraigosa withdrew his support for the bill by clean-air crusader, state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, unless the Long Beach Democrat found a way to include money to help pay for two new bridges. Lowenthal didn't, and the bill passed the committee anyway, raising a question or two not only about the mayor's influence but about where money will come from for road improvements to modernize the ports.
Lowenthal's bill would raise millions of dollars to mitigate the effects of air pollution and ease congestion by charging container fees at ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland. SB 974 would levy a $30 fee on each loaded 20-foot container that passes through the ports, raising $394 million a year, starting on January 1, 2009.
Villaraigosa wanted to make two bridges near the port eligible for funding. The Gerald Desmond and Commodore Schuyler F. Heim bridges have "serious safety concerns," said Matt Szabo, a spokesman for the mayor, and should be replaced.
"The mayor supports the container fees going to environmental mitigation, but he also believes a portion of the fees should go to rehabilitating some of the distressed infrastructure around the ports," Szabo said. It would cost $1.5 billion to replace the two bridges. The Gerald Desmond Bridge at the Port of Long Beach would be replaced by a higher bridge to accommodate larger container ships, which can move goods cheaper. Ten percent of the country's waterborne cargo transverses the bridge, which is wrapped in wire nets to prevent concrete pieces from falling to the water and streets below. The Heim Bridge near Terminal Island in Long Beach is one of the state's 228 bridges on the "Priority Structurally Deficient Bridge List."
According to Szabo, repairing the bridges would benefit the ports because it would lead to "fewer bottlenecks and idling trucks," thereby fulfilling the bill's goals of easing congestion and mitigating environmental impacts.
Who could blame the mayor for wanting to secure funding for the bridge projects after the bait-and-switch Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled this summer, when he grabbed millions of dollars reserved for transportation project to help balance the state budget?
But environmentalists aren't buying the mayor's
argument.
The mayor wants to replace the bridges, they argue, to allow bigger ships to pass under them and more trucks to pass over them. Increasing truck capacity, and thus increasing the amount of pollutants emitted into the air, does not improve air quality.
"The mayor of Los Angeles made a firm commitment to growing and growing green," said Angelo Logan of East Yard. "The bridges is not a 'growing and growing green' project." Logan called it "irresponsible" to fund infrastructure projects with the money raised by this bill that are not environmentally sound.
The bill will now go to the full Assembly for a vote. Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year, calling it anti-business.
Most environmentalists believe the container fee's revenue should fund environmental mitigation and infrastructure projects, rather than the construction of new bridges that would increase cargo transportation. Some are hailing the bill - as it now stands - as a crucial step in cleaning up communities.
"We're ecstatic about the bill because this bill will save people's lives," said Annette Kondo of the Coalition for Clean Air. Kondo called the bill the "top environmental priority" for many environmental groups across the state.
Half the money raised from the fees would go to the California Transportation Commission to fund projects to alleviate congestion. Kondo said the infrastructure projects would include improving railroad crossings so drivers do not emit more pollutants as they wait for trains to pass.
The other half would go to the California Air Resources Board to support projects that reduce air pollution. With the money available, trucks could run on cleaner diesel or alternative fuels, Kondo said. Money could also encourage shipping companies to switch to cleaner locomotives or to electrical power while they linger in the ports so they are not running on diesel.
As it now stands, the shipping and freight transport industries do not absorb all of the costs of the pollution and environmental damage they cause. Rather, the people who live in California - who get stuck in traffic behind trucks and breathe the pollutants they emit - pay some of the price. "Our lives and our lungs subsidize this pollution so that somebody in the Midwest can buy a cheap pair of shoes or a cheap DVD player," Kondo said.
Adding a container fee would shift the bill from the residents of California to the shipping and transportation industries. It would also more accurately reflect the so-called true price of doing business in the cargo industry.
The business community opposes the bill, arguing that it's bad for the economy. A long list of companies, including Target, Burger King, Abercrombie & Fitch, Wal-Mart, Macy's, and JC Penney, oppose the bill.
"It's a half-a-billion-dollar tax on business," said Randy Gordon, president and CEO of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. "We do not want a half-a-billion-dollar tax on the state of California to make our state much more uncompetitive."
He argued that shipping companies will not want to use the ports in California and will move their shipping to other ports like the one in Houston. Gordon said he too supports the environment, but the container fee should be enacted at the federal level so that "all the ports would be on an equal and level playing field."
Again, the environmentalists aren't biting. They contend that California has the infrastructure and the market, making it attractive to shipping companies even with the added container fee.
A study by Energy and Environmental Research Associates LLC, called Cargo on the Move Through California: Evaluating Container Fee Impacts on Port Choice, found that a $30 container fee would "not cause significant ship diversion" to other ports or otherwise harm business at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. The ports receive more than 40 percent of the goods imported to the United States and trade is expected to triple in the next 20 years. The demand for the two ports is so great, the study argues, that it outweighs the fee burden.
Another argument that the business community and Schwarzenegger made is that the money would be raised locally but spent in Sacramento. "We're concerned about where those dollars are going," Gordon said.
But an amendment to the bill negates this argument as well. The amendment ensures that a local authority would oversee how the funds are distributed and guarantee that the money would be spent in the region it is collected from. The new bill also includes Oakland on the list of ports, thereby appeasing one of Schwarzenegger's concerns last year.
Kondo said the Coalition for Clean Air was very pleased that the local oversight is part of the new bill. "Who knows better than the folks that live and work in these communities?" she said.
Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who supports the idea of the shipping industry paying to mitigate pollution, agrees that the local oversight is crucial. In a statement, she said, "One thing we can all agree on is that it is imperative that we get local control of how the money is spent in Southern California."
Published: 09/06/2007
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