Shipper Group Decries Environmental Claims

The National Industrial Transportation League sharply criticized environmental groups’ claim that trade groups oppose clean-air efforts at ports this week, calling the accusation “a flagrant distortion of the truth.”

NITL, the largest group representing shippers in Washington, said the group has never opposed the environmental goals of clean-trucks programs and that its shipper and carrier members “have made substantial investments in new and cleaner trucks.”

The criticism in a letter to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., came after the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club sent a letter to Oberstar last month asking him to support new limits on federal trucking oversight that would allow ports to require concession agreements for harbor trucking.

The NRDC said in the letter that the clean-trucks programs at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have worked better than originally envisioned but that ports need the local regulatory authority to ensure they can continue to enforce a ban on older, dirtier trucks.

The NITL was among a wide range of trade groups, including the National Retail Federation and the Agriculture Transportation Coalition that sent a joint letter to the Port of Los Angeles last month opposing the port’s efforts to change federal pre-emption provisions.

But NITL and others have noted they oppose only the provisions in the Los Angeles clean-trucks program that they say, and courts have agreed, have nothing to do with restrictions on truck emissions.

“Contrary to the claims of the Sierra Club and the NRDC, the NITL never opposed the (clean-trucks program’s) goals of reducing vehicle emissions and fostering a cleaner environment,” NITL Executive Vice President Peter J. Gatti wrote in a letter to Oberstar.