Port of Long Beach Defends ATA Settlement

The settlement of a lawsuit Monday between the Port of Long Beach and the American Trucking Associations should serve to expedite the introduction of low-polluting trucks into the harbor, the port's executive director said.

Richard Steinke was responding to a charge by the National Resources Defense Council that Long Beach abandoned its clean-truck goals by settling the ATA suit. The neighboring Port of Los Angeles, by contrast, is continuing with the litigation.

ATA's lawsuit, which challenged the concession requirements in the ports' clean-truck programs, was a potential roadblock to greater cooperation between the port and the trucking industry in implementing the clean-truck plan, Steinke said.

ATA challenged the concession requirements, especially the provision in the Los Angeles clean truck program mandating the use of employee drivers, as a violation of federal preemption standards prohibiting state and local entities from regulating companies engaged in interstate commerce.

Preliminary rulings by a U.S. District Court and a federal appellate court in California indicated that some provisions in the port concession plans, and possibly the concession requirements in their entirety, most likely violate the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A).

Long Beach this week settled the suit with the ATA by dropping the concession requirements for truckers and replacing them with a registration process that focuses on the clean-air aspects of the trucking plan, Steinke said. The registration program mandates that harbor truckers enter into a binding contract to comply with environmental, safety and security requirements in the clean-truck program.

By contrast, NRDC's support of the concession programs is based on a strategy promoted by organized labor that would open the door to unionization of harbor truck drivers, most of which are independent contractors.

"The NRDC's real objection to our program has nothing to do with clean air. By aligning itself with the Teamsters, who have been very public about their campaign to unionize port truckers nationwide, the NRDC is pursuing an agenda beyond air quality," Steinke said. Long Beach accepts both companies with employee drivers and those that contract with owner-operator truckers at its marine terminals.

The Teamsters, in words echoed by the NRDC, maintain that a sustainable clean-truck program must be based upon a harbor trucking system in which well-financed motor carriers with employee drivers bear the economic responsibility to purchase and maintain clean trucks.