A Dirty Trucking Industry Is Trying to Clean Up Its Act

Sandwiched between three freeways and the fourth-largest container port in the country lies the neighborhood of West Oakland, Calif. Its residents often choke down the exhaust of the 1,500 diesel trucks that pass through the community on the way to and from the Port of Oakland. On any given day, trucks are parked throughout this working-class, African-American neighborhood, sometimes idling for hours as drivers await their next load.

Margaret Gordon, 61, knows these trucks well -- and the toll they've taken on her neighborhood. She has asthma. Her son has asthma. So do her grandchildren and, according the Alameda County Public Health Department, at least one in five kids in the community.

Asthma is not all that afflicts the neighborhood. According to a March report by the California Air Resources Board, there are 1,200 excess cancers per 1 million people in West Oakland. And the average lifespan of residents is six years less than that of their more upscale neighbors in Oakland Hills, only 10 miles away.

"Every year for the last 15 years I have lived in West Oakland, I know somebody [who] has died of some form of cancer," says Gordon, a founding member of the Environmental Indicators Project, a nonprofit organization that studies the local effect of diesel pollution, and a member of the Oakland Port Commission.

For years, dirty air has pitted residents against truck drivers, many of whom are immigrants working long hours for low wages. A similar story plays out at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

But over the past year, groups as diverse as the Teamsters, the National Resources Defense Council and the American Lung Association have joined community members and truck drivers to form the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports to take on the broader culprit: an unsustainable trucking system.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act, which deregulated the industry, turning truckers into independent contractors. Most drivers now own their trucks and are contracted by trucking companies that, in turn, contract with businesses that ship through a port. Drivers are responsible for maintenance, route planning and parking -- an expensive system for people whose average annual salary is $30,000.

Many can afford only older, polluting diesel rigs, and must park wherever they find free space. The trucking companies and the industries for which they transport goods, meanwhile, absorb almost none of these costs.

"This trucking system is totally broken," says Doug Bloch, an organizer with Change to Win and Oakland director of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports. "And it's exploiting the community and it's exploiting the immigrant truck drivers, all for the benefit of Wal-Mart and Target and these huge companies that are moving goods through our port."

In 2000, California set a goal of cutting overall diesel pollution in the state by 85 percent by 2020. And in December 2007, the state followed with a regulation limiting diesel emissions from port trucks. With port traffic expected to double by 2020, these state decisions marked two big victories for community and environmental groups.

In September, the port will begin phasing in new standards that require drivers to purchase clean-burning diesel or natural gas trucks, or to retrofit older trucks. By the end of 2009, all trucks will be required to meet these standards, but under the current system, few truckers can afford to do so.

"I'm in agreement that we should clean up the environment," says trucker José Manuel Lino Rivas, who lives in Oakland. "But we also need the authorities to help us obtain a truck, because with the salaries we're paid, we can't."

A new truck costs upward of $125,000. The ports are applying for state grants to help cover some of the costs of transitioning to the new rules. But under the most optimistic projections, grants would provide only $20,000 to $50,000 per truck, and maintaining new truck models can cost significantly more.