Ports to celebrate completion of Clean Trucks Program on New Year's Day

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will celebrate a milestone on New Year's Day with the official completion of its Clean Trucks Program, a massive effort that has reduced air pollution from harbor trucks by 90 percent in just over three years, port officials said.

The program will take 280 of the oldest container trucks off the road this week and will replace them with newer models, marking the final step in an effort to replace old, polluting big rigs with 2007 or newer models.

With the start of the new year on Sunday, all 11,772 trucks serving both the ports of Long Beach and neighboring Los Angeles will meet the new standards.

"The Port of Los Angeles, along with our industry partners, has made the business of moving cargo cleaner," said Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the port of Los Angeles. "The results speak for themselves, and we couldn't be more proud of reaching this milestone."

Port of Long Beach spokesman John Pope said the end of the program on Sunday is more of a symbolic day since significant reductions in truck-related pollution have already been reached. Today, 98 percent of trucked container moves in the port are done by rigs with 2007 or newer engines. Pope noted that about 90 percent of the funding to replace the trucks came from private companies.

"We set an example for the entire industry," Long Beach Harbor Commission President Susan Anderson Wise said in a statement. "We helped replace more than 10,000 pollution-spewing trucks with newer, less-polluting ones and the bottom line is that our communities can breathe better. Everyone at the port can be proud of this accomplishment, and we are grateful to all our partners in the trucking industry and the environmental community who helped us get here."

The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles both began banning older rigs in 2008 in an effort to clean the notoriously smoggy air around the two ports, which together handle close to 40 percent of the nation's shipping imports.

Martin Schlageter, a campaign director with the Coalition for Clean Air, applauded the achievement but said the completion announcement is mostly a formality.

"We're certainly energized by it and think it's a great achievement of the ports," Schlageter said. "But it's one step in the process. We have a long way to go to get to clean air in our region."

Schlageter said the ports should be trying to work toward newer 2010 truck standards, in addition to increasing the number of trucks at the port that run on alternative fuels. About 7 percent of the cargo moves at the ports are currently made by trucks that run on liquefied or compressed natural gas.