HispanicVista Columnists

By Talli Nauman
November 26, 2005

Seventeen-year-old Maribel Garcia not her real name has wasted away to 76 pounds. Eduardo Mora has been in the hospital five years with lung cancer, though he never smoked a cigarette in his life. They are not alone, but being among the residents of an area with one of the world's highest cancer risks and rates of premature death is no consolation.

Theirs are the West Coast cities of San Pedro and Wilmington, Calif., which are adjacent to the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the largest shipping facility on the eastern Pacific Rim, and the single largest pollution source in their airshed.

About 90 percent of the inhabitants in the port cities are of Mexican or other Latin American descent. Like many of them, Jesse Márquez never heard of MATES 2, the 1998 scientific study that established Long Beach diesel fuel air pollution cancer risks are up to 5,000 times what standards allow, as well as other bleak facts, such as 40 percent of all families having an asthma sufferer.

When Márquez found out, though, he went straight to bat for the community, forming the Coalition for a Safe Environment, and becoming the environmental justice leader he had never imagined himself to be.

The coalition befriended three San Pedro residents who had lost a lawsuit over the smog and illness from the ports' multimodal transportation. Appealing the case, they won a ruling that the Port of Los Angeles and its trustee, the City of Los Angeles, were violating the California Environmental Quality Act.

The US50 million award in the settlement of the case went to modernize the port. As a result, ocean liners moored for unloading and loading will be supplied with electric power hookups to keep them idling, instead of being allowed to burn tanks of fossil fuel during the dozens of hours each spends in wait. This is significant because freighters use the filthiest petroleum product known to humankind and its combustion in harbors close to communities is a major source of serious health problems.

Shipping poses other air quality problems. On the high seas, scant regulation and even less enforcement mean the world's ships are guilty for as much pollution as the entire North American continent, including 15 percent of the greenhouse gases produced by humanity. The wind blows the sulfur, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and particulates from freighters' smokestacks to coastal communities throughout the final 40 miles of each vessel's journey. On the pier, diesel vehicles spew their own contaminants. Then trucks and locomotives that pick up the cargo add more dirty diesel exhaust to the mix.

Water pollution is another side effect. Invasive species, sewage, and toxic paint are released from the ships with very little regard to their effects. This has decimated the fish and shellfish populations that used to attract sport fishing expeditions to the banks of the harbor at Long Beach-Los Angeles.

Márquez laments the loss of water quality, as well as air quality. He recently had a chance to dig for clams that he never would have enjoyed if he'd stayed at home, where they have disappeared. It was in Baja California. And he plans on going back there again soon.

His purpose is not just to dig clams. His organization wants to help Baja residents understand the environmental threat of port expansion. So does the San Pedro Sierra Club chapter.

Proposals from reputable investors envision a new merchant shipping port at the Baja community of Punta Colonet to accommodate rapidly expanding free trade with China, India and other Asian countries. That trade has doubled since 1998 and will quadruple in the next 20 years. Additionally, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his new port commissioner, S. David Freeman, swear they will clean up the operation there, virtually forcing Long Beach to do the same.

Shipping companies are accustomed to operating mainly for short term profits, rather than factoring in the cost of business, a.k.a. their responsibility to the environment and community health. So they may be unwilling to bargain under the new port terms being set in Southern California. They may seek a new safe harbor where environmental incentives, regulation and enforcement are notoriously less present than in California.

Even with its reputation for strong environmental protection measures, California has been unsuccessful to date in holding the line on the health costs of pollution from burgeoning Pacific Rim trade. That means tiny Punta Colonet has little hope of environmental defense against a port proposal.

This peaceful enclave is probably best suited to be a low-impact beach recreation destination. If its relatively small population seeks port jobs, the job seekers must know that even in the established shipping centers just up the coast, the dock workers are the ones who suffer the worst health effects from the smog.

The approximately 1,415 premature deaths due to air pollution in California's South Coast area cost US10.2 billion in 2004. About 25 percent of it, or US2.6 billion, was due to port smog, according to the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists. The dockworkers are at "Ground Zero" for exposure to the contaminants.

As San Pedro resident Tom Politeo, co-chair of the Sierra Club Harbor Vision Task Force, notes: The object of focusing attention on the ports' contribution to environmental health degradation is not to shut them down. Nor is it to move them to somewhere else and transfer their problems to other people. They must be improved where they stand.

Solutions will have to be one small step at a time. They include the electric plug-in of tankers that must idle at dock, which is called cold ironing; better fuels for ships, port vehicles, and over-the-road trucks; cleaner running engines; and better use of rail possibilities, especially electric trains. Some such mechanisms are being put in place, even if more slowly than surely.

What IS for sure is that the port proposal for Punta Colonet or any other proposal for a Pacific Coast port should be roundly dismissed unless it guarantees enforcement of the best available, state-of-the-art technology.

Fortunately for Baja, the dock workers in California will be more than willing to make a stand for that demand, be it in Punta Colonet or elsewhere. Baja communities also can be glad that the Coalition for a Safe Environment sees itself as a guardian angel for its colleagues south of the border. Having championed 14 successful cases in five years in California, it certainly has some expertise that Mexico can use to its own advantage including a Port Communities Bill of Rights for protection of health and natural resources.

Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is the Americas Program Associate at the International Relations Center. (talli@direcway.com)