Washblog

On December 17th, 2007 the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners approved a cargo fee that will generate $1.6 Billion to fund the replacement of 17,000 trucks in their short haul or drayage fleet which serves the Port. The Port will use the funds to ensure that the old, polluting trucks will be scrapped and taken out of circulation, rather than continuing to work outside the ports. The result will be an 80 percent reduction in air pollution from the drayage fleet in the next five years.

The fee will place a $35 charge on every loaded twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) cargo container entering or leaving any terminal by short-haul (or "drayage") truck beginning June 1, 2008. The fee will not apply to containers entering or leaving the Port by train and will end when the fleet of drayage trucks meets Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) requirements in about 2012.

The Port of Seattle however, which repeatedly stated it was waiting for other West Cost Ports to decide what to do, implying that it didn't want to over reach in its actions and therefore lose ground on competition, has balked at adding a per container fee.

So, as other Ports along the West Coast move to eliminate dirty, aging trucks from their inventory the Port of Seattle stands to gain, or at least hopes to gain from not adding an equal per container fee to containers passing through the Port of Seattle. A lower per container cost may entice some companies to send containers through the Port of Seattle.

The Port of Seattle has lost a good share of its container business in the last few years, a good portion of which has gone to the Port of Tacoma. The Port of Tacoma has not enacted a per container fee either.

Last fall the Port of Seattle was blasted by local residents at a public hearing for "hundreds of dirty trucks that regularly infiltrate neighborhoods" At that point the Port, which was about to release its Clean Air Strategy, which did not include any trucking plans at all, gave in to community pressure and included trucking in its plan. But the plan falls far short of other West Coast Ports emission reduction plans in that the plan only encourages voluntary actions by business and industry to clean up. Some businesses have balked at the plan because it would not create a level playing field. In other words, if some businesses voluntarily take actions to clean up their operations, which will cost money, and others don't, those businesses who don't will have an economic advantage.

Even though the plan was heralded as a good first step by local environmentalists, it is a long, long way from the kind of actions needed to adequately reduce the harmful, deadly and negative impacts of international trade on public health and the environment. The kind of actions which are being taken by the Port of Long beach.

If the Port of Seattle, started charging the same per container fee today as other Ports they would have nothing to lose and everything to gain terms environmental stewardship and community support.

Instead, it is clear that the Port of Seattle is using the container fee imbalance to attempt to gain container business. This is the same Port that says it wants to be an environmental leader.

"The Port of Seattle should be the greenest, cleanest, and most energy efficient in the U.S."

That was CEO Tay Yoshitani in his early debut at the Port of Seattle. Were are beginning to wonder, just exactly which Port was he talking about?