(This did not get the attention it deserved.  It’s a big deal that the labor-enviro alliance worked and was able to push this through.  There’s more at the LA Times and Matt Yglesias’ blog. – promoted by David Dayen)

In a landmark vote by Los Angeles Harbor Commissioners, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa moves closer to his goal of cleaning up Southern California’s air and paves the way to improve the lives of 16,000 port truckers and their families.  The sorely needed L.A. Clean Trucks Program is expected to serve as a national model for ports around the country.  

Here’s why the program was needed, the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports have served as the nation’s top entry point for commercial goods slated for store shelves at the likes of Wal-Mart and Target.   This brought a daily barrage of thousands of the worst-polluting trucks in Southern California through its major transit corridors and nearby communities, causing many residents to suffer high rates of lung disease, cancer and childhood asthma.  

On top of that, the port truck drivers themselves were classified under Jimmy Carter deregulation as independent contractors which meant they each were individually responsible for operating and maintaining their own trucks.  Problem is, the combined injuries of low load fees from shippers and their middlemen brokers, rising cost of diesel fuel and high cost of living in L.A., most truckers ultimately earned little more than minimum wage.

Small earnings in a multi-billion dollar industry left port truckers unable to purchase and operate expensive new trucks with environmentally friendly emissions standards that could clean up the air and reduce the health risk to neighbors living nearby.  

The Clean Trucks Program places the responsibility for cleanup squarely on the backs of new trucking companies by requiring that only companies with fleets of 2007 emissions standard trucks and drivers to operate them can serve the port.

Unfortunately the Long Beach Port Authority authorized the new emissions standards only and fail to realize that the current business model at the harbor will not afford truck drivers there to finance the expensive, but much needed upgrades.

This program is a longtime coming and I have a feeling Wal-Mart and Target will not simply roll along with the program.  This should also teach us a lesson that democrats should not always accept conservative-business friendly deregulation ideology as it can have disastrous impacts on local communities.

But thanks to the new Blue-Green Alliance (Labor-Environmental), new progressive ideals are advancing.