The city of Los Angeles has until May to apply for $500 million and make investments in zero-emission equipment and infrastructure at the local port, where $432 billion in international trade was generated last year.
The administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Michael S. Regan, Mayor Karen Bass, Director of the Port of Los Angeles, Gene Seroka and Congresswoman Nanette Barragán announced the investment in front of the port complex which represents 19% of all US maritime trade.
The investment aims toward environmental justice for the communities that reside near the Port of Los Angeles, and who have suffered from air and water pollution for decades.
“It’s about time they listened to us,” said Fabiola Chávez-López, who has lived for 21 years near the port and near a refinery.
“We have all suffered from poor air quality,” he said, while walking his pet “Sol,” a French pit bull, and in the company of his daughter Montserrat, owner of a pit bull named “Roscoe.”
The promise of zero emissions
Congresswoman Barragán obtained the $3 billion from the EPA for the Clean Ports program through the Inflation Reduction Act, which was based on her Climate Smart Ports Act.
The application for the funds is due in May. There will be a review in September and October, before the winners are announced.
The investment is a key element of President Joe Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda, which aims to generate environmental benefits for all, address the climate crisis and the negative impacts of air pollution, and create jobs. and opportunities for communities across the country.
“The Port of Los Angeles is committed to reducing emissions associated with the movement of goods and protecting the health of our port workers and communities near the port,” stated Mayor Bass. “Continued federal investments are needed to accelerate our progress toward meeting our clean air goals and delivering on our zero-emissions promise.”
Bass said that efforts to protect the environment from the ravages of climate change are not only internal, since he signed a first agreement of this type with Finland, although he acknowledged that much of the achievements in his first year of administration were possible thanks to the preliminary work carried out by his predecessors, former mayors Eric Garcetti and Antonio Villaraigosa.
Poor air quality
During the visit to the port and after a boat tour, EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan announced that he met with Congresswoman Nanette Barragán and environmental justice leaders, who mentioned the challenges of air quality and that affect the communities surrounding the Port of Los Angeles, whether due to pollution produced by trucks, ships and locomotives that enter and leave the port or diesel.
“Many communities across the country that reside near and around our nation’s ports experience poor air quality due to emissions from the ports’ daily operations,” the EPA official acknowledged.
However, he said President Joe Biden has made clear that his administration is committed to ensuring that all people across the country have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and healthy lands, regardless of skin color.
“From day one as administrator I have focused on that commitment, partnering with ports, businesses, communities and Congress to make it a reality,” he added.
“We know that port centers, like the Port of Los Angeles, are essential to commerce and vital to our nation’s economic growth and supply chain infrastructure,” explained the EPA administrator. “We also know that protecting people should never come at the expense of a booming economy.”
In defense of the most vulnerable
On the Wilmington Boardwalk, Congresswoman from California’s 33rd District, Nanette Barragán, said that since she was elected to Congress in 2016, she has worked to do everything possible to clean the air and combat pollution in low-income communities. resources.
“Make no mistake, Wilmington and the surrounding communities are an under-resourced community that needs to get more money and receive its fair share,” the congresswoman noted. “The Port of Los Angeles is a huge economic engine; I talk to my colleagues about it all the time and I tell them that it affects all congressional districts because it maintains jobs not only locally, but throughout the country.”
However, he stated that, like all major ports, “it is also a source of air pollution. And this pollution comes from hundreds of ships, trucks and rail freight handling equipment.”
“It harms the public health of our local communities,” Barragán added. “Our port community of Wilmington and West Long Beach has high rates of childhood asthma and elevated cancer risks are very common, and pollution is something we need to do something about.”
The response to water and air pollution that damages the health of thousands of residents comes after decades of inaction by the authorities of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the dismantling carried out by the former president Donald Trump.
“I remind you that I was elected in 2016 and the former president [Trump] “dismantled the EPA and was taking away any type of money intended for environmental justice from the communities,” added the Congresswoman. “In fact, they deleted the words “environmental injustice” from the website.”
“When Secretary (Rick) Perry came before me on the Energy and Commerce Committee and I asked him to define the word environmental justice, he couldn’t even do it. So in the short time that President Biden and the Biden-Harris administration have been around, this has been a top priority issue for them.”
Barragán told La Opinión that new investments in zero-emission equipment and infrastructure at the Port of Los Angeles represent “the first step” in cleaning up the air and water in communities where minorities live.
With these investments, will health problems in the community end?
“No. It’s the first step,” she responded. “There is still more work to do.”
For his part, EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan previously stated that, since the first day of the Biden administration, the president “has made environmental justice a central pillar and, in fact, is the first president to pronounce the words environmental justice during the State of the Union address.”
While solutions arrive to the constant cough problem suffered by Mrs. Fabiola Chávez- López, originally from Michoacán, Mexico, who lives a short distance from the Marathon Refinery Los Angeles – Wilmington, she says that she will have to continue breathing the black smoke that comes from from the refinery located on the Pacific Coast Highway.
“The refinery is burning all the time and from my house we only see the black smoke,” he said. “Hopefully this problem will end soon.”