WASHINGTON: Living next to a port is kind of like living next to a coal plant — except the EPA isn’t really regulating it. Take the port neighborhood of Ironbound in Newark, N.J. Residents constantly have to breathe in exhaust from diesel-powered trains and trucks that haul imported goods (like the ones you probably wanna buy for the holidays), diesel-burning garbage trucks that haul waste from as far away as New York City (and dump the trash into a massive, nearby incinerator, which smells exactly the way you imagine rotting garbage smells), and even jet fuel-burning airplanes overhead that transport people in and out of the international airport. And it’s about to get worse: The widening of the Panama Canal means that even bigger ships will bring in more imported goods.
That’s why the Moving Forward Network, an alliance of grassroots environmental groups, is demanding the agency finally step in and do something to reduce the pollution in port neighborhoods across the United States. Lydia DePillis profiles some of what’s at stake over at the Washington Post.
In addition to the environmental impact, there’s a labor issue when it comes to ports, too. As DePillis explains, the Teamsters have long argued that the truckers who drive those diesel-burning trucks should be employees of the trucking companies that dispatch them, and not independent contractors as the companies often classify them. The Labor Department agrees, and has prosecuted some of those trucking firms for misclassifying the truckers. The union is now, well, unionizing those employees.
One of the trucking companies that’s now negotiating with the Teamsters is EcoFlow, a Los Angeles trucking company that prides itself on efficient vehicles. This illustrates a solution: a clean-energy trucking company can embrace union workers while cutting down on the pollution in Los Angeles ports. See? It’s innovation, growth, union jobs, efficiency and clean neighborhoods. And it’s only just begun.
