Part 3: Diesel Death Zones & The Need for Regulation
Trucks Are Causing Record Smog
Two-thirds of the air pollution in Los Angeles comes from mobile sources, including cars, trucks, planes, and boats. While cars dominate the LA transportation landscape and planes have long received harsh criticism from environmentalists, LA’s air quality catastrophe is largely caused by transporting freight on rail lines and boats. Car culture has become a quintessential part of LA’s identity, but those are not the only tailpipes we should be concerned about.
Because larger vehicles like trucks burn different types of fuel than ordinary passenger vehicles (diesel versus standard gasoline), their impacts on air quality are different. By burning diesel, trucks and buses alone account for over 50% of nitrogen oxide pollution in LA, which forms ground-level ozone buildup that causes and exacerbates respiratory health issues. Moreover, ozone pollution is the primary culprit in smog, the distinctive, murky, airborne eyesore that has plagued LA for decades. More than being unpleasant to look at, smog has been associated with "a 10% increase in deaths attributable to ozone pollution from 2010 to 2017” in Southern California.
Improvements in vehicle emissions standards for passenger cars have led to dramatic increases in fuel efficiency in recent years, but pollution standards for trucks have lagged behind. Measured in equivalent gallons of gasoline, goods-transporting trucks use more than 25 times as much fuel as all passenger cars in the U.S. What’s more, diesel pollution has been shown to cause more asthma attacks and higher cancer rates, harming and even killing nearby residents, but diesel fuel standards have improved slowly. In fact, the average miles per gallon (mpg) for trucks in the U.S. has risen by less than 1 mpg since 2003.
Moreover, truck activity has persisted and even increased throughout the pandemic, as online sales continued and goods have needed to be transported in record volumes. While passenger car traffic dramatically declined for much of 2020, trucking rapidly recovered and has been booming, a major factor in why smog reached record levels in 2020 despite reduced overall pollution. And the problem is only expected to get worse, as daily truck trips in Los Angeles are expected to increase from 36,000 today to 55,000 by 2035. The same boom has been happening with shipping: The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have both seen dramatic increases in traffic and trade volume since August 2020.
Warehouses Create “Diesel Death Zones”
From the ports, goods are often transported via trucks to warehouses, where they are sorted and distributed to their final destinations. In fact, 65% of containers moving through the ports are trucked to warehouses. The corridors along which these trucks drive to get to the warehouses have been beset by inordinate volumes of air pollution, so much so that these areas have been dubbed “diesel death zones.” Air quality around these areas, such as the 710 freeway, is on average 40% worse than the rest of Los Angeles, which already suffers from the worst ozone pollution of any city in the country and the fourth worst particle pollution.
Moreover, these “death zone” communities are disproportionately home to low-income and BIPOC residents. For example, 77% of residents along the 710 freeway corridor identify as Black or Latinx. That fact is no accident—the city was deliberately planned such that highways and industrial hubs (major sources of pollution and health hazards) were placed near Black and Latinx neighborhoods and away from wealthy white neighborhoods. In fact, a freeway expansion in South Pasadena (a wealthier white area) was abandoned recently after community pushback, while expansions in lower-income areas like East LA are moving forward.
Proposed Warehouse Rule Would Make Waves
While all of this discussion about trucks and diesel pollution may sound gloomy and hopeless, there is a potentially monumental rule in the works that could go a long way toward addressing the problems with the warehousing industry. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) is considering a rule that would require dramatic emissions reductions from warehouses and also force the trucking industry in Los Angeles to rapidly clean up its act.
The rule, called Proposed Rule 2305, creates a points system for warehouses in the Southern California region, allowing warehouses to gain points for emissions reduction efforts like purchasing zero-emissions trucks, providing on-site EV charging infrastructure, or installing solar panels. If warehouses do not meet certain minimum points requirements, they are required to pay mitigation fees, which then go toward buying zero-emissions trucks and charging infrastructure in hardest-hit communities. The rule would apply to approximately 3,000 warehouses (larger than 100,000 square feet) in the region. It is projected to cut NOx pollution in the region in half in just a few years, while also bolstering the market for zero-emissions technology.
This “indirect source rule” (so named because the rule addresses truck pollution indirectly by regulating warehouses) will create green, good-paying jobs at warehouses, ensure that warehouses themselves bear the economic costs of the pollution that they cause, and serve as a powerful incentive for warehouses to move toward emissions reductions. We should all be ashamed that we live in a society where such things as “diesel death zones” exist, and this rule will begin the process of ameliorating that social ill. Unfortunately, the rule has faced fierce opposition from the warehousing industry and oil and gas companies, and SCAQMD is feeling that pressure. Whether or not the rule will get approved is still uncertain, and SCAQMD has signaled that it might want to cut back on the stringency of some of the rule’s provisions. Moreover, the warehousing industry is almost certain to challenge the rule in court.
Call to Action
The good news is that there has been tremendous support for the rule from LA residents, environmental groups, and public health stakeholders. But we are up against a massive amount of money and political influence, so we need as many people as possible to push the SCAQMD to adopt a strong rule. SCAQMD listens when they hear overwhelming community support for a rule, so let’s make sure they hear from us about how needed this rule is.
The SCAQMD Governing Board will meet on Friday, May 7, for a final vote on approval of the rule. We are calling on all residents of the LA region to join the Zoom meeting here and make a public comment demanding that the agency adopt the warehouse rule. If you cannot make the meeting, then please send in a letter to SCAQMD making the same demand. You can use this template to email a letter to imacmillan@aqmd.gov and vjuan@aqmd.gov urging SCAQMD to vote to approve the rule on May 7th.
This rule could be a bellwether moment in cleaning up LA’s air and addressing historical environmental racism in the region. Let’s make sure SCAQMD knows that!
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NOTE: Even though the timeline for this particular call to action has passed, there are still plenty of opportunities to make your voice heard. Follow @climateimpactla for regular updates about new developments and mobilization opportunities
