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The electrified highway that could change the future of trucking (and this polluted San Diego neighborhood)

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Tuesday, August 13, 2024

This story is the second in a series by Reckon and Next City examining how Black and Brown communities across the U.S. are working to hold corporations accountable for environmental injustices. Read the first story, on a new rail line planned in Africatown, the Alabama neighborhood founded by formerly enslaved people.For decades, San Diego’s port communities like Barrio Logan and National City have been plagued with unhealthy air quality. Residents of communities bordering the 34 miles of coastline encompassed by the Port of San Diego face a barrage of toxic pollutants and other hazardous conditions from industrial shipyards, intersecting neighborhood freeways, and even the U.S. Navy. They believe these hazardous conditions would never be tolerated in San Diego’s more affluent areas.The fight for clean air has been a long, uphill battle for these working-class, historically Mexican-American and immigrant communities. But after years of advocacy by residents and activists, the Port of San Diego has begun to take steps to offset the long history of environmental racism and injustice.In May, the Board of Port Commissioners for the San Diego Unified Port District voted unanimously to double the board’s annual contribution to the Maritime Industrial Impact Fund (MIIF) and help curb emissions by expanding the fund’s scope to include several electrification projects.“For decades, communities living next to the port marine cargo terminals have had the burden of pollution from the operations at these port terminals,” says Kyle Heiskala, Policy Co-Director for the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), an environmental justice nonprofit that pressed the board to up its MIIF contribution. “They have not seen a ton of benefits for the local residents living near the port, and instead get a lot of the negative impacts in terms of air pollution.”Disproportionate environmental impactToday, Barrio Logan is one of the most polluted areas of San Diego County and ranks among the top 5% of California’s most polluted areas. The community is more than 85% Hispanic, and more than a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. Both Barrio Logan and neighboring National City rank in the 90th percentile for some of the highest concentrations of diesel particulate matter in all of California. The byproduct of exhaust from trucks, buses, trains, ships, and other equipment, the pollutant has been deemed carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. According to the EPA, due to their proximity to the port, rail yards, and freeways, residents have an 85% to 95% higher risk of developing cancer than the rest of the U.S.Historically, outcry over the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards created by the Port have been ignored. Some have even blamed residents for living in communities that border the Port and its industries, but Heiskala notes that San Diego’s ‘Portside’ communities predate the Port and its industries.“People need to remember that the neighborhoods and communities were here first. The Port was established in 1962 – these neighborhoods are over a hundred years old,” he said. “All of the industries that we’ve seen grow over the past five decades have been introduced into these communities of color as a result of race-based land use decisions that took neighborhoods and cited them for industry.”In 2023, Barrio Logan moved forward with a new community plan, marking the first update to the neighborhood’s plan in over 40 years and a victory in residents’ long battle to add buffers between the port and neighboring communities. The most consequential update amended the city’s zoning laws banning the creation of mixed commercial/residential zones directly adjacent to residential areas.“We don’t see shipyards in La Jolla for very historically documented reasons,” Heiskala adds, pointing to a mostly-white neighborhood just 15 minutes north of Barrio Logan.Steps forwardIn 2010, the board established the MIIF to address some of these historic inequities and aid communities bordering the Port. The Port will now contribute 4% percent of its gross maritime industrial revenue – an estimated $1.55 million in fiscal year 2025. Previously, a 2% cap had been approved in June 2023.The Port’s increase to the MIIF would contribute to various methods and strategies to offset the impacts of industrial pollution. Over $500,000 has already been spent on equipment like air filters and air monitors for homes and elementary schools adjacent to the port, to help filter indoor air and monitor quality.The MIIF has funded a variety of community programs, notably the FRANC Program, a free electric shuttle system that connects multiple destinations throughout National City.Heiskala says that the board of port commissioners’ commitment is evident in the progress made towards the Maritime Clean Air Strategy goals and the Port has seen immense progress in converting cargo handling equipment to electric. The Port of San Diego now boasts the nation’s first cohort of all-electric cranes and all-electric tug boat, with a goal of zero-emission trucks and cargo handling equipment by 2030.Too little, too late?Not all residents have been impressed with the Port’s progress in meeting its emissions goals. Lydia Young, a community organizer who lives in Logan Heights, believes the Port’s actions are only a fraction of what’s needed to address a long cycle of neglect in San Diego’s portside communities.“The MIIF is a good first step that’s decades too late,” Young says, adding that the $1.55 million contribution is a mere fraction of the Port’s revenue and local impact. The Port of San Diego’s website says it had a “$9.2 billion overall economic impact in San Diego County” in 2019.“At this rate, the MIIF would support the fiscal average of one two-story house a year in San Diego,” Young says. “For an industry that makes billions from our land and labor each year at the risk of our health, this is nowhere near enough.”Dr. Vi Nguyen, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente San Diego and co-founder of San Diego Pediatricians For Clean Air, also believes more must be done to address the needs of children and families in portside communities.“There’s a lot more money being invested in mitigation, but the health effects on these communities span generations, and a couple of million dollars isn’t going to fix everything,” Nguyen says.Most of Dr. Nguyen’s patients and their families live in Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and National City. And although the cost to reduce emissions at the Port is steep, Dr. Nguyen says it pales in comparison to the long-term costs of failing to do so.“Just in terms of asthma, the downstream cost to us as a healthcare system is astronomical,” Dr. Nguyen says. “Exposure to PM 2.5 during the first and second trimester of pregnancy and in the first years of life skyrockets the chance of developmental delay, lower IQ, anxiety, depression, and psychotic experiences. Having a child with autism or developmental delay is a lifetime of cost to the individual and the families and communities.”Moving toward electrificationIn addition to MIIF allocations, San Diego’s portside communities have received funding for more emissions-reduction projects.Last year, National City received an $8.5 million federal grant to create a plug-in electrification project for idling ships to tap into the city’s power grid to charge from the shore. Advocates foresee that the biggest challenge is likely the transition of the local trucking fleet from diesel to electric trucks. In March, the Port also approved a developer to build and operate a zero-emission truck stop in National City, capable of charging up to 40% of the port’s trucking fleet.But the U.S. trucking industry’s decentralized structure has complicated efforts to convert San Diego’s local trucking fleet. “When the cranes stop operating at the end of the day, it’s off and sits there on the terminal. But these trucks are driving all over the community,” Heiskala explains. Currently, federal rules make it difficult to transition from diesel to electric, and regulations dictating the number of hours a truck driver is allowed to drive before they’re required to break don’t take into account the time it takes to charge electric trucks.“The current board of Port Commissioners as a majority has recognized their responsibility to undoing those historical harms,” Hesikala said. “We have to do it because of climate change, but we also owe it to the generations of people who have been suffering and literally dying from the pollution.”Like the history of San Diego’s portside communities themselves, the path to a zero-emissions port has been complicated. The most recent victory in funding and the commitment to further electrification, however, signal a potential turning point.Though the fight against industrial pollution in San Diego’s portside communities is far from over, for the first time in decades, there is a sense of progress and hope for cleaner air and healthier communities.Roberto Camacho is a Chicano freelance multimedia journalist from San Diego, California. His reporting typically focuses on criminal justice reform, immigration, Chicano/Latino issues, hip-hop culture, and their intersections to social justice. Follow him on Twitter/IG/Threads: @rob_camacho_sd

After a long battle, San Diego’s Port has doubled its commitment to offset the impacts of industrial pollution in neighboring communities.

This story is the second in a series by Reckon and Next City examining how Black and Brown communities across the U.S. are working to hold corporations accountable for environmental injustices. Read the first story, on a new rail line planned in Africatown, the Alabama neighborhood founded by formerly enslaved people.

For decades, San Diego’s port communities like Barrio Logan and National City have been plagued with unhealthy air quality. Residents of communities bordering the 34 miles of coastline encompassed by the Port of San Diego face a barrage of toxic pollutants and other hazardous conditions from industrial shipyards, intersecting neighborhood freeways, and even the U.S. Navy. They believe these hazardous conditions would never be tolerated in San Diego’s more affluent areas.

The fight for clean air has been a long, uphill battle for these working-class, historically Mexican-American and immigrant communities. But after years of advocacy by residents and activists, the Port of San Diego has begun to take steps to offset the long history of environmental racism and injustice.

In May, the Board of Port Commissioners for the San Diego Unified Port District voted unanimously to double the board’s annual contribution to the Maritime Industrial Impact Fund (MIIF) and help curb emissions by expanding the fund’s scope to include several electrification projects.

“For decades, communities living next to the port marine cargo terminals have had the burden of pollution from the operations at these port terminals,” says Kyle Heiskala, Policy Co-Director for the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), an environmental justice nonprofit that pressed the board to up its MIIF contribution. “They have not seen a ton of benefits for the local residents living near the port, and instead get a lot of the negative impacts in terms of air pollution.”

Disproportionate environmental impact

Today, Barrio Logan is one of the most polluted areas of San Diego County and ranks among the top 5% of California’s most polluted areas. The community is more than 85% Hispanic, and more than a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. Both Barrio Logan and neighboring National City rank in the 90th percentile for some of the highest concentrations of diesel particulate matter in all of California. The byproduct of exhaust from trucks, buses, trains, ships, and other equipment, the pollutant has been deemed carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. According to the EPA, due to their proximity to the port, rail yards, and freeways, residents have an 85% to 95% higher risk of developing cancer than the rest of the U.S.

Historically, outcry over the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards created by the Port have been ignored. Some have even blamed residents for living in communities that border the Port and its industries, but Heiskala notes that San Diego’s ‘Portside’ communities predate the Port and its industries.

“People need to remember that the neighborhoods and communities were here first. The Port was established in 1962 – these neighborhoods are over a hundred years old,” he said. “All of the industries that we’ve seen grow over the past five decades have been introduced into these communities of color as a result of race-based land use decisions that took neighborhoods and cited them for industry.”

In 2023, Barrio Logan moved forward with a new community plan, marking the first update to the neighborhood’s plan in over 40 years and a victory in residents’ long battle to add buffers between the port and neighboring communities. The most consequential update amended the city’s zoning laws banning the creation of mixed commercial/residential zones directly adjacent to residential areas.

“We don’t see shipyards in La Jolla for very historically documented reasons,” Heiskala adds, pointing to a mostly-white neighborhood just 15 minutes north of Barrio Logan.

Steps forward

In 2010, the board established the MIIF to address some of these historic inequities and aid communities bordering the Port. The Port will now contribute 4% percent of its gross maritime industrial revenue – an estimated $1.55 million in fiscal year 2025. Previously, a 2% cap had been approved in June 2023.

The Port’s increase to the MIIF would contribute to various methods and strategies to offset the impacts of industrial pollution. Over $500,000 has already been spent on equipment like air filters and air monitors for homes and elementary schools adjacent to the port, to help filter indoor air and monitor quality.

The MIIF has funded a variety of community programs, notably the FRANC Program, a free electric shuttle system that connects multiple destinations throughout National City.

Heiskala says that the board of port commissioners’ commitment is evident in the progress made towards the Maritime Clean Air Strategy goals and the Port has seen immense progress in converting cargo handling equipment to electric. The Port of San Diego now boasts the nation’s first cohort of all-electric cranes and all-electric tug boat, with a goal of zero-emission trucks and cargo handling equipment by 2030.

Too little, too late?

Not all residents have been impressed with the Port’s progress in meeting its emissions goals. Lydia Young, a community organizer who lives in Logan Heights, believes the Port’s actions are only a fraction of what’s needed to address a long cycle of neglect in San Diego’s portside communities.

“The MIIF is a good first step that’s decades too late,” Young says, adding that the $1.55 million contribution is a mere fraction of the Port’s revenue and local impact. The Port of San Diego’s website says it had a “$9.2 billion overall economic impact in San Diego County” in 2019.

“At this rate, the MIIF would support the fiscal average of one two-story house a year in San Diego,” Young says. “For an industry that makes billions from our land and labor each year at the risk of our health, this is nowhere near enough.”

Dr. Vi Nguyen, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente San Diego and co-founder of San Diego Pediatricians For Clean Air, also believes more must be done to address the needs of children and families in portside communities.

“There’s a lot more money being invested in mitigation, but the health effects on these communities span generations, and a couple of million dollars isn’t going to fix everything,” Nguyen says.

Most of Dr. Nguyen’s patients and their families live in Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and National City. And although the cost to reduce emissions at the Port is steep, Dr. Nguyen says it pales in comparison to the long-term costs of failing to do so.

“Just in terms of asthma, the downstream cost to us as a healthcare system is astronomical,” Dr. Nguyen says. “Exposure to PM 2.5 during the first and second trimester of pregnancy and in the first years of life skyrockets the chance of developmental delay, lower IQ, anxiety, depression, and psychotic experiences. Having a child with autism or developmental delay is a lifetime of cost to the individual and the families and communities.”

Moving toward electrification

In addition to MIIF allocations, San Diego’s portside communities have received funding for more emissions-reduction projects.

Last year, National City received an $8.5 million federal grant to create a plug-in electrification project for idling ships to tap into the city’s power grid to charge from the shore. Advocates foresee that the biggest challenge is likely the transition of the local trucking fleet from diesel to electric trucks. In March, the Port also approved a developer to build and operate a zero-emission truck stop in National City, capable of charging up to 40% of the port’s trucking fleet.

But the U.S. trucking industry’s decentralized structure has complicated efforts to convert San Diego’s local trucking fleet. “When the cranes stop operating at the end of the day, it’s off and sits there on the terminal. But these trucks are driving all over the community,” Heiskala explains. Currently, federal rules make it difficult to transition from diesel to electric, and regulations dictating the number of hours a truck driver is allowed to drive before they’re required to break don’t take into account the time it takes to charge electric trucks.

“The current board of Port Commissioners as a majority has recognized their responsibility to undoing those historical harms,” Hesikala said. “We have to do it because of climate change, but we also owe it to the generations of people who have been suffering and literally dying from the pollution.”

Like the history of San Diego’s portside communities themselves, the path to a zero-emissions port has been complicated. The most recent victory in funding and the commitment to further electrification, however, signal a potential turning point.

Though the fight against industrial pollution in San Diego’s portside communities is far from over, for the first time in decades, there is a sense of progress and hope for cleaner air and healthier communities.

Roberto Camacho is a Chicano freelance multimedia journalist from San Diego, California. His reporting typically focuses on criminal justice reform, immigration, Chicano/Latino issues, hip-hop culture, and their intersections to social justice. Follow him on Twitter/IG/Threads: @rob_camacho_sd

Read the full story here.
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Related News

Data centers are putting new strain on California’s grid. A new report estimates the impacts

A new report estimates that California’s data centers are driving increases in electricity use, water demand and pollution even as lawmakers stall on oversight.

In summary A new report estimates that California’s data centers are driving increases in electricity use, water demand and pollution even as lawmakers stall on oversight. California is a major hub for data centers — the facilities that store and transmit much of the internet. But just how much these power-hungry operations affect the state’s energy use, climate and public health remains an open question for researchers. A new report released this week by the environmental think tank Next 10 and a UC Riverside researcher attempts to quantify that impact — but its authors say the report is only an estimate without harder data from the centers themselves. “We are just making these reports pretty much in the dark — since there’s almost zero information,” said Shaolei Ren, an AI researcher at UC Riverside and co-author of the report. “We have extremely little information about data centers in California.” Ren and his coauthors conclude that between 2019 and 2023, electricity use and carbon emissions by California data centers nearly doubled, while on-site water consumption slightly more than doubled. Much of the increases were attributable to the electricity required to run artificial intelligence computations. But many of the report’s estimates, including its health impacts, are based on limited data — a key issue researchers said they encountered repeatedly when crafting the report. The report underscores a growing tension in the industry: advocates who support clean energy and experts who study energy demand agree the days of steady, flat energy use at data centers are over, but there’s far less consensus on just how sharply electricity demand will climb. “In very simple terms, a lot of the uncertainty comes from: what is our life going to look like with AI in the next five years, 10 years, 20 years — how integrated is it going to become?” said Maia Leroy, a Sacramento-based advocate who focuses on clean energy and the grid.  “Are we reaching a point where the use is going to plateau, or is it going to continue?” Experts say more transparency is essential to better understand what resources data centers demand in California. Liang Min, who manages the Bits and Watts Initiative at Stanford University, says the state should improve its forecasts for energy demand to support clean energy goals. Min, who investigates AI’s growing strain on the electric grid, told CalMatters that demand at power centers rises in rapid, unpredictable phases and can shift quickly with each new generation of hardware. The California Energy Commission, which plans for energy use and the growth in demand, “can play a pivotal role,” in understanding and adapting to the demands of AI. As demand grows, policy responses lag In Sacramento, efforts to add transparency and guardrails around data centers have struggled this year. California lawmakers shelved most consumer and environmental proposals aimed at data centers, even as they approved a plan to regionalize California’s power grid to help meet demand from the sector. They set aside two bills focused on curbing data centers’ energy use — one requiring operators to disclose their electricity use and another that offered clean power incentives. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a separate proposal that would have required data center operators to report their water use, even after the bill was weakened. In the end, Newsom — who has often highlighted California’s dominance in the artificial intelligence sector — signed only one measure, allowing regulators to determine whether data centers are driving up costs. Mark Toney, who leads The Utility Reform Network and supported the transparency measure, has questioned whether data centers justify the costs they’re pushing onto ratepayers. He warned of the centers’ “voracious consumption of energy and water, increased carbon emissions, and jacking up ratepayer bills.” Hard facts about data centers are tough to find in California because most rent out power, cooling and floor space to other companies, said Ren, the UC Riverside researcher. Such colocation facilities don’t run their own servers or technology, so they report less information publicly than data centers built by major tech companies in other states. While estimates vary, California has the third-most data centers in the country, after Texas and Virginia. DataCenterMap, a commercial directory that tracks data centers worldwide, lists 321 sites across the state. More in California are expected in coming years. The centers operate around the clock and often rely on diesel backup generators to maintain service during power failures — a practice that adds both greenhouse gases and local air pollutants. They also consume energy and water depending on their cooling methods. Rising data-center demand, and rising questions F. Noel Perry, the businessman and philanthropist who founded Next 10, said his organization’s report shines light on what is fundamentally a black box. “To solve a problem, we have to understand what the problem is,” he said.  “We’ve seen the proliferation of data centers in California, in the U.S. and across the world — and we also are seeing major implications for the environment,” Perry told CalMatters. “The real issue has to do with transparency — and the ability of elected officials and regulators to create some rules that will govern reductions in emissions, water consumption.” The report estimated that data centers used 10.8 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, up from 5.5 terawatt-hours in 2019, accounting for 6% of the nation’s total data center energy use. Unless growth is curbed or better managed, the report’s authors project demand could rise to as high as 25 terawatt-hours by 2028, equal to the power use of roughly 2.4 million U.S. homes. Carbon emissions from the sector nearly doubled during the same period, climbing from 1.2 million to 2.4 million tons, researchers estimated, while on site water use grew from 1,078 acre feet in 2019 to 2,302 acre feet in 2023. That’s enough to meet the annual water needs of almost seven thousand California households. The report’s authors also estimated the public health costs from air pollution associated with data centers have potentially risen, from $45 million in 2019 to more than $155 million in 2023, with the burden expected to reach as high as $266 million by 2028. Most of those costs stem from indirect pollution produced by fossil-fueled power plants that supply the grid. But authors pointed out that regions dense with data centers — particularly Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley — could face higher localized risks from diesel backup generators. Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, said the report exaggerates the impact of backup diesel generators, which are tightly regulated and rarely used in California, minimizing their contributions to air pollution. Data centers don’t control the water used in electricity generation, said Diorio. Since those water impacts don’t happen on site, it’s not fair to blame that on the centers themselves.  “It paints a skewed picture of this critical 21st-century industry,” Diorio said in a statement. Diorio said the report also overlooks how cooling technology varies by region and has become more efficient in recent years. But the authors say their findings underscore the need for uniform reporting standards for data centers’ energy and water use. The report said California should establish ongoing local monitoring and review of data centers — and make the findings public. Ren, the UC Riverside researcher, said that California’s cleaner grid and stricter pollution rules are helping blunt some environmental impacts of data centers already. “California — versus the national average — is doing a better job due to the cleaner grid,” he said.

Pollution
Water
Climate

Can Peru Reboot Its Amazon Oil? Pollution Fallout and Local Opposition Loom

By Alexander VillegasSANTA ROSA, Peru (Reuters) -Near a remote bend of the Patoyacu River in Peru's northern Amazon, Wilmer Macusi stood atop a...

SANTA ROSA, Peru (Reuters) -Near a remote bend of the Patoyacu River in Peru's northern Amazon, Wilmer Macusi stood atop a rusty pipeline cutting through the jungle, swirling a branch in the pool of stagnant water surrounding it.“They say this is clean,” said Macusi, a 25-year-old Indigenous Urarina leader, pointing to the spot where an oil spill occurred in early 2023. “But if you move the water, oil still comes out.”Black droplets bubbled to the surface as plastic barriers meant to contain the spill drooped into the water. The pipeline links a nearby oilfield, Block 8, to the larger government-owned North Peruvian Pipeline (ONP). Macusi's community of Santa Rosa lies a short walk away.Peru’s northern Amazon holds hundreds of millions of barrels of crude, according to government data. But Indigenous groups say oil extraction over the past half-century brought pollution, not progress, and are opposed to a fresh wave of development.The region once pumped more than half of Peru's oil, peaking at about 200,000 barrels a day in the 1980s before environmental liabilities and community opposition drove production below 40,000 bpd. Key blocks went dormant in 2020.Now, the region's modest reserves are again central to state oil firm Petroperu's plans. The company has spent $6.5 billion upgrading its Talara refinery into a 95,000-bpd complex aimed at producing high-grade fuels for export. Heavily indebted with a CCC+ junk credit rating from ratings agency Fitch, Petroperu wants to revive Amazon oil output to supply Talara.The state firm estimated last month that proven and probable reserves in the region were worth $20.9 billion, which Petroperu said could deliver $3.1 billion in tax revenues for local governments and communities. While the amount of oil at stake is relatively small, the plans have fueled tensions over past spills, stoking Indigenous opposition at a time Brazil, Ecuador and Guyana are trying to expand their Amazon oil frontiers.Frustration about climate action and forest protection boiled over at the COP30 climate summit this week, when dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the venue and clashed with security guards.Petroperu is also planning to import oil to the refinery by linking the 1,100-km ONP to neighboring Ecuador, which aims to boost production in its own Amazon region as part of a $47 billion oil expansion plan. Hailed as an engineering marvel when it was built in the 1970s, the ONP has since become a lightning rod for leaks, protests and sabotage. Indigenous groups in both countries are resisting the pipeline link-up.The government is weighing options for how best to run the pipeline, including through a joint venture or outsourcing its management.  Petroperu failed to attract an international partner to run its largest oilfield, Block 192, which produced more than 100,000 bpd at its peak but has recently been the focus of Indigenous protests demanding remediation for damage to the forest, soil and waterways.Petroperu's former chairman Alejandro Narvaez, who was fired last month, estimated Block 192 could produce at least 20,000 bpd with investment and overall Amazon production could hit 100,000 bpd.The state oil firm selected domestic firm Upland Oil & Gas to operate the block, but Peru's state oil regulator disqualified Upland last month on the grounds it did not demonstrate financial capacity. Upland disputes the decision and has asked for a review.Petroperu also partnered with Upland to revive production at the smaller Block 8, which produced 5,000 bpd last month.Upland's CEO Jorge Rivera, son of one of Peru's early oil prospectors, told Reuters that Upland has offered Indigenous communities training, jobs and funding."We've dedicated ourselves to understanding the complexities behind operating these fields,” he said.Rivera visited Santa Rosa in March, gifting a Starlink terminal and requesting a report on the community's needs.The community's main demand was the cleanup of the nearby spill, but questions remain over who bears responsibility.Though the operator is responsible for the 108-km stretch of pipeline that runs through Block 8 connecting it to the ONP, Upland's contract exempts it from liability for past pollution.The previous operator, an Argentine subsidiary named Pluspetrol Norte, was fined a record number of times by Peru's environmental regulator OEFA before it filed for liquidation and left the area in late 2020. Eight Indigenous federations and non-governmental organizations filed a complaint to the OECD's Dutch National Contact Point, a mechanism to implement OECD guidelines for businesses, which concluded in September that Pluspetrol had violated Indigenous communities' rights in Peru's Amazon and urged the company to address the environmental damage.In a response to Reuters, Pluspetrol said it already had complied with environmental and human rights regulations and that the NCP statement was "without merit" for not reflecting the "breadth and complexity of the evidence presented and the extent of actions taken by the company."  Decades of scientific research have found high levels of lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic in wildlife and Indigenous people living near Peru's oilfields. Estimated cleanup costs for Block 192 alone stand at $1.5 billion.OEFA registered over 560 environmental infractions including oil spills and others from the ONP or other oil infrastructure in Blocks 192 and 8 from 2011 through September 2025.Petroperu has said any damage is "temporary and reversible" and blamed unspecified "economic and rural-domestic activities" by local communities as the main driver of water pollution.In late 2023, Peru's prosecutor's office said it had broken up a network of businessmen, local Indigenous leaders and a Petroperu employee that it said was orchestrating oil spills to secure lucrative cleanup contracts.  In an interview with Reuters before his dismissal, Narvaez said Petroperu had prioritized cleaning up spills under the regulator's supervision.The government of Peru's interim President Jose Jeri, who took power last month, replaced Narvaez with Petroperu board vice president Fidel Moreno and said it will soon replace Petroperu's entire board of directors.Moreno did not reply to an interview request.Macusi said communities had yet to access a fund from Upland promising 2.5% of oil sales. Meanwhile, meetings with the oil regulator, Perupetro, to discuss funding for community projects have been delayed.After an oil spill from the Block 8 connector pipeline in 2022, Urarina communities held a strike, taking over oil facilities, fields and blockading a river to demand a better state response. Macusi, who as a teen worked hauling buckets of spilled oil, says communities are ready to take action again."If the promised benefits don't come soon, we'll take measures," he said.(Reporting by Alexander Villegas; Additional reporting by Marco Aquino; Editing by Nia Williams and Katy Daigle)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Pollution
Business
Forests

Pollution, poverty and power: the real cost of environmental inequality in the UK

Cleaner air is progress, but injustice remains. Environmental racism still decides who breathes dirty air, who gets sick and who gets heard.

Cleaner air is progress, but injustice remains. Environmental racism still decides who breathes dirty air, who gets sick and who gets heard.

Pollution

L.A. air officials approve port pollution pact as skeptics warn of 'no clear accountability'

Southern California air officials voted overwhelmingly Friday to give themselves the power to levy fines on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach if they don't fulfill their promises to transition to cleaner equipment.

Southern California air officials voted overwhelmingly Friday to give themselves the power to levy fines on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach if they don’t fulfill their promises to transition to cleaner equipment. The ports remain the largest source of smog-forming pollution in Southern California — releasing more emissions than the region’s 6 million cars each day. The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s governing board voted 9-1 in favor of an agreement that commits the ports to installing zero-emission equipment, such as electric truck chargers or hydrogen fuel pumps, to curb air pollution from the heaviest polluters. The plans will be submitted in three phases: heavy-duty trucks and most cargo-moving equipment by 2028; smaller locomotives and harbor crafts by 2029; and cargo ships and other large vessels by 2030. If the ports don’t meet their deadlines, they would be fined $50,000 to $200,000, which would go into a clean-air fund to aid communities affected by port pollution. The AQMD, for its part, forgoes imposing new rules on the ports for five years. Many environmental advocates voiced disappointment, saying the agreement doesn’t contain specific pollution reduction requirements. “I urge you not to sign away the opportunity to do more to help address the region’s air pollution crisis in exchange for a pinky promise,” said Kathy Ramirez, one of dozens of speakers at Friday’s board meeting. “This is about our lives. I would encourage you to think about why you joined the AQMD board. If not for clean air, then for what?” Port officials and shipping industry officials lauded the decision as a pragmatic way to transition to a zero-emissions economy.“The give and take of ideas and compromises in this process — it mirrors exactly what a real-world transition to zero emissions looks like,” said William Bartelson, an executive at the Pacific Maritime Assn. “It’s practical, it’s inclusive and it’s grounded in shared goals.”The vote answers a long-standing question over how the AQMD intends to reduce pollution from the sprawling trade complex, a focus of environmental justice efforts for decades. The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, known as the San Pedro Port Complex, is the largest container port in the Western Hemisphere, handling 40% of all container cargo entering the United States. Despite years of efforts at reducing pollution, the vast majority of heavy machinery, big rigs, trains and ships that serve the region’s bustling goods movement still are powered by diesel engines that emit toxic particles and nitrogen oxides, a precursor to smog. For nearly a decade the AQMD has vacillated between strict regulation and a pact with the ports with more flexibility. Several negotiations over a memorandum of understanding failed between 2017 and 2022. The board was prepared to require the ports to offset smog-forming pollution from trucks, trains and ships through clean air projects, like solar panels or electric vehicle chargers. Instead, the ports presented the AQMD with a proposed cooperative agreement, prompting the agency to pause its rulemaking. The AQMD doubled the penalties in that proposal and agreed not to make new rules for five years, not the 10 the industry wanted. Perhaps the most important details of the agreement — the types of energy or fuel used; the appropriate number of chargers or fueling stations — won’t be published for years. The lack of specifics prompted skepticism from many environmental advocates.“It’s just a stall tactic to make a plan for a plan in the hope that emission reductions will come sometime in the future,” said Fernando Gaytan, a senior attorney with environmental nonprofit Earthjustice.The contract also includes a clause that the AQMD or ports could terminate the agreement “for any reason” with a 45-day written notice. Wayne Nastri, the AQMD’s executive officer, said this gives the agency the option to switch back to requiring zero-emission infrastructure at the ports. “If we report back to you and you’re not seeing the progress being made, you can be confident knowing that you can pivot and release that [rulemaking] package,” Nastri said to the board. At the end of public comment, opponents of the agreement broke into loud chants. The AQMD cleared the gallery as the board discussed the proposal. Board member Veronica Padilla-Campos, the lone “no” vote, said the agreement lacked the necessary emission reductions and offered “no clear accountability” to local communities.Fellow board member Nithya Raman acknowledged many criticisms of the agreement but ultimately voted for it. “I really have come to believe that the choice before us is this cooperative agreement or no action at all on this issue — continuing a decade of inaction,” Raman said. “I will be voting to support it today, because I do think that it is our only pathway to take any steps forward toward cleaner air at the single largest source of air pollution in the region.”The plan still must be approved by commissioners at the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach Harbor Commission at meetings this year.

Pollution
Crisis
Energy

Pollution-plagued port communities near LA and Long Beach say regulator excludes them

Communities near the ports say regulators didn't consider their input when weighing a cooperative agreement about pollution from the ports.

Guest Commentary written by Theral Golden Theral Golden is a Long Beach resident Paola Vargas Paola Vargas is a community organizer at East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice The South Coast Air Quality Management District Board of Governors should vote against the so-called cooperative agreement to curb emissions in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, because impacted community members were not meaningfully included, it weakens the district’s ability to reduce emissions and it creates a dangerous precedent.   The toxic pollution experienced daily by nearby community members isn’t new. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the busiest in the country. We have known for decades that port emissions shorten life expectancy and quality of life in the South Coast Air Basin, which encompasses parts of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and all of Orange County. These pollution-burdened areas are called “diesel death zones” due to the adverse health impacts. In places like West Long Beach, life expectancy is up to eight years shorter than the county average. Throughout the basin, there are an estimated 2,400 pollution related deaths a year. Both ports have made air quality improvements, but the complex is still the single largest fixed source of emissions in southern California.  And the toxins are only going to increase. Cargo activity at the ports is expected to rise 57% from 2021 to 2032. We can expect the human death toll to rise alongside it. There is a process underway with the South Coast Air Quality Management District — the governing body charged with regulating port pollution — that has the potential to address these grave health outcomes. Communities harmed by the pollution have consistently asked the district to incorporate their feedback when identifying solutions, but the district has not meaningfully engaged them. Instead, it has sided with industry time and again, allowing it to dictate the flow and outcomes of the process.  Gov. Gavin Newsom recently declined to sign Senate Bill 34, citing concerns that it would limit the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s authority to regulate port emissions and would interfere with cooperative actions taking place with the ports. We agree with Newsom’s assessment that regulatory authority and cooperation can avoid the worst health impacts — except the cooperation he refers to as “locally driven and collaborative” has been anything but.   The cooperative agreement includes a five-year ban on rulemaking. That handcuffs South Coast Air Quality Management District, effectively blocking the agency’s authority to address port pollution when the South Coast Air Basin can least afford a delay.  Youths play baseball at Bloch Field near the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro on April 8, 2025. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters This ban on rulemaking not only impacts the ports of LA and Long Beach but every port in the district. It also sets a dangerous precedent that could spur other air districts to eliminate public participation in rulemaking processes and prioritize industry priorities over public health.  Instead of advancing the cooperative agreement, the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s board should provide more time to meaningfully and collaboratively engage local communities and consider public health implications.   This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. We can chart a path that addresses port pollution, improves quality of life and recognizes the role ports play in our global supply chains.  But that won’t happen without communities taking a meaningful place at the table. 

Pollution
Health

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