Port groups, shippers, weigh in against truck law revision

Harbor groups and shippers say clean air at the ports can be achieved without amending federal trucking law.

The Trucker Staff

7/29/2009

Several groups representing port trucking have written the president of the Port of Oakland’s Board of Commissioners asking the commission not to urge Congress to revise long-standing federal trucking law under the guise of clean air.

The Port of Oakland Commission is set to adopt a final resolution Thursday asking Congress to amend interstate trucking rules as set forth under the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA).

The Waterfront Coalition, which represents manufacturers, retailers and agricultural exporters/importers and transportation providers wrote a letter earlier this month telling Commission President Victor Uno that any action to amend “longstanding federal laws concerning interstate trucking codified in the FAAAA … would have no impact on air quality and could compromise future cargo growth through the Port of Oakland.”

A letter also was sent to Uno from the Harbor Truckers for Sustainable Future, a two-year-old nonprofit trade association of motor carriers operating in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif.

The Harbor group wrote that it “does not support nor find it necessary for the Port of Oakland to ask Congress to amend the FAAAA” because the FAAAA’s “pre-emption of state and local truck regulation does not prevent the development or progress in achieving the true air quality goals of your recently adopted Clean Truck Program.

“All the recent press releases from the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach tout the success of their Clean Truck Program and this was done without amending the FAAAA.”

The Harbor group specifically took issue with part of the Commission’s draft resolution that states “ … the current system of federal laws and regulations relating to port operations does not sufficiently allow West Coast ports to create comprehensive and legally supportable programs to increase and maintain operational efficiency of various maritime operations, including programs relating to environmental concerns, emissions reductions, security and infrastructure funding.”

The Harbor group called the language “misleading” and “not accurate” because it said “There are no legal challenges to Oakland’s Clean Truck Program or the California Air Resources Board’s Drayage Truck Program.”

In addition, some 30 shipping organizations have sent a letter to Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, urging him and his colleagues to “reject efforts to re-write federal trucking rules.”

Part of the letter said Congress is being asked “ … to grant to local governments the ability to regulate the harbor drayage industry to address environmental and port security matters and thereby eliminate the federal preemption of state and local regulation of foreign and interstate commerce.”

The letter continued that “these efforts will not improve air quality or port security in and around the nation’s ports but will re-impose a fragmented, local, patchwork regulatory structure on foreign and interstate commerce contrary to the U.S. Constitution and acts of Congress.”

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Dorothy Cox of The Trucker staff may be reached to comment at dlcox@thetrucker.com.