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I'm David Nazar.

Earlier this year, we brought you a special report about all the efforts of the Port of Long Beach to try and curb all the pollution that's been overtaking communities for decades.

Neighborhoods like San Pedro, Wilmington, Long Beach, other surrounding areas as well.

We interviewed port officials who explained all the mitigation plans that have taken place over the years to try and read those diesel emissions, assert the smoke, everything that filters into the air.

And while the port of L.A.

and the Port of Long Beach have had some success with these mitigation efforts, many residents living out there say both ports continue to dirty the air, and those efforts are not nearly enough.

Well, no sooner did we air our report talking about all the positives port officials were working on.

I got emails from port neighbors saying this was all nonsense from port officials, and the port was just talking a good game with a marketing video.

Their words.

So as always is the case.

I listen to you, I listen to the viewers.

So all voices, your voices can be heard.

Now we bring you the neighbors story of frustration and anger and what they claim is now a public health crisis that is killing them.

And certainly we're going to hear from the Port of Long Beach and the port of LA as well.

The Port of Los Angeles and adjacent Port of Long Beach, located about 25 miles south of downtown L.A., is the largest and busiest port complex in the U.S.

and North America, and one of the busiest in the world.

Together, the ports process some 40% of the nation's containerized cargo.

Millions of containers and billions of dollars of goods each year ready to ship overseas or hauled inland with the help of the many ships, tugboats, trucks, forklifts, pipelines, trains.

And with all these mobile sources, there's a lot of pollution out here.

The diesel fuel exhaust, the particulate matter, the toxic emissions getting into the air, causing the black soot and smog.

And neighbors living near the ports are angry.

They say there's a pollution crisis today.

To be fair, both the port of L.A.

and the Port of Long Beach have worked for years to try and mitigate the pollution problems out here.

And we're going to explain all of that later in this report.

So stay with us.

First, though, we speak with some of these angry residents in San Pedro's, no Hill above the port, and we talked to other neighbors as well who insist port pollution efforts are, in their words, simply a greenwashing.

A marketing campaign from port officials of what is now a public health emergency.

They say residents living in places like San Pedro, Wilmington, Long Beach, Carson and Palos Verdes, for example, say too little, too late.

They claim the pollution damage has been done.

Neighbors like Doctor John Miller, a lifetime fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, Doctor Miller has worked for decades in local hospital E.r.s near the port.

He is convinced there is no direct causation with port pollution and the many related illnesses that residents are dealing with.

Decades of studies have shown that this whole area and downwind of here, suffers from elevated levels of multiple types of cancer, elevated levels and elevated levels of cardiovascular disease, inclu other cardiopulmonary problems, and of course, elevated deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, multiple other other malignancies included, including even lymphomas.

We also know that, pregnant women and neonates are adversely affected.

We know that this, this pollution is associated with, low birth weight infants.

And it's frustrating to me that having been working on this for more than 25 years, and I know now that there's so many children out there who have here who have suffered this, and we knew about it decades ago, and we're just nothing is being done about it.

In any population.

There is going to be a percentage of people get cancers, cardiovascular illness, other diseases.

Are you certain that it is directly from the port?

These are all the soot, the smoke, the air out here.

Well, this is one of the main contributors because this is the main polluter here in Southern California.

When you've tried to tell port officials about this over the years, what has their reaction been to you?

Well, they say, thank you very much.

That's very interesting, doctor.

And, then they don't go any further.

For years, Andrea Ricco directed community engagement and outreach at USC Environmental Health Sciences.

And, he says it was clearly determined years ago that both the ports of LA and Long Beach were some of the worst polluters in the state of California.

The air here is really bad.

In the last ten years, there's been basically no progress made in reducing emissions from these ships and from the trucks.

Why is that, in your opinion?

The port is not doing enough.

They claim they don't have enough power to plug in the ships.

If they don't have enough electricity, then they need to be having the Department of Water and Power give them more electricity.

So the port is, claiming they're making a lot of progress when really the emissions, have been, the reduction in emissions have been stagnant for the last ten years.

All I can say is the port is really misleading the public.

They're really misleading them in terms of claiming that they're making great progress on reducing emissions from the ships and trucks, when, in fact, over the last ten years, they've made virtually no progress in reducing emissions.

And and that affects all the people who live here and the workers who are also impacted by it.

And then you have children playing in the playground behind me, and it's yards away from ships that are polluting.

I mean, that is a really bad situation.

Kids can get asthma, adults can develop lung cancer.

You've got a housing, you have public housing that's really close to here.

So the team of scientists that I worked with at USC, study air pollution, and they know the impacts of air pollution on little children in terms of asthma, on adults, in terms of developing respiratory illness and lung cancer.

So this is kind of a joke that the, ships are out there and the containers are out there.

The cranes are out there on the trucks or on the freeway.

Carl Southwell is a 30 year risk consultant working with all sorts of companies, everything from risk management and pollution mitigation to disaster relief.

Carl says he's very concerned that port officials are not solving this pollution crisis, which is happening in in the ports, is what I would term a slow motion disaster.

You have cumulative impacts from the air pollution, the the particulate matter in particular, once it's breathed into people's lungs, it accumulates and it tends to have, big problems down the road with, people's health in particular children.

To me, it's it's what what I would look at is it's a wicked problem.

How bad is the health out here for those residents?

As far as morbidity, I think that that residents that are that are within a short distance from the ports will experience shorter lifespans than the average American.

A few miles south of San Pedro is the city of Wilmington, which also borders Support Complex.

A group of angry residents here heard we were producing a special report about the air pollution.

So they, like the Pedro residents, gathered to tell their story on camera.

Ricardo Pulido chairs a local volunteer environmental group that in part worked to safeguard residents from the port's toxic pollution that he claims is killing his neighbors.

I've been here 40 years feeling cursed.

I'm a neighbor, but we get the same pollution.

Because the Western, you know, all the way across.

I smell sulfur.

I used basically the smog and bad days.

And this is one of the hottest spots on the planet, as you know.

We're so angry.

Point where we're boiling.

We just.

We've had it.

You got that news?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We had enough.

Enough is enough.

We see a lot of, lip service from the port, from the refineries, from all the different, petroleum industries out there.

And we are just sick and tired of it.

We, our children are dying, leaving our family members of some of our adult men are here today who were tested for respiratory is is, ill.

They're not able to breathe this morning.

Some days.

And those are a really question.

I smell it all the time.

Alicia Baltazar has lived in Wilmington for the past ten years.

Alicia says the port pollution problem has gotten so bad out here.

She and other Wilmington residents formed their own neighborhood council, in part just to try and fight back against the ports.

Everybody knows that the air quality is happening.

Everybody knows what's causing it, but nobody wants to do anything about it.

Everybody will say, oh, we're going to stop the trucks, finally.

But then you see streets that have trucks going in both directions, idling all hours of the day.

You have the neighbors coming to the neighborhood council complaining about the idling trucks, and then you have the port turn around and say it's not happening.

I feel like I'm being gaslit.

We have put our own air quality monitors in the in the community, and we get a whole total different reading them with the port reports to us.

So we see that a lot of emissions are here.

I do a lot of work with the schools.

I spend a lot of time, especially in and Freese Avenue Elementary School.

And you'd be surprised how many kids are in that office all day long.

Getting their inhaler is not being allowed to play outside.

You see, a lot of kids have to go sit in that cafeteria during lunch because they're not allowed to go run around outside because their asthma will kick up and you go to another community.

And it's not like that.

We've also been called the cancer corridor because we know that if you live here long enough, you or somebody in your family is eventually going to get cancer of some sort.

I believe there's a causation because there's no way you can have that.

Many people have asthma and cancer in one little area and not blame it on something that's happening in that area.

You know, and for us, we can clearly look around and we can see it.

We can smell it.

We know the air is not good.

And that's getting in our soil.

It's getting in our water, it's getting in every part of our lives.

Magali Sanchez Hall also lives in Wilmington.

Magali says she's an environmental justice activist leading her nonprofit, Amr, which she says gives a voice to the voiceless out here.

What's happening here is that we are called the sacrifice.

You probably know that.

So the majority of the population here are Latinos.

Latinas, 90% is about 50% of the population don't have a high school diploma, as you probably know.

Economic vulnerability, it's at the top.

You know, the average individual income is 22 to $24,000.

So basically here is a community that that is this possible.

So you have all these wealth happening here, all of these businesses taking place.

But the community doesn't receive anything from all these businesses, from the poor and all these, pollution that is happening here.

Basically, we're in the wild, wild West.

If you have in a in this small place of nine mile racial, you have Wilmington and you compared to the rest of the county, I will sentence you.

Wilmington has the highest rates of asthma, cardiovascular diseases, cancer rates.

Why is that?

You tell me why.

Because we're basically in the same county.

So if there's no way to prove.

That's why they keep on getting away with it.

It's honestly disappointing.

Frustrating to know that this is happening to my people.

Like this is happening to my friends.

This is happening to my brothers.

It's happening to my relatives.

Is are happening to my neighbors.

These are happening to the people that live in this community.

It's disappointing to know that this is happening.

Like, what do you mean?

You're telling me that me and my community are more likely to be disadvantaged than other communities?

Just because we live near the port?

And the fact that these guys and the poor, it and everywhere else are saying, hey, you know what?

You're fine, you're fine.

And when you look at it, when you look at the numbers, the statistics of it all, it's like, what?

Like what's going on?

One trend I noticed a really big trend of is asthma.

That's a really big trend.

I notice they tend to have respiratory disease.

The diseases that they mentioned, cardiovascular, and they just tend to be really messed up.

And I always ask them like, hey, where's your inhaler?

I always ask them, where is your inhaler?

Because if you're in Wellington, you always need it.

You need it on hand.

After our Wilmington visit, we took a harbor tour and met with a couple of other neighbors who say they're angry with port officials who, in their words, have done nothing to mitigate the environmental crisis out here.

Janet Gunter, a San Pedro resident, has been the gadfly of sorts, trying to tell the world the ports are toxic.

She's been sparring with Port officials and port executives for years, spearheading lawsuits, winning lawsuits and just making herself a local household name as she continues to battle the powers that be.

We're sending you back to our humble ocean right now.

There are so many toxic toxins in the air right now.

I mean, there's chemicals.

There's these projectiles, there's noxious socks.

We've got the scale of all this, our center drones that are floating around all these neighborhoods and it's fast growing as well.

So where are the rewards from the community back home?

Asthma.

Lung is easy to see that you don't have to look at the American Lung Association.

Let's go.

That's really the only one.

And I trust, the monitors for this part of my life out of commission.

How Harry has challenged sometimes for years.

Nobody's on top of that.

I've been busy running the business.

That is the main focus.

They're shippers.

That's what they do.

That crime concerns about people.

That factor, very low on the scale.

They are Optum and dollars profit are coming over us.

It's a game, you know and they're competing with each other.

It's a Long beach versus wasn't it worth you've been fighting this fight for the last 120, 25 years?

25 years.

Yeah.

We are sliding, and denying the truth.

We have to take them to court.

Kicking and screaming about the pollution.

The facts of their were the emissions and the static flight that they were getting.

Costs from court expenditure.

If they are the bright green guardians that they say they are, why are they not out in front of the airship instead of being pulled out of my legal actions and commander know and say, I don't get it, y'all.

Fleury lives and works in San Pedro.

For years, Gail was with the neighborhood council in Pedro, and now she's with the Wilmington Neighborhood Council, where she advocates for the folks living in these communities.

There's so much pollution in the air.

We have the highest cancer rate for children.

We have the highest, rate in the state.

We have the highest melanoma rate in the state.

We have the highest Parkinson's disease in the state.

We also have a lot of, particulate matter in the air that is so dangerous that if you've been exposed to it, you're supposed to call poison control.

And they don't tell you that it's a nobody tells you it's in the air.

But these all of these containers get sprayed down with an insecticide that is deadly poisonous and that goes into the air and we breathe it because it's really close to the homes.

We inhale the exhaust from the trays that come in.

We're putting 14 new trucks into Wilmington, so there will be that much more pollution.

When you take a boat through the port, you will see a lot of uncovered chemicals, sulfur hole, things like that.

Those are not protected.

That goes into the air and we breathe it and it's deadly poisonous.

The amount of asthma, COPD, lung cancer is the highest in the state and it nobody really wants to pay attention to it.

We've solidified ourselves as truly an investor in this community and concept when it comes to reducing pollution.

Jeanne Soroka is the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

As executive director, Soroka administers policies and provides direction for the daily operation of the Port of La.

We met with Soroka after speaking with the neighbors.

The executive director says the port of LA has been extremely proactive, trying to mitigate the pollution out here, and he hears loudly and clearly all the concerns of the neighbors.

Pollution of any kind is bad.

That's why, dating back almost 20 years ago, the Twin ports of Long Beach in Los Angeles created the first ever Clean Air Action plan for ports.

And the resultant effect 20 years later, is that diesel particulate matter has declined by 91%, sulfur oxides by 97%, and nitrogen oxides are down by 74%.

And that's why we're the only ports in the world to have a strategy on paper and a pathway to zero emission cargo handling equipment trucks.

And we've learned so much since the 2017 Clean Air Action Plan update, which raise the bar on our deliverables.

Now, we know very clearly that ships, trucks and rail locomotives are the top three categories, which in part is why we develop the green shipping corridor with no less than eight Asia ports.

The idea there is to try to get private sector public partnership together in order to find renewable and synthetic fuels for these big ships.

If we could reduce pollution on that.

Shanghai to L.A.

Long Beach corridor, the biggest around the Trans Pacific, by 10%, that would be equivalent to all the pollution in the Port of Los Angeles for a year.

Soroka says the port is constantly implementing new plans and strategies for ridding the air of pollution, and he acknowledges there is much more work that must be done.

2030 mile marker for clean transportation and cargo handling equipment on our docks.

Over 5000 pieces of machinery that will need to be zero emission.

An investment with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

More than $1 billion to get clean electricity produced, transported, stored and shared with these marine terminal operators.

And then the big ticket item in 2035 with zero emission heavy duty trucks.

Every decision we make affects someone across a wide variety of stakeholders that has an interest in this port.

Balance is the key.

We've got to balance business with community, with traffic patterns, pollution, with education for our young people, the workforce of tomorrow.

Today's working family.

1 in 9 jobs in Southern California today emanates from the work at this port.

It's more than a million people that go on the job every day, counting on us to do our jobs.

But with that sheer volume, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles combining 40% of our nation's imports, that gives us an outsized seat at the table to work with technology firms, scientists, engineers and private sector companies to try to drive technology in this clean energy cycle even faster than it's going anywhere else in the world.

Today, we instituted the alternative marine power concept back over 25 years ago.

In Europe.

It's just being adopted, and there are many examples like that.

Not for today, but it's what's being done at home.

Again, those pollution reduction numbers are strong.

There's more to do.

And now getting to a zero emission port environment is taking that next step.

Mario Cordero is chief executive officer of the Port of Long Beach.

He leads the port and acknowledges that all of the neighbors we interviewed have legitimate concerns, concerns that Cordero says are not being ignored.

And Cordero, like Jean Soroka, says part of dealing with those community concerns was the introduction of a green port policy.

Years ago, in January of 2005, the Puerto Long Beach formalized the commitment that we would be a green port and hence the plan of action commenced then that led to a 2006 Clean Air Action Plan.

That was a collaboration with our sister port here across the bridge to Port Los Angeles, to jointly tackle the emission reduction issue, and specifically addressing the dilapidated trucks that were in the port complex at that time.

And for those of us, people who were familiar what the corridor looked like, in 2005, the 710 Long Beach Freeway, literally black smoke coming from these dilapidated trucks, black smoke coming from smokestacks of the vessels calling at the ports.

The port expanded about $180 million in shore power technology so that today our largest container terminals ships come in and hook up to electricity.

The 26th Clean Action Plan led to the Clean Truck Plan of 2008, and that was a, monumental transformation of the displacement of diesel trucks and now bringing in cleaner, cleaner trucks.

The result?

95% of the trucks today are whole lot cleaner than they were back in 2000 of it.

There's been significant reduction in the port region with regard to particulate matter.

And it's a difficult reduction in risk in cancer and some of the illnesses associated with pollution in and around the port region, Cordero explains.

The Port of Long Beach Harbor Commission has slated $65 million for all sorts of mitigation projects, with the ultimate goal of zero emissions out here, Cordero says.

Part of that money includes everything from helping to fund pollution filters.

All throughout the port areas, working with a children's asthma center, funding what's known as zero emission projects, creating initiatives like the Clean Ship Initiative, which gives incentives to cleaner ships entering the ports, creating the Green Flag program, where in part ships reduce their speed, which result in reduced emissions.

Cordero admits that cargo volume is certainly vital to the port.

However, he says working with the neighbors and the port communities is equally vital to ensure their good health and good working relationship going forward and today, monumental, a collaborative effort with countries like China and Singapore to commit to decarbonization of the Green Corridor, specifically the Pacific Trade Route.

The problem is just recently, serviced the first methanol vessel coming into the port, from China, from the Trans Pacific.

So again, the progress has been tremendous despite all these port pollution efforts, the angry port neighbors insists these efforts are just not good enough.

This is very likely a public health crisis.

It's something that perhaps the state should step in and do something about, because the port isn't the city isn't.

It makes money for them.

They don't want to lose their cash cow, but it needs to be done for the safety, the health of the people of this area.

We are human beings.

We have blood just like anybody else.

We might not have money, but we we need exactly like everyone else.

How much does it cost a life?

This has been an ongoing crisis for decades.

It should be recognized.

We as a society have to do better to protect the members of our society.

Our goal is zero emission.

In 2005, we declared our goal was to reduce emissions.

So we've we've gone from a commitment to reduce emissions to a commitment now to eradicate harmful emissions.

We are proud here at the problem is we're celebrating 20 years of living green.

And if you go back to what we've been able to do in 20 years, just imagine what we can do in the next 5 to 10 years with the Clean Air Action Plan.

Not only did we deliver air pollution reduction results six years ahead of our commitment to this community, it allowed us to re-up on the 2017 cap 2.0 program to raise the bar even higher.

So that's really the crux of this matter.

And I don't believe that in my 11 years on this job, I have ever said we would put profits over people.

This is a wide array of 260,000 residents and so many workers that combined every day to do the best we can at reducing pollution.

Thanks to the port neighbors and the port officials for their help with this story.

Now, for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click contact Us to send us your questions, your comments, your story ideas so we can hear from you.

And you know, you can also contact me directly with a direct message at.

David Nazar news on X or on YouTube or just go to David Nazar News.com.

Contact me there.

You know, I'll get back to you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app.

Thanks so much for joining us.