Action Plan

Did you hear me on the radio the other morning? KPCC assembled an expert panel for a roundtable discussion on the San Pedro Bay Clean Air Action Plan. The panel included attorneys and senior policy advisors and presidents of harbor commissions, all talking about this plan’s goal to reduce air emissions caused by the operation of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Over the course of the panel discussion, important and intimidating acronyms were offhandedly employed. Complicated technical reports were referenced in ways that made it clear that they had been both read and understood. Big words were used. I was not on this panel.
I was in a folding chair in the audience carefully observing a group of smart people talking smartly, trying to imagine what I would imagine these people to look like if I were listening to their voices on the radio. This was a difficult task, but I am pretty certain that S. David Freeman (Port of Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners President) and Peter Greenwald (Senior Policy Advisor for the Southern California Air Quality Management District) both looked the way I would have thought they should have. But the others, they were talking funny.
Unless you are naked right now (weirdo), chances are you are wearing something that arrived at the continent of North America in a great big corrugated shipping container that came through one of the San Pedro Bay ports before it caught your eye on that retail rack. But according to the smarties on the panel, running shoes and costume jewelry are not the only things being delivered to us by the ships and cranes and trains and trucks humming along down there at the Ports. We are also receiving dangerous and unhealthy doses of diesel particulate matter, and nitrous and sulfur oxides, among other chemicals. Not only do they have remarkable names, they also cause cancer and respiratory diseases in people living in the South Coast Air Basin. That’s where you live.
But never fear, for now we have a San Pedro Bay Clean Air Action Plan. It will require ships to turn off their engines when they are berthed (fun fact: this is called “cold ironing”), and use low sulfur content fuels, and will require other equipment to meet all kinds of EPA standards. These new control measures will reduce the number of horrible deaths caused by the import and distribution of all of our life necessities: twelve dollar plaid shirts, high bouncy balls, disposable razors with moisturizing strips, little gangsta Homies toys you can buy out of vending machines. Read the report at http://www.portoflosangeles.org/environment_studies.htm. If you care, send a comment to the Ports before the end of the month and tell them that you want more! Stricter standards! Fancier sounding control measures!
But back to what’s important; my radio appearance. The reason you heard my deep melodious voice coming from your speakers was that I got to ask a question, remember? I submitted it on an index card, which they gave back to me. Thank goodness, because it turns out that it’s really tough to talk into a microphone and think at the same time. My question was a good one. It was all about other ports in the world with similar action plans or something. I need you to tell me the truth, though. Did I sound fat?

A Small Request

If you are the guy I saw outside of your house the other evening with the fancy plastic Round Up spray bottle attachment on your hose, I thought you might like to know that I was just swimming at Huntington Beach. And, if you want, I could come over and roll around on your lawn and apply a second coat of your weed killing chemicals, if you think it’ll help.
The problem with swimming at the beach and then coming home and reading about water quality in the ocean is that you find out that you were frolicking in sewage discharge and urban runoff, which doesn’t come as a surprise, because, duh, you flush your own toilet uphill from there. But all the same, this realization is not exactly classifiable as “heartening.” It does, though, explain why you couldn’t see your feet.
You probably saw the Sunday Los Angeles Times with its front page toxic ocean article. Did it make you all itchy, too? The article (by Kenneth R Weiss) explains that the millions of tons of chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides and the burning of fossil fuels that we are pumping into the ocean on a daily basis are causing all kinds of nasty consequences: algae blooms, tumors on sea turtles, the disappearance of kelp and coral, and the creation of these so called “dead zones.” There are now 150 of these low oxygen areas in the oceans of the world, areas where organisms that can leave do so, and those that can’t leave die. If you looked at the graphic, you probably noticed the little red dead zone square right on top of southern California. That’s where all the sea stars suffocated.
This article made me curious about the Huntington Beach water that was still stuck in my sinuses, so I made the mistake of looking for more information. A couple of highlights: I found a 2005 Associated Press article describing a UC Irvine Study that determined that swimming at Huntington and Newport Beaches costs people (conservatively) 3.3 million dollars per year (No, not each. Total - parking is not that expensive). This amount was based on lost wages and medical treatments for over 74,000 incidents of stomach illness, respiratory disease, and eye, ear, and skin infections due to exposure to polluted water. And, even more frightening, according to the Surf Rider Foundation 2005 “State of the Beach” Report, male fish with female characteristics are showing up in beaches off of Southern California. Scientists believe that treated sewage is disrupting fish hormones and deforming the sex organs of these fish. That’s when I decided, enough research. I went and took a long, long shower.
So, just a small request; if you wouldn’t mind, like, whacking those weeds (string trimmers are fun!) and/or eating only organic food produced with no pesticides, and walking to work (a bike would be OK, or even roller skates), and becoming vegetarian, and wearing hemp, and powering your house with solar panels or an exercise bicycle, I’d really appreciate it. I might feel comfortable about body surfing again, too, if that’s something you happen to care about.