Lowenthal Won’t Introduce New Container Fee Legislation

An angry State Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-LB) vowed yesterday to continue fighting for clean air, but won’t be re-introducing legislation next year that would place a container fee on all freight using the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland to raise funds for clean air initiatives.  In a statement released to the press, Lowenthal blamed a Governor more interested in doing the bidding of multi-national corporations and Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin than in protecting thousands of Californian families from dangerous air pollutants.

“Pollution from international goods movement is causing a health crisis in California and the federal government is not going to bail us out. We need to stand up and fight this ourselves and hopefully, some day, we’ll have a Governor that will fight for California as well.” stated Senator Lowenthal.

The California Air Resources Board estimates 3,700 deaths a year are directly attributed to diesel pollution emanating from goods movement. That is in addition to the $200 billion in additional health care costs that CARB attributes to goods movement over the next 15 years.

“I held off on this bill last year at the request of Governor Schwarzenegger, and spent the whole year working with his office. Unfortunately the pressure from Governor Palin and multi-national corporations was too much for him and the Governor chose those interests over the health and well-being of Californians,”
concluded Lowenthal.