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Environmental Groups Blast Port of Seattle CEO
Tay Yoshitani attempts to gut Congressional clean air efforts
by Heather Weiner, Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports
The Port of Seattle's CEO, Tay Yoshitani, is taking on a large national coalition of environmental groups, labor unions, the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland, and many Democratic leaders in a fight over proposed environmental legislation in Congress. On January 25, say insiders at the American Association of Port Authorities, Yoshitani is expected to ask the group's policy committee to formally oppose legislation that would empower ports to set environmental, safety, security and operational standards for port trucking companies doing business on their property.
"This is unconscionable," said Brady Montz, Chair of the Seattle Group of the Sierra Club, "For years, the Port of Seattle has claimed that our outdated federal laws limit their ability to protect Seattle's neighborhoods from polluting trucks; and now it turns out that Tay Yoshitani is working behind the scenes to prevent the Port from even having the option to enforce environmental standards for trucking companies."
Yoshitani's move isolates him from major American ports that have embraced the need to grow greenly and have sought solutions to the deadly air pollution and other security and congestion concerns that put local communities at risk. Yoshitani -- who at $330,000 a year is the highest paid port official in the country -- is backed by his former employer, the National Association of Waterfront Employers, as well as other industry lobbies like the American Trucking Association. His views are also aligned with corporate retail shippers like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Target.
The Port of Los Angeles recently implemented a comprehensive clean truck program that provides incentives to trucking companies to invest in green fleets. The American Trucking Association won a federal court injunction in a pending case against essential features of the program citing an arcane statute that exempts trucking from necessary port regulations that could reduce emissions from heavy duty rigs by 80 percent. That injunction has left contract truck drivers, who average $10-11 an hour, in charge of replacing and maintaining our nation’s 100,000 port trucks, 95 percent of which fail to meet U.S. EPA emissions standards. Congress is now considering closing the legal loophole in federal motor carrier statutes that the Virginia-based trucking lobby is relying on, at the formal urging of the Port of Los Angeles, Port of Oakland, and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.
In Seattle, a coalition of environmental, labor and economic justice organizations are also educating lawmakers about why this loophole must be closed. Nationally, an amendment to the Federal Aviation Authorization Administration Act is supported by a long list of mayors, members of Congress, air quality districts, and a blue-green coalition of over a hundred local, state and national organizations committed to addressing the problems caused by the port trucking industry.
“Mr. Yoshitani’s profit-before-people tactics are appalling. While he keeps Seattle in a race to the bottom, other ports are finding ways to compete and grow responsibly in the 21st century,” said Heather Weiner of the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports, a national alliance of public health, environmental, community, labor and faith-based organizations. “He should be working on solutions to the dead-end jobs and deadly pollution at our port complex, not perpetuating them.”
Last October, Yoshitani announced that the Port of Seattle had not taken a formal position on the amendment and the Port of Seattle's commissioners have not approved Yoshitani's anti-environmental positions in a public vote. However, according to lobbying disclosure forms, the Port of Seattle was paying a K-street lobbying firm to fight against it. The firm, McBee Strategic Consulting, gets up to $300,000/year from taxpayer funds for its work. McBee, one of the top ten firms working against climate change legislation, also represents the American Trucking Association (ATA), which is leading the industry's fight against the legislative proposal and is also the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles' Clean Truck Program. McBee was also implicated in former Port of Seattle CEO Mic Dinsmore's ethics scandals when it was revealed the firm helped Dinsmore get a paid internship for his daughter.
Yoshitani was a lobbyist and Senior Policy Advisor at the National Association of Waterfront Employers in 2004-2007, before he came to the port. He has been criticized for seeking a raise during the recession even though he is the highest paid port director in the country.
Locally, the Port of Seattle has pointed to the ATA’s lawsuit as a barrier to implementing a comprehensive port trucking program here. The Port of Seattle’s current truck program sets relatively weak air pollution standards, ignores exploitive workplace conditions, does little to deal with trucking impacts on the South Seattle neighborhoods of Delridge, Georgetown and South Park, and forces workers to personally bear the costs of new clean air technology, parking regulations, and other requirements.
Under the proposal for federal legislation, local government would be allowed to design programs tailored to local needs to meet at a minimum federal standards of regulation of environmental, labor and security.
Local political support for this regulation includes:
•Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club
•Community Coalition for Environmental Justice
•Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington Chapter
•Church Council of Greater Seattle
•Honorable Rob Holland, Port of Seattle Commissioner
•International Longshore & Warehouse Union, Local 19
•Martin Luther King County Labor Council
•People for Puget Sound
•Puget Sound Sage
•One America
•Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council
•UFCW, Local 21
•Unite Here, Local 8
•Washington Community Action Network
Contacts: cleanandsafeports.org and 206/218-7194.◆