The Port of San Diego said this week it has made significant progress toward its goal of reducing air pollution in Barrio Logan and West National City by the end of the decade.
At the Port Commission's regular meeting Tuesday, staff said the agency and the companies it works with have committed $240 million to electrification over the last five years. That has paid for massive power outlets for stationary ships, along with electric harbor cranes and a battery-powered tugboat.
As a result, between 2019 and 2024, particulate matter pollution and nitrogen oxide pollution from the Port's activities dropped by 44% and nearly a third, respectively.
However, the Port acknowledged that it’s made little progress on another key goal: encouraging trucking companies to swap out their fossil fuel-powered big rigs for battery-powered models. That’s comes as the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress have moved to block California’s mandates on electric trucks.
“The one area that needs help is the heavy-duty truck transition,” said Commissioner Michael Zucchet. “I think a real focus on that … is a good thing to think about.”
Environmental justice advocates said they were cautiously optimistic about the results.
“Even in this current political climate, we don't see the Port letting up on these very ambitious and important goals,” said Jasmin Vargas, an organizer with the Environmental Health Coalition. “I'm excited to see the pollution reductions in our communities that this promises.”
The reductions are a result of the Port’s Maritime Clean Air Strategy, a sweeping plan adopted in 2021 by which the agency hopes to address its decades-long legacy of concentrating air pollution and other hazards in the surrounding, majority-Latino neighborhoods.
West National City and Barrio Logan have some of the worst exposure to particulate pollution in California, state data shows. Residents of both neighborhoods also share disproportionately high rates of asthma and heart and lung disease.
The Port is just one source of pollution in these neighborhoods, according to the California Air Resources Board. Other sources include the flow of freeway traffic, local industrial businesses and the U.S. Navy.
The Port of San Diego is one of the state’s smaller maritime ports, according to a 2022 state legislative analysis. Other ports, including the massive shipping operation of Long Beach, have also launched their own electrification efforts.
On Tuesday, residents urged the Port to keep up its efforts and focus more closely on electric trucks in the coming years.
“For many years we’ve been impacted by Port businesses, especially the trucks that enter and leave,” said Logan Heights resident Monserrat Hernández. “We want to hold Port people accountable for the pollution they’ve done in my community.”
The Port’s original goal for the truck fleets that load and unload at its terminals was for them to be all-electric by 2030. But the vast majority of that traffic remains almost entirely diesel-powered.
Philip Gibbons, an energy and sustainability program manager for the Port, argued that was about to change.
Several key infrastructure projects currently underway around the Port will soon make it much easier for trucking companies to adopt electric models, Gibbons said Tuesday. Those include the Skychargers charging facility nearing construction in National City and a planned Zucarmex sugar warehouse that will rely on an electric fleet in Barrio Logan.
During Tuesday’s presentation, commissioner GilAnthony Ungab said he wanted to ensure that the agency wasn’t just estimating the pollution they were eliminating. He questioned how they would analyze whether it would actually reduce health disparities.
“It's a big difference between inventorying emissions and public health,” said Ungab, a former medical director at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center.
Port staff said they didn’t yet have an answer for how they would study those results.
“We do know these investments have brought down emissions,” said Peter Eicher, a program manager for climate and sustainability. “But connecting that to a decrease in hospital visits and asthma rates … we're not exactly sure how we're going to accomplish that.”
