LOS ANGELES (CN) — Southern California may finally see cleaner air in the coming years after state regulators cleared a major hurdle in court Thursday.
A California state appeals court has sided with the California Air Resources Board and upheld a set of sweeping anti-smog laws for the shipping and transportation industry — shooting down a legal challenge by the Western States Petroleum Association, one of the largest lobbying forces in the state, in the process.
California Appellate Judge Natalie Stone, who authored the decision, called the fuel lobby’s arguments “off-mark” and said that the court gives considerable deference to the agency’s “quasi-legislative” role in regulating pollution.
In late 2020, the state agency, which monitors air pollution, adopted stringent new regulations to crack down on California’s notoriously hazy air. The new policies expanded existing rules requiring idling ships docking in California’s ports to reduce their emissions by connecting to the local electricity grid and covering their exhaust stacks.
Once fully implemented, supporters said the rules would cut emissions by 90% and greatly reduce the cancer risk for residents living near ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Richmond, which are routinely plagued by bad air.
Western States filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court challenging these new regulations just a month after they passed.
The petition claimed the board’s adoption of the new rules was arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by the evidence, and contrary to California law. It also claimed the board failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act and California Environmental Quality Act during the rule-making process.
The trade association filed for declaratory and injunctive relief in Los Angeles Superior Court in September 2020. The court found in favor of the resource board in March 2023, and Western States appealed its case soon after.
In its 71-page ruling, a panel of judges from California’s Second District Court of Appeal rejected the fuel lobbyist’s claims that the agency’s emissions requirements could not feasibly be carried out on oil tankers by its given deadlines.
Under the rules, auto carriers have until 2025 to comply at all ports. The rules go into effect for oil tankers in Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2025 and at Northern California ports by 2027.
“It is WSPA’s burden to show why CARB’s assessment of the impacts of the accelerated deadline was faulty or lacking, and it has not done so,” Stone wrote.
On appeal, the fuel industry representatives argued that the board set an unrealistic deadline for “capture and control” pollution technology on tankers to be ready, failing to account for the time required to design, engineer, test, and mass produce the necessary technology for statewide use.
The technology, they argued, did not exist yet.
However, this wasn’t enough to dissuade the judges, who said the board had the authority to set emission standards that would require technology that doesn’t exist yet but is achievable by the compliance deadline.
Indeed, she stated, this has been the case since the Supreme Court decided the issue in 1976 in Union Electric Co. v. EPA. The judge said these laws are often “technology-forcing” and necessarily so because companies lack incentives to develop new pollution control technology without it.
The judge added that the board may recover its costs on appeal.
Neither Western States nor the California attorney general’s office, which represented the resource board, responded to a request for comment by press time.
Stone was joined in her decision by California Appellate Judges Gonzalo Martinez and John Segal, who concurred.
Transportation accounts for 50% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions and more than 95% of toxic diesel particulate matter emissions, according to the state agency. It also estimates the resulting cleaner air will prevent nearly 4,000 deaths and 1,800 emergency room visits, plus save $36 billion in health care costs by the year 2050.
