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Article courtesy of The Oakland Post.
For more stories, visit The Oakland Post online.
By Lee Hubbard--
Mayor Ron Dellums delivered a truckload of $8 million dollars to avert a strike of more than 1,000 independent truckers at the Port of Oakland
On Monday January 4, Dellums called the truckers, Port Officials and the State to meet in his offices to fashion an agreement to help the truckers comply with clean-air retrofit regulations.
Truckers announced their intention to strike over the clean air environmental rules, which became effective on January. The new rules required trucks to be new or retrofitted with new diesel filters. The retrofits costs from $15,000 to $25,000 and were required on trucks manufactured from 1994 to 2003. The California Air Resources Board established a $22million grant program to help truckers buy new trucks and filters, but many truckers complained that grant monies allocated for the truckers had been denied to a majority of the truckers.
“The money that was promised to local truckers was $38 million; we only received $10 million from the state,” said Bill Aboudi, the president of AB trucking, a local trucking company that serves the Port of Oakland. The deal struck by Mayor Ron Dellums puts truckers at the table, to help them and solve their issues with the California Air Resources Board.
Mayor Dellums’ assistance allows for a two week grace period for truckers and cargo truckers to work while they get funding from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The additional funding will total $11 million, which the truckers will have to apply for. Many of the truckers had applied for the funds previously, but were denied because the state claimed it had run out of money.
“The state’s identification of $11 million, within a week, to assist the drivers demonstrates the regulatory agency’s commitment to Oakland and the effective implementation of environmental regulations,” said Mayor Dellums. “We can balance environmental, economic and equity interests by working collaboratively and in good faith with the key stakeholders.”
The Mayor’s office worked over the New Year’s weekend bringing truckers, the California State Air Resources Board, Bay Area Quality Management District and the Port of Oakland together to come up with the compromise.
Aboudi said,” If the deal were not struck between truckers and the California Air Resource Board, over 1,200 drivers would be permanently out of work, unless they could come up with the money to retrofit their trucks.” Aboudi and the truckers credit the Mayor for keeping them on the road.
The truckers were told that if they tried to drive trucks onto the port illegally, they would be turned around and not allowed into the Port. This would have resulted in reducing the workforce of the port and bringing the transfer of goods and services to a virtual standstill.
“This is glorious news,” said Ron Light, head of the West State Alliance, a trucker’s trade association group that serves the Port of Oakland. ‘These next two weeks will be instrumental in leveraging the new state grant into sufficient funding to replace or retrofit all of the Port of Oakland trucks. Everyone in the trucking community is hopeful and appreciative of the intervention of Mayor Ron Dellums for achieving what we hope to be a fair and equitable arrangement to Insure that everyone can continue to work,” concluded Light.
The California Air Resources Board has asked the port of Oakland to extend the clean air deadline until January 17, after which drivers onto the Port will have to provide proof of a new truck or filter sale in order to continue working, until April 30, when the extension ends.
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