Feds Visit Port of L.A., Signaling Renewed Relationship After Years of Legal Battles

In another example of just how much things have changed for local port authorities since President Obama's inauguration, the chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission dropped by L.A. on Tuesday to check out first-hand the progress being made in ridding the nation's largest seaport of some 16,000 polluting big rigs - an effort previous FMC executives under the Bush administration had denounced as anti-competitive and illegal.

The visit by FMC Chairman Richard Lidinsky, appointed by Obama in May, comes just months after the agency, which oversees the nation's shipping laws, dropped a lawsuit and investigative probe into the ports' Clean Truck Plan, which under Bush had claimed could lead to serious disruptions in service and price increase in the movement of goods through Long Beach-Los Angeles. Together, the ports handle about $1 billion in cargo daily.

As it turned out, those fears were unfounded, as the FMC noted in dropping its probes and lawsuits in June and August, respectively.

Noting the previously acrimonious relationship between the parties, Lidinsky said that instead of lawsuits and investigations, the agency now hopes to act as a partner to help America's other major seaports emulate the Los Angeles truck turnover plan.

"I am pleased to see firsthand the promising results of the Clean Truck Program and am encouraged to hear that all parties in our maritime transportation chain are moving ahead and putting past adversarial relationships behind them since all of us want the same goals of public and economic health for these and other ports," Lidinsky said."We want to be a positive force for them as they recover from the worst maritime economic crisis since the Great Depression by restoring and creating new jobs, and we will stand side by side with ports as they use their expertise to fashion responses to the 21^st Century's environmental and public health challenges."

The only remaining legal challenge against the Clean Truck Plan is a lawsuit filed by the American Trucking Associations against Los Angeles, which wants trucking firms doing business on port and state property to own and maintain the fleets of new, cleaner rigs that will be dispatched to the waterfront in years to come. The case is expected to begin in February.

Long Beach was dropped from the lawsuit when it sided with the trucking industry in October by agreeing to ditch the requirement that companies own rigs - leaving the burden of new truck purchase, maintenanace, fuel costs, insurance and upkeep on contract drivers, which now comprise 95 percent of the harbor truck driver workforce.