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About 400 independent truckers drove their semis to Los Angeles City Hall Friday to protest new environmental rules that on Jan. 1 will bar trucks built earlier than 1994 from the LA part and require that trucks built between 1994 and 2003 be retrofitted to meet new emissions standards.. The truckers said they would support the Clean Truck Program if they had help meeting the new requirements.A new truck can cost as much as $100,000, and retrofitting can mean spending thousands, according to UPI.com. "We all want to go green," said Sofia Quinones of the National Port Drivers Association, which represents thousands of independent truckers. "But the devil is in the details." Sarah Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said the city supports a provision requiring trucking companies to make independents their employees. The industry has filed a court challenge. Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee notes imports and exports through California ports has dropped 20 percent in the recession and questions whether traffic will ever reach the boom levels of a few years ago. He writes: The flow of international cargo is changing in ways that may bypass California, and the state's politicians seem bent on making shipping increasingly expensive. East Coast ports have been expanding their ability to handle waterborne shipments directly to and from Asia, without cargoes having to be transshipped by rail or truck. The route will grow even more viable in a half- decade, when a much- expanded Panama Canals begins handling much- bigger ships. Vancouver has also boosted its cargo capacity and is offering Asian shippers direct access to the Midwest, a hotly competitive market. Meanwhile, California politicians, especially those representing the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, have largely adopted the posture that ports are a nuisance, creating noise and pollution, They have championed new fees to offset the impacts. Just last week, Sen.Dean Florez, a Democrat who represents the San Joaquin Valley but wants to become lieutenant governor, staged a hearing at the Port of Los Angeles to air local complaints about effects of port traffic. While paying lip service to the ports' importance, Florez declared that it's important "to ensure that those profits do not come at the expense of the health of surrounding communities." Villaraigosa, meanwhile, is carrying water for the Teamsters union, trying to force independent truckers to become employees and join the union under the rubric of fighting pollution. The politicians seemingly don't understand that California ports are in a highly competitive global market. Even a minor differential in costs, a few dollars per container, can send business and jobs away. We simply cannot assume that we will prosper because we're Californians. Those days are gone forever.
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