Expanded air quality program for ships proposed

The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners are scheduled at its 1 p.m. meeting Monday, December 8, to consider investing as much as $4 million a year in an expansion of the Port of Long Beach's successful Green Flag Incentive Program to achieve even greater reductions of air pollution from cargo ships that visit the Port.

In the three-year-old Green Flag program, vessels within 20 miles of the Port now voluntarily reduce their speed to 12 knots, reducing air pollution in exchange for a 15 percent discount on dockage fees. A proposed expansion of the reduced speed zone to 40 miles, with a dockage discount of 25 percent, could achieve even greater air pollution reductions.

The Port will spend an estimated $1.57 million on the existing Green Flag Program this year. If the higher dockage discount is adopted, the Port could invest as much as $4 million a year on the air quality improvements.

Source: American Shipper