Watchara Phomicinda/The Orange County Register via AP
A semitruck turns into an Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, California, November 12, 2020. Areas around Southern California facilities run by Amazon and other companies have endured increased air pollution from emissions affecting largely minority communities.
There’s a layer of soot on every window. Heavy-duty trucks traverse through the neighborhood daily, idling on residential streets as early as 5 a.m., spilling tailpipe exhaust and disturbing children, pets, and the elderly. Children cannot play outside because the air quality is so horrible. Residents develop asthma and cancer and suffer fatalities at alarming rates. This is life in a “diesel death zone.”
President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved in March to regulate diesel pollution by proposing a rule that would limit the release of nitrogen oxides (NOx) on new heavy-duty vehicles starting in 2027. This would be the first change to heavy-truck tailpipe regulations in two decades, and is a part of a three-stage plan to move to a zero-emissions freight sector, as The Hill reported.
As per usual in climate politics, the administration is acknowledging a decades-long fight, one that has been spearheaded by low-income communities of color, who have been disproportionately affected and systematically overlooked. And as climate change has worsened, the need for a zero-emissions freight sector has become urgent.
Diesel pollution is a major contributor to climate change, accounting for 20 percent of NOx and 25 percent of PM2.5 pollutants that are emitted from vehicles, as reported by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Diesel pollution has also been linked to a myriad of health issues, such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, and lung cancer.
The emissions from diesel trucks were regulated in earnest in 2005 with the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) program, which was reauthorized in 2020. Still, the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), a “non-traditional, fact-based, environmental organization,” projected that by 2023 there would be nearly 9,000 deaths, close to 4,000 heart attacks, and almost $100 billion in monetized damages due to diesel pollution (specifically from particulate matter, also called soot).
Starting with the Clean Air Act in 1970, emissions regulations have been hard-won through decades of climate advocacy. But the issue of freight sector emissions has yet to be expressed broadly as a case of racial and economic injustice. A study in April 2021, published in Science, found that diesel (PM2.5) polluters “disproportionately and systemically affect people of color in the United States.”
CATF used EPA data to create an online tool, “Deaths by Dirty Diesel,” that maps how freight pollution is not distributed evenly across the United States. Those living in “diesel death zones”—high-traffic, high-pollution areas—are most at risk. Their analysis shows that Los Angeles residents face the worst particulate matter concentration, but areas like California’s Central Valley, the Inland Empire, the Interior West, and Upper Midwest follow closely behind. These “fenceline communities” are disproportionately “Black, Latino, and impoverished,” as defined in a report released by the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform.
“It’s kind of like the essence of environmental racism, that communities like ours are bombarded with many different things,” said Angelo Logan, campaign director for Moving Forward Network (MFN), a coalition of over 50 community-based environmental groups that advocate for a zero-emissions freight sector.
One of MFN’s grassroots organizations is the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, an organization striving for “the health, wellbeing and self-reliance of the Inland Empire in a way that uproots white supremacy and the reigning hegemonic extractive systems.”
The issue of freight sector emissions has yet to be expressed broadly as a case of racial and economic injustice.
San Bernardino County, where the organization is based and which is lined with large-scale warehouses serving Southern California, consistently ranks among the most polluted places to live, according to the American Lung Association’s 2022 “State of the Air” report, released just last week. Alicia Aguayo, communications manager for PC4EJ, and a longtime resident of San Bernardino, lives next to a rail yard owned by leading railroad company BNSF, in an area so badly clotted with diesel emissions that schools limit outdoor time.
Aguayo spoke of the diesel emissions that come from the rail yard, combined with unregulated trucks that drive through and often park on residential streets. “This is something people aren’t looking at, the bigger picture, [that] the combination of all of these emissions are deadly. And it’s preventable. Zero emissions would help reduce the cumulative burden,” she told me over email.
Cumulative burden is an essential part to this story. It is not just the pollution of the Earth that should concern everyone, but the low quality of life some people are forced to endure in these communities. It is the combination of the noise, the dirt, and the safety risks from having heavy-duty trucks use neighborhoods for freight transportation that makes life harder than it should be.
“Zero emissions will help improve the air quality for overburdened and environmental justice communities who are oftentime, as a result of systemic racism such as redlining and zoning, located in homes right next to highway, industry, and rail yards,” said Atenas Mena, co-executive director for CleanAirNow in Kansas City, another organization of MFN.
CleanAirNow was started by locals who had concerns about layers of soot on windows and the potential ramifications of exposure. The residents have been organizing since 2017 to install air monitors, hosting the EPA for air quality testing and community listening sessions. A report from the organization, in collaboration with the Union of Concerned Scientists, states that “Communities of color overburdened with cumulative impacts have resided closer to the industrialized sections of Kansas City because they have been blocked from living in other areas.” Kansas City is about 30 percent Black and 60 percent white; it remains highly segregated.
De facto segregation through redlining, zoning, and other discriminatory practices has created a similar dynamic in other parts of the country as well. This also means that many of the residents bearing the burden of diesel pollution are also the workers who keep manufacturing and freight running. Take Will County, Illinois, which contains one of the largest inland ports in North America and is a major area for warehousing.
As Yana Kalmyka, an organizer with the Will County–based Warehouse Workers for Justice, put it: “For working-class communities of color like the ones where warehouse and logistics companies have set up shop, there is no metaphorical ‘line’ separating industry workers suffering from poor labor standards and fenceline community residents bearing the brunt of diesel pollution. They are often one and the same.”
“The fact that the majority of the diesel pollution in Will County is concentrated in our low-income communities and communities of color is a clear example of environmental racism,” said Devin Cooley, a lifelong resident of Joliet, Illinois. “When you’re young and you see the truck traffic, you don’t really think about it, but when you get older and realize that it’s toxic for your health, you think of the people that you love and what we’re all breathing in,” Cooley said.
To ease the transition, MFN recommends policies that center the environmental and labor needs of communities. This follows some of the contours of the Biden administration order, and past climate policy, but goes further. Many environmental groups have questioned the fact that the Biden order waits until 2027 to update current standards, and aims only to remove 90 percent of harmful emissions by 2031, rather than a zero-emissions standard.
Policy recommendations include zero-emissions mandates for all trucks and equipment used in freight, charging infrastructure, and financial incentives for the transition. Another example is use restrictions that would allow private or government entities to limit how, when, and where certain vehicles can be used.
Truck drivers are often also “misclassified” as independent contractors—nearly a quarter of California truck drivers are misclassified, according to a UC Berkeley study. This is a “major barrier” to electrification because truck drivers would essentially bear the cost of the change under the current model.
The need for zero emissions does not beget an easy or peaceful transition. People, and workers especially, have to be on board, but the average citizen has been fed fears over automation and, more broadly, the reactions of corporations that resist prioritizing climate policy.
MFN’s holistic approach prioritizes the well-being of local communities as well as workers in the industry, rather than the profit-driven corporations. “The communities that have been suffering the consequences for decades need to be at the center of this new economy,” Logan said.
