Critical vote approaches on ports' Clean Truck Program: competing petitions circulate in support and opposition of plan.

THE ongoing feud between truckers and environmentalists in San Pedro Bay is heating up as a critical vote by port harbor commissioners nears.

The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports plan to vote next month--no specific date has been set--on a controversial program aimed at reducing emissions from the 16,000 trucks that serve the port complex. But the Clean Trucks Program, as it is known, has rankled many of the 1,300 trucking companies operating out of the ports, who fear they will be put out of business by what they fear will be expensive and onerous requirements.

"We don't know what the variables are going to cost," said Michael Lightman, president of Long Beach-based Great Freight Inc., adding that it could "wreak havoc" on port trucking. Lightman helped start Harbor Truckers for a Sustainable Future, a coalition of trucking companies who oppose the ports' plan. The California Trucking Association, meanwhile, has distributed a petition to truckers who oppose the plan.

But the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, an association of more than 30 environmental, labor and immigrant-rights groups, claimed last week that some of the truckers who signed the petition were pressured to do so. The coalition has distributed its own petition, collecting more than 11,000 signatures from community members, environmentalists and truck drivers in support of the plan.

The ports had planned to vote on the program in July, but pushed back the vote by 60 days in an attempt to work out some kinks. The program, if approved, would go into effect in January.

Staff reporter Richard Clough can be reached at [phone], ext. 251, or at [e-mail].