THE (Trade,Health,Environment) Impact Project: A Community-Based Participatory Research Environmental Justice Case Study

Abstract

For decades, goods movement (the transportation of imported goods) in California has had detrimental consequences for the predominantly low income and minority residents living close to the marine ports, rail yards, and connecting highways. Although the California Air Resources Board estimates that goods movement in the state is responsible for an estimated 2,400 premature deaths annually, the impacts of this sector were not widely recognized until after 2000. In 2001, several key events drew attention to impacts from the country's two largest ports, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and started them on a path to reduce emissions. Based on a multi-method case study analysis, this article describes the informal collaborative work which culminated in THE (Trade, Health, Environment) Impact Project (“THE Impact Project”), a regional community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership between the University of Southern California (USC), Occidental College, and four community-based advocacy groups to address air pollution and other health impacts associated with goods movement through the massive Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports complex. Following an overview of our case study methods, we describe the collaborative and its use of both data and community organizing to promote policy change over the past decade. We then discuss several outcomes to which THE Impact Project contributed, key among them passage of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan in 2006, the integration of health language in official port and transportation documents, and the delaying of a major freeway so that health considerations could be more fully integrated into planning and decision making. The project's role in helping to broaden the policy debate and increase the inclusion of community members in relevant decision-making bodies also is discussed. We conclude with an exploration of challenges, lessons learned, and implications of this work for other CBPR partnerships.

Introduction

One of the key entry portals to global trade and goods movement can be found in Southern California, at the Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports, the two largest ports in the U.S. With the rapid increase in global trade in the 1990s and early 2000s, the twin ports now receive more than 40% of all imports into the U.S. (Calif. Air Resources Board, 2006).

For decades, goods movement in Southern California has had detrimental effects and consequences for neighborhood residents living close to the marine terminals, rail yards, and along the connecting highways who have been disproportionally exposed to diesel exhaust, other vehicle pollutants, and noise from congested roadways. Residents in the late 1990s argued that while goods were being transported through the Southern California region to communities across the United States, those who lived near the ports were left to bear the burden of the enormous negative impacts of ship, truck, and rail emissions on their communities, their families' lives, and their health. Local residents had little success in getting the ports to listen to their concerns. In fact, the first major story in the Los Angeles Times on port pollution was not published until 2002. It called the ports “L.A.'s worst air polluter” and pointed out that the ports had gone largely unregulated for a variety of reasons including “lack of jurisdiction over foreign-flagged ships to fears of losing trade to other cities” (Polokavic, 2002).

The year before that Times story, two important events occurred in the Southern California policy environment, creating a window of opportunity to raise the public's concern about air pollution from activities related to international trade. First, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), together with two other advocacy groups and two homeowner associations, sued the Port of Los Angeles for insufficient emission mitigation strategies for a planned large shipping terminal, winning a $50 million settlement two years later. Their lawsuit prompted then mayor of L.A., James Hahn, to set up a “no-net increase [of pollution] port task force.” Second, the University of Southern California (USC) hosted a Town Hall meeting to share scientific research on air pollution's health effects. The 350 attendees learned about new research findings and shared their concerns about rapid expansion of the ports and the fact that shipping emissions were virtually unregulated. The lawsuit's settlement was a critical event because it created recognition by the City of Los Angeles (which owns the Port of Los Angeles) and its mayor that it could no longer ignore air pollution issues and concerns of the surrounding community if it expected to grow larger. The Town Hall meeting also 1) engaged scientists at USC's environmental health sciences center and its community outreach and engagement program in investigating port-related pollution, and 2) allowed scientists, community-based organizations, environmental advocacy groups, and environmental justice (EJ) advocates the opportunity to meet each other and share concerns about goods movement and research findings about air pollution. As an academic partner noted, that 2001 meeting was “the original impetus for building a future community/academic collaborative to address the health and community impacts of goods movement.”

At the time that USC hosted the 2001 Town Hall meeting, it was already working with two community partners, the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA) and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), through the community outreach and engagement program set up under a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)/Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Children's Center grant. The Town Hall meeting and smaller meetings held thereafter offered a chance for USC to meet with two new environmental justice advocacy groups (Coalition for a Safe Environment, based in Wilmington, home to the Port of Los Angeles, and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, based in the City of Commerce, adjacent to several rail yards and the truck-congested I-710 freeway). The Town Hall meeting further enabled the new partners to be introduced to LBACA and CCAEJ and to all then come together around the issue of goods movement.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimated in 2006 that regional health effects of goods movement in this area accounted for 2,400 premature heart-related deaths, and 62,000 cases of asthma symptoms, among a million more cases of respiratory distress (CARB, 2006). Recent epidemiologic studies have documented health effects from living in close proximity to high levels of diesel traffic exposures. For example, a 10-year USC prospective study of children ages 10–18, from 12 different communities in Southern California, found a significant association between traffic exposure and lung-function development (Gauderman, Vora, McConnell, Berhane, Gilliland, et al., 2007). Children who lived in close proximity to highways (less than 500 meters) had substantial adverse effects in lung functioning when compared to their peers living 1,500 meters away (Gauderman et al, 2007). Additional studies by Wilhelm and Ritz (2003, 2005), documented the increased risk of premature and low birth weight babies associated to diesel exposure. Recent research has shown a high burden of preventable asthma in communities that are impacted by traffic emissions from goods movement activities (Perez, Kunzli, Avol, Hricko, et al., 2009; Avol, 2007).

To address such concerns, and with initial funding from The California Endowment, THE (Trade, Health and Environment) Impact Project was founded in 2006 as a regional community-based participatory research partnership (partnership and collaborative will be used interchangebly in reference to THE Impact Project) between a community outreach and engagement program at the environmental health sciences center at USC, the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College, and a coalition of four community-based advocacy groups working to address air pollution and other community health impacts associated with the movement of goods through the Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports (Table 1). The advocacy groups—East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ) in LA; the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) in Riverside; the Coalition for a Safe Environment (CFASE) in Wilmington; and the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA)—each brought critical community voices to the partnership. Each of the partners was able to build on a history of environmental justice activism in Southern California in which they had been involved individually and collectively. The creation of THE Impact Project formalized relationships established over the previous five years, combining the partners' strengths, resources and local expertise to create a collective vision and magnify their effectiveness in efforts to help change several key policies and the broader environment. Key among these changes were shifting the policy debate to consider health as well as economic concerns in port and infrastructure expansion, infusing health language into official port and transportation documents, building a community-driven movement, delaying the expansion of the I-710 freeway so that health considerations were appropriately considered, and the adoption of a Ports' Clean Air Action Plan.

Table 1.

THE Impact Collaborative, Formalized in 2006

Collaborative Partner	Partner Acronym	Partner Role
Community Outreach and Engagement Program, Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center and Children's Environmental Health Center, University of Southern California	COEP USC	Translation of scientific research findings; bridge between scientists and the community; training of A-Team members. USC and all partners below also testify at public hearings on the health and community impacts of ports and freight transport.
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice	EYCEJ	Environmental justice organization and community organizing group, with community base near the major freeways and rail yards serving the ports.
Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice	CCAEJ	Environmental justice and community organizing group, with one of two original A-Teams. Members in close proximity to warehousing and rail operations.
Coalition for a Safe Environment	CFASE	Environmental justice organization with members living near the harbor.
Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma	LBACA	A partnership to improve the lives of children with asthma in Long Beach, with one of the first A-teams.
Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College	UEPI	Policy research and writing on international trade, ports and freight transport, also engaging students.

The above-mentioned scientific data on the negative impact of goods movement paints a grim picture for communities affected, but has also armed community residents with a powerful tool in the fight for environmental health and justice, generating momentum and a movement, grounded in community organizing and advocacy strategies, with strong alliances between university and community partners.

Critical to this work has been community-based participatory research (CBPR), defined as a “collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a topic of importance to the community with the aim of combining knowledge and action for social change to improve community health and eliminate health disparities.” (Kellogg Health Scholars Program, 2001; Israel et al., 1998). THE Impact Project well illustrates CBPR by successfully marrying evidence-based science and grassroots community organizing for health and environmental justice. The partnership is grounded in the nine guiding principles of CBPR developed by Israel et al. (1998) to inform and guide the CBPR process. Key principles include: recognizing community as a unit of identity; extending the definition of community beyond geography, as illustrated by THE Impact Project's regional approach; promoting co-learning and capacity building among all partners; integrating a balance between research and action; moving beyond study findings to action-oriented solutions; facilitating an equitable partnership, as illustrated by THE Impact Project's sharing of grant funding among partners; and committing to long-term engagement and sustainable change (Israel et al., 1998, 2005).

The value of CBPR in improving research quality has been well documented (Cargo and Mercer, 2008; O'Fallon and Dearry 2002; Minkler and Wallerstein, 2008; Morello-Frosh et al., 2005). At its core is trust between community and researchers and a commitment to both sound research and its use for data-informed action (O'Fallon and Dearry, 2002). In recent years, CBPR partnerships, such as THE Impact Project, have seized opportunities to fill the gaps of traditional scientific approaches that often do not take the lay knowledge of communities into account, and may, as a result, miss critical data and/or community insights in data interpretation that could benefit disadvantaged communities (Corburn, 2007; Gonzalez et al., 2011; Minkler et al., 2010). The linkage of science to policy (through research combined with community organizing) is a powerful tool that has the potential of legitimizing the hybrid role of community knowledge and scientific researcher, thus contextualizing the issues, improving the science and procedural democracy, and impacting on new or existing policies, with the goal of addressing and reducing health disparities (Wallerstein and Cacari-Stone, 2007).

This article aims to elucidate the CBPR process and outcomes of a policy-focused project grounded in the environmental justice movement in Southern California and focused on the negative health impacts of the ports, rail yards and related goods movement activity. Following a review of the methods employed in our case study approach, we illustrate the case study in four sections. The first, An Informal Collaborative Is Born, describes the years preceding the formalization of the CBPR partnership known as THE Impact Project, and its efforts to study and address air pollution and other health impacts associated with the transportation of imported goods through the Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports. In the second section, THE (Trade, Health, Environment) Impact Collaborative, we discuss the formal creation of THE Impact Project and its use of both data and community organizing to promote policy change. Getting to Policy Outcomes offers a description of several outcomes to which THE Impact Project contributed, key among them passage of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan in 2006, broadening of the policy debate and increasing the inclusion of community members in decision-making bodies overseeing the ports and related goods movement activity. We conclude with Challenges and Implications, an exploration of challenges, lessons learned, and implications of this work for other partnerships interested in using CBPR to study and address both distributive justice (equitable sharing of both resources and environmental burdens) and procedural justice, or equitable processes through which normally disenfranchised groups get “a seat at the table” and a real voice in decision making that effects their lives and communities (Minkler, 2010; Kuehn, 2000).

Methods

The case study described and analyzed in this article was conducted in 2008–2010 as part of a larger research project in California designed to explore the role of CBPR as a strategy for linking place-based work and policy to promote healthier communities. A statewide scan uncovered 36 current or recent policy-focused CBPR efforts in the state. Six of these, from diverse parts of California were selected for in-depth case study analysis based largely on their fidelity to the principles of CBPR (Israel et al., 1998, 2005), and the extent to which they appeared to have contributed to policy change or changes in the policy environment. THE Impact Project Collaborative was one of these six, and will be the focus of this article (summaries of all six case studies can be found in a booklet for The California Endowment (Minkler, et al., 2012: <http://www.policylink.org>), with two others published in peer-reviewed journals (Gonzalez et al., 2011; Minkler et al., 2010).

Following Yin's (2003) case study protocol, two members of the research team visited THE Impact Project Collaborative, conducting in-person key source interviews with several lead community and academic partners, focus groups with community members, and phone interviews with local policymakers. Archival review and analysis of relevant internal documents and media coverage also was undertaken to further triangulate the data.

Audiotapes of the four interviews and two focus groups were transcribed and coded independently by two to three members of the research team using a 16 item coding template, with sub-codes, whose code categories related to each major domain of interest (e.g., partnership creation and evolution; partner involvement in conducting the research; policy goals, stages, activities, and outcomes; facilitating factors and obstacles faced; and sustainability indicators). We conducted inter-rater reliability checks, reconciling discrepancies. Next, we employed the qualitative software package, ATLAS.ti (version 5.5) to group all key domains by site, and generate reports, facilitating an additional layer of coding. Finally, we shared preliminary case study reports based on the reconciled findings with community and/or academic partners at each site to facilitate member checking as an added means of helping to ensure the accuracy of data interpretation.

An Informal Collaborative is Born

Several critical years of informal collaboration between a growing number of partners preceded the formalization of THE Impact Project, which brought together key players in environmental health, urban environmental policy, and the environmental justice movement along the ports and rail routes. Although we focus here on the recent contributions of THE Impact Project, key contributors to its birth and evolution are important to discuss, as they set the foundation for the subsequent collaborative research and related policy advocacy and outcomes.

In the late 1990s, informal relationships were forged between the USC community outreach and engagement program (COEP) of an NIEHS-funded environmental health sciences center and community-based organizations (CBOs) that were seeking the use of scientific studies in policymaking. As noted above, these community groups included the CCAEJ, which is a leader in raising EJ concerns about large warehouses in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties serving the ports, even though they are 50 miles away from the port complex. USC scientists had conducted the Children's Health Study, a longitudinal health study looking at children's respiratory health in relationship to the types and levels of pollution in the communities where the children lived. A key community in the study was Mira Loma, home to millions of square feet of warehouses which attracted diesel trucks that often drove through residential communities. The USC study showed that Mira Loma had high levels of particulate matter (PM) and elemental carbon (EC)—a marker for diesel exhaust—and that such elevated levels were associated with reduced lung function in children in that community and others with high PM and EC levels. CCAEJ invited USC to present its scientific results at community meetings, assisting CCAEJ members in better understanding the science, and at public hearings related to the growth of affected counties in Southern California. Another city in the Children's Health Study was Long Beach, a harbor community, and USC developed a relationship with the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA), presenting its research findings at LBACA coalition meetings. In 1999, these two groups became community partners and collaborators in an NIEHS/EPA Children's Environmental Health Center based at USC.

By 2003, USC had received another NIEHS/EPA Children's Center grant, again in partnership with LBACA and CCAEJ. As part of the grant's outreach, USC and its partners formed Neighborhood Assessment Teams, or “A” Teams in Riverside and Long Beach, “as a way of exchanging scientific information with community members,” teaching lay health workers (promotoras) and other community members to count traffic and measure ultrafine particles. This “street science” approach (Corburn, 2005), coupled with new USC epidemiologic studies linking traffic-related pollution to higher rates of health impacts helped grow the scientific basis for the work (THE Impact, 2009), and empowered community residents with a new skill set and confidence. In 2005, USC with 25 community partners hosted its second Town Hall meeting, with more than 400 people in attendance and many community organizations. By this time, USC's environmental health sciences center outreach program faculty and staff and the community groups CCAEJ, EYCEJ, and CFASE had become prominent figures in hearing rooms providing testimonials and sharing the science, corroborating resident concerns with scientific evidence on the community health impacts of pollution from goods movement activities. Meanwhile, LBACA also began to shift its focus towards policy because of a proposed highway expansion that would increase diesel emissions in close proximity to homes and schools in that community. Also during this time, three of the EJ groups realized that they shared similar concerns around rail yard emissions and joined together as the Modesto Avila Coalition, expanding the reach of their work so that it spanned from the harbor area (where there are rail yards), up the I-710 freeway 20 miles directly north to the rail yards in the City of Commerce that serve the ports, and on to the rail yards in Colton and San Bernardino, some 50 miles east. Thus a place-based partnership was formed with a geographic base along the route of cargo container movement in Southern California. With the formation of the Modesto Avila Coalition, USC's community outreach program and CCAEJ saw an opportunity to capture the regional work of the community partners and the scientific and policy expertise of university faculty. They spearheaded the development of a community/academic collaborative that would attempt to shift the nature of the debate about ports and freight movement to elevate community voices in the policy arena, while also using the science and policy work of the academic partners to strengthen those voices. In 2005, the collaborative successfully applied for funding from The California Endowment. Receipt of this support formalized the marriage of all six community and academic partners into THE (Trade, Health, Environment) Impact Project. A seventh partner with which USC and CCAEJ had worked closely was also added at this time: the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College.

The (Trade, Health, Environment) Impact Collaborative

With funding, and the formalization of THE Impact project in 2006, the collaborative grant objectives moved towards informing policy, with public health action to “reduce ports and good movements emissions” at the forefront. From its inception, the goal of THE Impact Project has remained the same: to shift the policy debate and make the goods movement industry accountable for its decision making by taking under consideration the health and environmental impacts from multiple sources of air pollution. In the words of an academic partner, the project aimed to achieve its goal “by testifying at hearings, getting appointed to committees, and by trying to get the need to reduce environmental health problems from port-related activities written into city general plans and policies.” The critical and timely convergence of data and community organizing laid the groundwork for a movement that began prior to the THE Impact Project, and continues today with its original policy goals.

The funding from The Endowment brought the partners together in a unique way, working collaboratively from a regional lens with an awareness and keen understanding of the necessity of developing port policies that would not negatively impact nearby neighborhoods, i.e., by bringing more traffic or trains through these other communities. In the words of one community partner, “the collaborative and THE Impact Project brought us together to understand our common links, problems and situations.” Through community organizing efforts, such as the use of town hall meetings, the Project shifted from a local to a regional focus. As another partner noted, “I feel our Impact Project has been very instrumental in making the public understand that this is a regional issue, and that it is not just a local port issue.”

Working towards policy change

Policy change is the result of multiple actors “hitting” different leverage points (Sterman, 2006). Similarly, contextual factors have a major role to play. However, our multi-method data collection suggested that the partnership's efforts, including community engagement and leadership development, substantially contributed to several policy victories, as summarized below.

Data and organizing

Consistent with CBPR principles, THE Impact Project extended the “relevance and rearch” of its research (Morello-Frosch et al., 2005) by actively engaging concerned community residents in the environmental justice movement. It did this through involving them in education, research and advocacy as prominent community leaders in the project's Neighborhood Assessment Teams (“A” teams) which all Project community partners eventually developed. Through a mutually respectful collaboration, community partners recruited residents from Long Beach, Riverside, Wilmington, and Commerce who were then trained by the USC community outreach and engagement team—and USC scientists—using participatory education training modules such as “Diesel Particulate Matter 101” and “Goods Movement 101.” The community partners hosted leadership development and public speaking trainings for the “A” Team members, who began to see a scientific basis for their suspicions about the connection between health problems that had long afflicted their children and families, such as coughing and asthma, and their proximity to truck-congested highways, rail yard, and port pollution (THE Impact Project, 2009). By on-the-ground work measuring air pollution in their community and counting traffic, including trucks, that transit through their neighborhood, the “A” Team participants offered a unique perspective grounded in their lived experience and expert knowledge of their community (THE Impact, 2009). The “A” Team findings were analyzed and disseminated accordingly, prompting action at a community, research and policy level, with subsequent outcomes at each level. First, university research findings and “A” Team results were translated to accessible language and presented to residents through organized community forums, generating public discussion on the implications of the findings, possible solutions, and next steps. Second, the scientific evidence gathered by “A” Team members and sometimes anecdotal information on the Team's observations were presented at hearings of government agencies, such as the Port of Los Angeles Harbor Commission, California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, and others. Testimony by trained community leaders was powerful in helping build the case for the adverse health impacts associated with goods movement in low-income communities in Southern California. Finally, the “A” Team data informed USC scientists about “local community hot spots,” long suspected of environmental hazards, but that had been previously undocumented, providing the USC scientists with new areas of possible investigation. As one community partner noted,

The importance of the “A” Team work is not just the activities, but the data gathered because Caltrans does not count or track how many trucks transit throughout the city on smaller highways; that data does not exist elsewhere. We are the only group in Long Beach collecting this data.

The success of the “A” Teams is credited to the long term investment in and exchange of experience, knowledge and expertise they provided. As noted by a community partner, “the residents want to learn the science and the scientists want to learn from the residents,” filling, in the process, an important scientific gap on the detrimental environmental health impacts on families and communities.

Getting to Policy Outcomes

Outcome # 1: Clean Air Action Plan

As noted above, a core principle of CBPR is balancing research and action (Israel et al., 2005). Key policymakers have suggested that partners of THE Impact Project played a major role in the successful passage of the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) of 2006. That measure created a five-year plan to reduce pollution from the ports by 45%. In addition, the CAAP recognized the valued contributions of The Impact Project partners, inviting five of the six partners to serve on the new mayor's CAAP implementation task force. The core strategies and factors that resulted in the CAAP adoption included community organizing, community engagement, leadership development, and a change in the political climate. Public hearings to discuss the ports' Clean Air Action Plan dated back to the early 2000s, initially convening as a “no net increase” task force by Mayor of Los Angeles James Hahn. But the new political environment of 2005, with the election of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, created a window of opportunity and new agenda for the port. With allies in place, such as the new mayor and newly appointed Harbor Commissioners, numerous hearings about port and rail pollution were held in 2005 and 2006, prompting both Impact partners and residents to increase their representation at meetings and hearings, seizing the moment, with a “renewed ability to be heard.” A powerful strategy contributing to the partners' strong and influential voice at public hearings was their individual representation, testifying on behalf of their own organizations, rather than solely as a collective. As an Assembly member remarked,

I became educated by the activism of all these folks. The first [scientific] studies were released and then were updated, and a combination of environmental leaders, and academic leaders—all had a profound influence on me. All of it impacting the course, that there is a need to address air quality issues.…It essentially built momentum…and all of this work resulted in the passing of the clean air action plan.

THE Impact Project partners continue to have a mutually respectful and beneficial relationship with trust at its core, which in the eyes of policymakers, has resulted in the successful union of strong, rigorous science that in turn supports claims made by neighborhood residents and community organizers. Since the passing of the 2006 Clean Air Action Plan, the project partners continue to be a strong and consistent voice, holding the ports accountable to their agreed-upon plan to reduce port pollution by 45%. According to one community partner, with the introduction of the 2010 update to the CAAP, which outlined its intentions and plans for the future of the ports, several Impact partners (along with others, including NRDC) succeeded in delaying its implementation to allow for more public input and to bring awareness that the new version was “watered down” and less effective in comparison to the original 2006 CAAP. Without the partners' appointments to the task force, a real opportunity for engaging this powerful set of voices in helping impact on key decision making could have been missed. Additionally, THE Impact Project partners played key roles in being appointed to help develop the California Goods Movement Action Plan, adopted by the state. Three of the partners were also appointed to the Goods Movement Advisory Committee for the Southern California Association of Governments and two of them to the U.S. EPA goods movement working group formed under the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (see <http://www.epa.gov/compliance/ej/nejac/recommendations.html>).

Outcome #2: Changing the nature of the debate

From its inception, THE Impact Project aimed to shift the ports and goods movement debate from one solely focused on “economics” to one that includes “health,” so that community leaders, elected officials, and others understand that although they consider the ports to be the “engine of the economy” in Southern California, the ports also have serious adverse health and community impacts on residents. Through its academic connections, both at USC and Occidental College, for example, the project worked tirelessly to disseminate the “science” and to help build an environmental health and justice movement around the issue of goods movement, inclusive of scientists, lawyers, community organizers, and residents. THE Impact Project played a key role in building the community-driven movement that dramatically influenced and changed how policy decisions about goods movement are made, shifting from a serious lack of community involvement to a deeply rooted community participation approach that brings to the forefront community voices on important health issues. The community organizing strategies employed by the partners were highly effective and included engaging residents most affected by the issue at hand through Neighborhood Assessment trainings, community skills building workshops, disseminating research findings to local neighbors at schools, churches, or other community venues, and simultaneously working collectively to identify solutions. Furthermore, the partners capitalized on the opportunities to attend meetings and hearings, “taking the public voice to the public hearing,” while also seeking and accepting appointments to various goods movement task forces. These appointments were “a very big commitment,” according to one partner, “because we felt we could make a difference by changing the nature of the debate.” Key to their strategies were developing long-term relationships with local government bodies and informing prominent legislators and city officials about the personal toll that goods movement activities were taking on residents' health. In the words of one assembly member:

It put a face onto something otherwise known as only a scientific study, or a conclusion. The activism made it three-dimensional; people would talk about doctor visits, school absenteeism, and not being able to go outside to play. They gave us a visualization of trucks rolling by the schools. Their testimonials and mobilization were really instrumental… because they put a face to it—both the problem and the scientific studies.

The successes of THE Impact Project partners in helping shift the debate is grounded in the often challenging, but critical and sensitive balance between research and community organizing. As noted above, shifting the debate among policymakers from looking at international trade and the ports as an “economic engine” and business model to a comprehensive community model that takes into account the needs of the neighbors residing in communities most affected by the goods and transportation has been a key outcome for which the project has shared major credit. For example, an academic partner pointed out that an important “White Paper on Goods Movement,” published by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) in 2002 failed to even mention the word “health” (SCAG, 2002). Similarly, the 2004 SCAG Regional Transportation Plan talked about “meeting the needs of goods movement” by expanding connections between highways, ports and rail yards, again with no specific mention of the health impacts related to air pollution from this industry (SCAG, 2004). By 2012, SCAG's Regional Transportation Plan included a full Goods Movement Appendix, in which SCAG admitted that “ships, trucks, trains and other goods movement equipment are among the largest contributors to regional air pollution,” and that “freight emissions contribute to local health risks, which have raised community concerns and opposition.” (SCAG, 2012).

Outcome #3: Delaying the approval of infrastructure projects until decision makers adequately examine environmental public health implications

In 2005, all of the academic and community partners attended and testified at a public hearing by the Port of Los Angeles about a new rail yard proposal that the Port argued would help it stay competitive with other ports in the U.S. Community, EJ, environmental, and academic public health groups all testified that the project was ill-conceived (Schoch, 2005) because it would produce significant diesel pollution, known to have adverse health impacts, and be sited four miles from the ports, in close proximity to homes and schools. Members of THE Impact Project have continued to urge the Port of Los Angeles to find a more suitable location on-dock (at the Port) for this rail yard. Although the railroad and the Port of L.A. had expected to begin construction in 2007, the project was delayed while a draft environmental impact report (DEIR) was prepared. The DEIR was not issued until late 2011, and it resulted in major criticism by academic and community members of THE Impact Project, NRDC, the Air Quality Management District, and others, because it had not adequately considered the project's anticipated adverse health impacts. The Port of L.A. decided to pull the DEIR back and conduct more analyses; it is expected to be re-released for public comment in late 2012—six years after the first public hearing on the project.

Similarly, a proposal in 2002 to add additional lanes to the I-710 freeway and create elevated truck-only lanes to move cargo containers from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the rail yards, met major opposition from groups including the Impact Project partners because adverse effects of diesel pollution had not been adequately considered, and there had been insufficient attempts to inform the public of the project. The concerns expressed carried special weight, as the proposed expansion was expected to be one of the largest public works projects in the country. In reaction, a new public participation scheme had to be developed by the policymakers, years of public discussions about environmental and health impacts ensued and, at the urging of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, EYCEJ, LBACA, CFASE, and USC's community outreach and engagement group, a health risk assessment was conducted to evaluate diesel cancer risk. The California Department of Transportation issued the DEIR in 2012, more than 10 years after the project was first proposed.

Challenges and Implications

Policy level work focused on the Ports' emissions has been a consistent challenge, both because of their perceived role as major economic engines for Southern California, and because of the multiple policy jurisdictions involved, including city and port authorities; the regional air quality districts; state of California rules, oversight, and guidelines; federal EPA regulations; and International Maritime law. Time, financial resources, and staffing continue to be a challenge for the partners, especially as they become more involved on task forces any one of which may require attendance at dozens of meetings. Despite these challenges, the partners' consistent public advocacy and community organizing; Town meetings hosted by USC in collaboration with community and other academic partners; receptive public figures; and the enhanced science from USC and UCLA investigators was credited by policymakers as having “played a very valuable role in policy change…by testifying, for example, at all harbor commission meetings, and placing a face to the medical challenges they experience because of pollution in their neighborhoods.”

This case study has important implications for research, practice, and policy. First, it helps us understand the value in including community residents and community-based and EJ organizations in improving the scientific quality and rigor of the research process, and the value to the participants who not only gain skills, but also are empowered to participate in a civic process and leverage research results to seek justice. Second, the longevity and subsequent victories of THE Impact Project has catapulted the partners as leading spokesperson on ports and goods movement, garnering local and national attention, and serving as advisors to and resources for other community organizations facing environmental injustices in their community. At the policy level, THE Impact Project has gained national momentum as a successful collaborative that engages residents and community-based groups as advocates by actively engaging them in the civic process, and establishing relationships with key policy makers to advance their policy agenda. A hallmark of THE Impact Project's success lies in its members' vision to capture and share their lessons learned through multiple media, i.e., town hall meetings, national and international conferences, news media, and publications (see THE Impact Project Policy Briefs, 2012), but most importantly to serve as a resource for communities facing similar environmental injustices.

Conclusion

This case study offers valuable lessons for partnerships interested in engaging in CBPR in environmental justice by illustrating the power of distributive and procedural justice in communities who have a history of neglect and of exclusion from decision-making processes. THE Impact Project explored here is part of a growing effort in the U.S. to address the problem of goods movement, but one of few that engaged both community resident leaders and academic researchers to help systematically study the problem as a basis for subsequent action (Hricko, 2006; Hricko, 2008; Matsuoka, Hricko, Gottlieb, and DeLara, 2011; Gonzalez et al., 2011). While there has been a long and productive history of CBPR in environmental justice, the approach for this case study, specifically around goods movement and from a regional perspective is more recent. As Pastor and colleagues (2009) suggest, “the region is a productive place for new progressive organizing, partly because it is on the regional scale that many problems are experienced and partly because a confluence of interests make it possible to create new sustainable coalitions among unlikely partners” (p.3). THE Impact Project illustrates the possibilities of taking on the challenge of regional policy change with multiple government jurisdictions, extending the reach of CBPR environmental justice case studies beyond the local level. The Project's unique history, relationships, individual expertise, and common agenda contributed to the collective success of THE Impact Project. As a CBPR project, THE Impact Project is a marriage of strong community-based organizations, academic partners and local residents. With its scientific base and community engagement, it has helped to create a national environmental justice movement along the ports and rail routes, raising public awareness and discussion, and infusing social and political urgency on the environmental impacts of the global economy on communities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge The California Endowment for its support of this case study analysis and the larger study of which it is a part. We further owe deep thanks to the community and academic partners, and the policymakers, who shared with us their time and insights, and without whom this analysis would not have been possible. THE Impact Project in turn thanks the funders of its collaborative efforts, The California Endowment, the Kresge Foundation, and the California Wellness Foundation. The USC Community Outreach and Education Program of the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center receives additional faculty and staff support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), grant #5P30ES007048 and previously received support for the work described in this article from NIEHS grant #P01ES009581 and U.S. EPA grant #RD831861.

Author Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest or financial ties to disclose.

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