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

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.