A pillar of the community

Dirty air was so prevalent that students regularly went home early from school because they were having trouble breathing, said Kelly Jondle, the school’s facilities manager.

So when the Port of Long Beach began offering community grants to combat local air quality issues more than five years ago, school officials seized at the opportunity to better the environment of its students and faculty and secured enough grant funding to install air filters in all of the high school’s classrooms and administration offices.

The impact was immediate, Mr Jondle said.

“We noticed right away the slowdown and complete stop of kids having to break out their asthma (medication),” he said. “Once we got those air filters in and they really started working, it made a difference in the classroom.”

Since then, the high school has received nearly US$1 million in grant funding from the Port of Long Beach for various projects, including the installation of air-cleaning devices, new double-paned windows to keep away dust and cut down on busy street noise and dozens of solar energy roof panels that would help to reduce energy usage by as much as 66%.

The energy savings alone allowed the high school to purchase air-conditioning/heater units for its classrooms. “It’s a much more comfortable environment for staff and students,” Mr Jondle said.

Community effort

Soon the community will be seeing even more improvements to Long Beach neighbourhoods over the next decade, starting this year.

The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners in July approved plans for a programme that would distribute US$46.4 million in grants over the next 12 to 15 years, a move that nearly triples its commitment to the existing US$17.4 million grant programme.

It is the most money a US seaport has voluntarily devoted to targeting port-related pollution.

The grants, which will come from port operating funds, will target projects that fall under three categories: health, facility improvements and community infrastructure.

The amount was determined by a state-mandated Community Impact Study that Harbor Commissioners directed staff to put together to examine the Port of Long Beach’s total impact on air, noise, traffic and water quality.

After the draft was released in April, community members weighed in on the plan, submitting input in the weeks that followed. The port also hosted a series of public workshops last autumn to help identify priorities for earmarking money for various projects identified in the study. In the workshop, the community prioritised healthcare and air filtration projects in the near term.

“We wanted to continue and expand this great programme that has had a real, meaningful and lasting impact on lives,” said Port of Long Beach Harbor Commission President, Lori Ann Guzmán. “As commissioners, we all live in this city. It makes us feel that much stronger about the port being a positive influence not only in an economic sense but in helping to build a healthier community.”

This latest amount of US$46.4 million adds to the US$17.4 million in Community Mitigation Grants given by the Port of Long Beach since 2009. More than 280,000 people have benefitted from the grant programmes, which were funded with monies from the port’s two largest projects, the replacement of the Gerald Desmond Bridge and the redevelopment of Middle Harbor terminal.

Safeguarding health

Past recipients have included the Long Beach Comprehensive Health Center, which used its US$661,318 to open a new Heart Station cardiopulmonary lab, Poly High School, which was given US$545,899 for air filters, and St Mary Medical Center, which spent its US$834,791 grant on a Breathe Easy Mobile Care Clinic that visits various locations to offer free respiratory and/or cardiopulmonary tests and screenings.

The grants are aimed at improving communities most affected by operations at the Long Beach seaport, which is the second busiest in the US with more than US$180 billion worth of goods moving through its docks.

Curbing pollution generated from such as an operation is a massive undertaking in Long Beach, where the estimated lifetime diagnosis rate of asthma is 14.2%. That exceeds the national rate of 8%, the state rate of 13.7% and Los Angeles County’s rate of 12.5%, said Judeth Luong, environmental health operations officer for the city’s Bureau of Environmental Health.

“So our risk for acute and frequent asthma symptoms in Long Beach is elevated due to our proximity to the two major shipping ports, oil refineries, rail yards, major highways and the air pollution itself,” Ms Luong said. “We know there’s a need.”

The city, which worked closely with the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, saw a gap that needed to be filled.

“We recognised that there wasn’t really anyone addressing the adult population,” she said.

So when the Port of Long Beach awarded one of its earliest community grants to the city’s Bureau of Environmental Health, officials there developed an Asthma Life Skills Academy for Adults that could help adults and seniors with asthma who live near the port to make lifestyle changes that would help them breathe better.

They modelled the adult case management programme after the American Lung Association’s Breathe Well, Live Well curriculum and trained workers who were recruited from the community health leadership programme in Long Beach.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Healthy Homes Initiative also shaped the programme, Ms Luong said.

About 344 adults with asthma enrolled in the academy, with 338 completing the home visits, and 335 completing the three-month follow-up assessment. The programme resulted in an 87%decrease in emergency and urgent visits to care providers for treatment of acute asthma symptoms. That translates to an estimated direct care savings of US$1.98 million.

The programme also saw an increase in better control of asthma symptoms and a decrease in the “collateral impacts (ie, missed days of work or school) of these symptoms,” according to the programme’s report.

Ms Luong added: “Our programme did door-to-door outreach, trained health leaders from Long Beach on the curriculum and really looked at (residents’) indoor and outdoor environment to find the asthma triggers so they can help improve their environment and breathe easier,” such as furry pets, heavy-scented products and tobacco.”

She shared a story about a North Long Beach housewife and mother of two who saw her breathing improve after enrolling in the academy and making small changes to the way she cleaned her house. The programme taught her to identify and avoid things that would create asthma flare-ups, such as using non-toxic cleaning supplies and eschewing candles and stuffed toys that collected dust.

“That money that the port gave us really empowered our residents and helped them manage their asthma better,” Ms Luong said. “That’s one story of many that we have collected over the years. I’m really proud of the difference we have made in the community.”

The programme ended in 2015, but there’s been strong community interest to bring it back.

“The programme has been missed,” she said. “We’ve been getting calls and requests.”

It has been difficult to find funding sources to continue the programme, but Ms Luong hopes the prospect of another round of port grants will inspire its return.

“It’s very exciting,” she said. “I hope it will energise the group.”

Tree planting

Another grant recipient was the city’s tree-planting programme. In 2013, the grant helped to launch I Dig Long Beach, an aggressive urban forest project to plant 6,000 trees by 2020.

Since receiving a US$675,000 grant from the port, more than 2,700 drought-tolerant, carbon-fighting trees have been planted nearly every month.

The programme has empowered people all over Long Beach to add and care for hundreds of trees in the city, especially young people, said Margaret Madden, neighbourhood improvement officer for the city.

“They’re wildly popular,” Ms Madden said. “We had several hundred people at our last tree planting, from Boy Scouts to high school groups like Millikan High School to Wrigley is Going Green. In addition to cleaning the air and helping to make the neighbourhoods look nicer, it gives these different groups an opportunity to bring the community together.”

Many of the tree-planting events have a theme and many times it is to honor someone local. Ms Madden pointed to a past tree planting held in memory of former Harbor Commissioner Dr

John E Kashiwabara, a longtime community leader and physician who had a practice in the Wrigley neighbourhood. The event drew many people, including Mr Kashiwabara’s family, she said.

“It’s really been a tool to foster a sense of community pride across the city,” Ms Madden said. “It’s really been a huge help.”

Grant funding

In late December, Mayor Robert Garcia appointed five people to be part of an advisory committee that would review applications for the latest round of grant-funded projects and provide input to harbour staff, which would make recommendations to the Harbor Commission.

Port officials are expected to consider guidelines for the grant programme by the first quarter of this year and begin soliciting proposals shortly thereafter.

News of the Port of Long Beach expanding its grant programme makes recipients such as Mr Jondle happy to be part of the community.

“It shows what a great corporate citizen they are and a great neighbour,” he said.

“We are grateful and we appreciate them. It’s the engine that drives not only Long Beach and Los Angeles, but Southern California. Without that port, we’d be nothing. We have to work together to keep them going.”