Street Vendors Often Forced to Throw Out Food By Hunter Chase and Fabiola Esqueda, Community News Reporters
[See Permit, p. 4]
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Victor Cortez works at his fruit stand in front of the DMV in San Pedro. Photo by Fabiola Esqueda
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Life isn’t easy for street vendors in Los Angeles, and the vendors in San Pedro are no exception. Permits are hard to come by, and without them, they can be fined by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and even have their food and carts confiscated. Victor Cortez, a street vendor who has worked in San Pedro, Long Beach and Harbor City, said that prior to the pandemic, the health department has confiscated his cart three to four times. Each time he has had to pay $1,400 to replace it. However, since the start of the pandemic, the health department has been more lenient, and has only fined him or confiscated the fruit he is selling and thrown it away. Edin Amorado, an activist who helps street vendors, said that the process of securing a permit takes a few weeks. The problem is that it is only possible to secure a permit for a tamale cart. “It’s just super hard for them,” Amorado said. “For example, if you have a corn mobile
Port Breaks Law Again With China Shipping SEIR By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
may not direct the port to carry out its obligations under CEQA in any particular way,” he wrote. Homeowners represented by the Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC) filed the initial China Shipping lawsuit in 2001 when the port approved the project without any EIR at all. They won on appeal in 2003, leading to the 2008 EIR. This lawsuit was notable because homeowners and activist organizations were joined by both state and regional air pollution agencies — CARB (California Air Resources Board) and the AQMD (South Coast Air Quality Management District) — as well as the Attorney General. “The forceful words from this judge’s decision underscored the port’s repeated failures to comply with environmental laws or to respect the health impacts to residents from their industrial expansion,” said Janet Gunter, one of three local activists who spearheaded the initial lawsuit. “This decision is a victory for the port-adjacent communities in Los Angeles,” said CARB Chair Liane
Randolph. “The Port of Los Angeles must finally require China Shipping to set in place the required measures they have been flouting, and take steps to reduce the air pollution they produce that is harming the residents of multiple AB 617 communities.” Assembly bill 617 requires specific emission reduction protections for environmental justice communities, including Wilmington, Carson and west Long Beach. “The judge understood the history of the port’s malfeasance in this case and I think that his ruling reflected that,” NRDC senior attorney David Pettit told Random Lengths News. “This is another in a long line of court rulings finding the port has violated laws designed to protect public health and the environment,” said Joe Lyou, president and CEO of the Coalition for Clean Air, another community plaintiff represented by NRDC. “It says a lot about their continual prioritization of money over the health of their neighbors. It’s time for the city [See China Shipping, p. 5] 1
July 7 - 20, 2022
The Port of Los Angeles violated the law with its most recent plans to mitigate harm from the China Shipping terminal, a judge ruled on June 27. Judge Timothy Taylor ordered the port and the City of LA to “set aside the August 2020 certification of the SEIR [supplemental environmental impact report],” which involved replacement mitigations for 11 measures in the 2008 EIR that were never implemented. “The port violated CEQA [the California Environmental Quality Act] in several ways by certifying the SEIR in August of 2020,” Judge Taylor wrote. Crucially, “The critical assumption underlying the SEIR’s environmental analysis — i.e., that China Shipping would agree to amend its lease in 2019 to require mitigation — is completely baseless,” which in turn “renders even the port’s watered-down mitigation measures unenforceable.” The port was justified in eliminating some measures as infeasible, but not others, he also ruled, and he declined to pursue a specific remedy. “The court