It sounds arcane and white collar: A federal judge last month ordered Long Beach officials to conduct an environmental report on their program to clean the air at the city’s port.

But at issue is a very blue-collar question: how often mechanics will get their nails dirty under the hoods of thousands of new trucks operating at the Port of Long Beach.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, which in 2009 sued the port over various provisions in its Clean Truck Program, want to ensure that mechanics regularly inspect the rigs – and now they might get their way.

“A new truck is very quickly going to become a dirty truck if it’s not maintained,” said Melissa Lin Perrella, a senior attorney with the NRDC’s Southern California Air Project.

The program, which required carriers to replace thousands of old dirty diesel trucks with current models, was passed originally in 2007 as a concession system; that allowed the port to block port access to trucking companies if they didn’t follow the rules. Those rules would have required trucking companies to prepare maintenance plans for all trucks and make maintenance logs available for inspection.

But trucking companies didn’t like the concession system and the American Trucking Associations filed a lawsuit against the port. In 2009, the port and the ATA reached a settlement that called for converting the Clean Truck Program into a registration system. The settlement made trucking companies responsible for following local, state and federal laws but abandoned the requirements for maintenance plans and logs to be turned over to port officials.

Dominic Holzhaus, Long Beach’s principal deputy city attorney who is representing the port in its lawsuit with the environmental groups, said the registration system still requires that companies maintain their trucks.

“We’re confident that the facts support what we did,” he said.

However, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder was swayed by arguments from the environmental groups, which contended that federal and other regulations didn’t stop port trucks from falling into disrepair in the past.

She ordered the port July 14 to study whether changes to the program, including converting it to a registration system and abandoning the maintenance requirements, would result in additional pollution or other environmental impacts.

Real-world maintenance

However, at least one local trucking company executive said that the concerns of the environmental groups do not reflect how maintenance is conducted.

Joshua Owen, president of Ability/Tri-Modal trucking in Carson, said the port’s change cut paper work for the companies but didn’t change real-world maintenance procedures.

He said that large trucking companies such as Ability/Tri-Model have their own strict internal schedules in order to comply with California Highway Patrol and federal maintenance regulations. While he admitted that CHP and federal government inspectors focus more on safety issues, such as brakes, the trucks are inspected.

“There are so many rules and laws and regulations outside of the port that we have to follow,” Owen said.

Thomas Jelenic, the port’s assistant director of environmental planning, added that the new cleaner-burning trucks won’t function without proper maintenance of their emission-control systems.

“You have this filter on your truck, and if you don’t maintain it, it will become clogged,” he said. “It’s like sticking a banana in your exhaust. Your truck essentially will not operate. This idea that we can have all these scofflaws driving around with modern trucks with emission systems that aren’t operating properly just ignores the way these systems work.”

The results of the study will be due Feb. 1. If the study shows no need for further work, it will be presented to the Harbor Commission and likely to the City Council. If it shows the need for a full environmental impact report, work would begin on that document.

Any decision could be subject to further litigation, but Lin Perrella said the NRDC’s goal is to have a full public discussion on whether to return to a concession system.

She called the 2009 settlement a backroom deal that resulted in a system inferior to the one approved at the Port of Los Angeles, which bans trucking companies from the common practice of using independent contractors and instead requires them to hire drivers as employees.

Lin Perrella said the NRDC believes large trucking companies with deep pockets, not independent owner-operators who might seek to save a buck, should be responsible for maintaining trucks. However, she added that the provision is not at issue in the Long Beach legal case since the port abandoned the idea prior to the 2009 settlement.

The ATA and others in the trucking industry maintain that the L.A. port plan’s underlying goal has less to do with any environmental motive and more to do with the Teamsters’ goal of unionizing port truckers. The union has been a big supporter of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who has pushed for the L.A. port’s Clean Truck Program.

In fact, the ATA has sued the Port of Los Angeles over its concession program in a case that is still tied up in federal court. Snyder, who is presiding over both port’s cases, upheld L.A.’s concession program last year, including its prohibition against owner-operators, but the ATA has appealed her ruling.

The ATA did not respond to requests for comment.