Issues & Advocacy
Key issues across five pillars, the policy priorities behind them, and the campaigns moving them forward.
01
Clean Air
No one's zip code should decide whether their child can breathe.
Why It Matters
The Port of New York and New Jersey moves goods for the entire region — and the diesel exhaust from that movement settles in the lungs of the people who live closest to it. Newark’s Ironbound and South Ward, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Staten Island, and Jersey City carry some of the highest concentrations of port-related air pollution in the country. The result is asthma rates among the highest in the United States, elevated cancer risk, and premature deaths that should never have happened.
New Jersey ranks second in the nation in cancer risk from diesel soot. In 2023 alone, diesel exhaust exposure was linked to over 330 premature deaths and $3.75 billion in monetized health damages across the state. These are not statistics. They are families.
The Coalition's Position
Clean air is a right, not a privilege of geography. Every regulatory tool available — federal, state, regional, and municipal — must be used to reduce port-related air pollution at the source. That includes mandatory emission reductions in overburdened environmental justice communities, enforceable air quality standards at port facilities, and real-time air monitoring the public can see.
What We're Fighting For
- Full implementation of New Jersey's Advanced Clean Trucks rule — without delay
- Cumulative impact regulations covering scrap yards and other previously underregulated port facilities
- Permanent air monitoring at port facilities with public access to the data
- Retrofit, repower, or replacement of diesel equipment operating under state contracts
- Designation of zero-emission zones in port-adjacent communities
02
Zero Emissions
The technology exists. The political will is the fight.
Why It Matters
Zero-emission trucks, equipment, and warehouses are not a future possibility. They exist, they work, and they are already in use at major port complexes across the country. The barrier to deploying them at the Ports of New York and New Jersey is not engineering — it is the willingness of policymakers and port authorities to require the transition at the speed the public health crisis demands.
Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles make up less than 10 percent of road traffic in New Jersey but generate nearly 50 percent of all toxic tailpipe emissions. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, around 40 percent of the total. Moving to zero emissions is both a climate strategy and an environmental justice strategy. The two cannot be separated.
The Coalition's Position
The transition to zero-emission goods movement must be aggressive, sustained, and equitable. The shipping companies that profit from goods movement — not independent truck drivers earning poverty wages — must bear the cost of fleet conversion. Zero-emission zones and corridors must be designated in the communities that have carried the heaviest pollution burden, prioritizing them rather than treating them as an afterthought.
What We're Fighting For
- Full and timely implementation of New Jersey's Advanced Clean Trucks rule
- Mandatory electrification of trucks, equipment, and warehouses at the port and in port-adjacent communities
- Use of gubernatorial powers to push the Port Authority of NY/NJ toward zero emissions
- Public investment in charging and fueling infrastructure scaled to the regional freight system
- Federal funding tied to environmental justice outcomes, not just emission reductions
03
Community Empowerment
The people closest to the harm are closest to the solution.
Why It Matters
For decades, the institutions that govern the Ports of New York and New Jersey have made decisions about port-adjacent communities without those communities at the table. Permits issued, expansions approved, emergency response procedures written — all without meaningful input from the residents who would live with the consequences. The cost of that exclusion has been counted in asthma diagnoses, in fires at scrap yards, in years of life lost.
Community empowerment is not a slogan. It is the practical work of changing who gets to decide, who gets informed, and who gets heard when port operations affect public health.
The Coalition's Position
Frontline communities must have real decision-making power — not just consultation — in the policies that govern their air, their land, and their health. Public agencies must communicate clearly and immediately when crises occur. Cumulative impact analysis must be a requirement, not a request. And the coalition itself must remain accountable to the communities it serves, building leadership from within port-adjacent neighborhoods rather than around them.
What We're Fighting For
- Full implementation of New Jersey's S232 environmental justice law and its cumulative impact rules
- Expansion of municipal environmental justice ordinances modeled on Newark's 2016 law
- Clear, immediate, and multilingual community notification procedures during port-related emergencies
- Public seats and meaningful authority for community representatives on Port Authority advisory bodies
- Investment in community-led monitoring, research, and advocacy capacity
04
Worker Protections
The people who move the goods deserve to make it home healthy.
Why It Matters
Port truck drivers serving the Port of New York and New Jersey have spent decades classified as independent contractors rather than employees — a designation that strips them of basic protections, denies them health and pension benefits, and leaves them earning poverty wages while shouldering the cost of upgrading the trucks they drive. Longshore workers, warehouse workers, and others across the logistics industry face their own pattern of exploitation, exposure, and exhaustion.
The fight for clean air and the fight for worker protections are the same fight. A truck driver breathing diesel for ten hours a day is not separate from the child breathing it in the apartment next to the highway. Both deserve better. Neither can be sacrificed for the other.
The Coalition's Position
Every worker in the port and goods-movement industry must have access to a living wage, safe and healthy working conditions, health and pension benefits, and full protection under federal and state labor laws, including the right to organize. Worker misclassification must end. The cost of the transition to zero emissions must fall on the shipping companies and trucking firms that profit from goods movement — not on the workers driving the trucks.
What We're Fighting For
- End independent contractor misclassification of port truck drivers
- Living wages, health benefits, and pension protections for all port and warehouse workers
- Safe working conditions, including protection from diesel exposure and access to basic facilities
- The right to organize, free from retaliation
- Hiring preferences for port-adjacent community residents — “employ us, don't poison us”
05
Economic Justice
A port that works for the region should work for the people it runs through.
Why It Matters
The Port of New York and New Jersey generates billions of dollars in regional economic activity every year. Very little of that wealth reaches the communities the port runs through. Newark, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Jersey City, and Staten Island host the trucks, the warehouses, the rail yards, and the emissions — but they receive a fraction of the jobs, the contracts, and the investment that the port produces.
Roughly one in three New Jersey residents now lives near a mega-warehouse. The boom in distribution centers has accelerated diesel truck traffic through neighborhoods never designed to absorb it, while the economic benefits flow disproportionately to the corporations operating the facilities rather than the residents living beside them.
The Coalition's Position
Economic justice means the port’s growth must benefit the region equitably. That requires modernizing port trucking with living wages and benefits. It requires hiring port-adjacent residents into the jobs the port produces. It requires holding warehouse and distribution operators accountable for the traffic, pollution, and infrastructure costs they generate. And it requires public investment that flows to the communities carrying the heaviest burden — not to the corporations already profiting from the system.
What We're Fighting For
- Passage of the Warehouse and Port Pollution Reduction Act (S3546/A4679) to address indirect-source pollution
- Local hiring requirements for port and warehouse jobs
- Equitable distribution of federal port-decarbonization funding to frontline communities
- Reform of the port trucking industry to end exploitation of independent operators
- Public investment in port-adjacent neighborhoods proportionate to the pollution burden they carry
POLICY PRIORITIES
Policy Priorities
CHP’s policy priorities cut across all five pillars. This page summarizes them in one place for funders, journalists, and policymakers who want the agenda at a glance.
- Defend the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule — oppose any delay or weakening; push for full, timely implementation across all vehicle classes.
- Pass the Warehouse and Port Pollution Reduction Act (S3546/A4679) — address indirect-source pollution from warehouses and distribution centers.
- Fully implement the NJ Environmental Justice Law (S232) — ensure the cumulative impact rules are enforced and strengthened.
- Establish zero-emission zones and corridors — in port-adjacent communities and along major freight routes.
- Expand cumulative impact regulation — to cover scrap yards and other previously underregulated port facilities.
- End port truck driver misclassification — and secure living wages, benefits, and the right to organize.
CAMPAIGNS
Campaigns
Defend the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule
Pillar: Zero Emissions / Clean Air
In 2021, New Jersey became the first state on the East Coast to adopt the Advanced Clean Trucks rule — a landmark policy requiring manufacturers to steadily increase zero-emission truck sales. It is one of the most important air-quality and climate measures the state has ever passed. And it is under attack. In December 2024, the Assembly Transportation Committee advanced a bill to delay the rule by two years. CHP mobilized fast enough to stop a full floor vote — but the threat hasn’t gone away. We need to defend this rule, and we need to push for its full implementation.
Coalition partner involvement: Clean Water Action, NJEJA, Ironbound Community Corporation, South Ward Environmental Alliance, with support from Earthjustice and partners across the Moving Forward Network.
Pass the Warehouse and Port Pollution Reduction Act
Pillar: Economic Justice / Clean Air
New Jersey’s warehouse boom has put roughly one in three residents near a mega-warehouse — and the diesel truck traffic those facilities generate is poisoning the air in communities that never agreed to host them. The Warehouse and Port Pollution Reduction Act (S3546/A4679) would address this indirect-source pollution at its root. CHP supports this bill in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund.
Coalition partner involvement: Clean Water Action, NJEJA, with Environmental Defense Fund as a legislative partner.
Community Accountability at Port Facilities
Pillar: Community Empowerment
Repeated fires at the Eastern Metal Recycling Terminal at Port Newark — the most recent following an earlier blaze at the same site — have exposed how little protection port-adjacent communities have during industrial emergencies. Residents are left without timely information, without adequate air monitoring, and without a say. CHP is calling for emergency and permanent air and water monitors, real community notification procedures, and the inclusion of scrap yards in cumulative impact regulation.
Coalition partner involvement: Ironbound Community Corporation, South Ward Environmental Alliance, NJEJA.
The work doesn't stop. Neither do we.
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