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The Port of Long Beach is holding back on long-term testing of the "sock-on-a-stack" emissions filter built by Advanced Cleanup Technologies Inc. (ACTI) after reports surfaced that the company was bouncing checks.
Contract negotiations for the Advanced Maritime Emissions Control System, or AMECS, have stalled while the port waits for assurances from ACTI that their financial troubles have stabilized, said port environmental planner Heather Tomley.
Bakersfield-based Channel 17 News reported in February that paychecks cashed by ACTI employees in Kern County bounced. ACTI eventually paid the balance on some of the checks after taking heat from frustrated businesses and the media.
While the port's concerns are understandable, drawn-out testing and negotiation between the port and Advanced Cleanup over the green technology could be one of the factors hitting the company's paychecks.
Long Beach's Board of Harbor Commissioners approved up to $2.39 million at the committee level last June for a long-term durability study of the sock-on-a-stack technology, which included a rental agreement that would pay ACTI $50,000 per month to rent the filter system to the port. Terminal operator Metropolitan Stevedore, which would host the tests at its berth, also committed to paying up to $200,000 for water and utility expenses on the project.
Performance tests on the AMECS began in late 2007, marking almost three years since the completed emission filter was available for port use. Once the contract is finished, it must come before the port board again for approval before the next round of testing can begin.
The AMECS uses a crane to place a bonnet-like device over a ship's smokestack to scrub the exhaust of pollutants before releasing it into the atmosphere. In two full-scale tests on vessels at Berth G214 in May and July of 2008, the sock-on-a-stack reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and diesel particulate matter (PM) by more than 95 percent.
ACTI received the Clean Air Award from the South Coast Air Quality Management District for creating the AMECS, which the company says is more than twice as cost-effective in reducing emissions as cold ironing.
Company owner Ruben Garcia said that his company is still working with the port to frame the contract for a long-term durability test. Garcia also told Channel 17 that his company has struggled in recent years in part because the government has yet to pay his company for millions of dollars of cleanup done after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in 2005.
ACTI currently has crews back in the Gulf states, this time because of the BP spill that is gushing crude oil into the water following an explosion on April 20 that sank the floating offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in 5,000 feet of water.
http://www.cunninghamreport.com/news_item.php?id=1274
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