Pollution-cutting measures at Hunts Point food distro center could be at the whim of the presidential election

It’s a chaotic Tuesday morning at the produce market of the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, the largest food distribution center in the U.S., nestled on the eastern edge of the South Bronx. At 329 acres, it’s also one of the biggest food hubs in the world. Its long, narrow outdoor platforms are crowded with people carrying produce from the back of 18-wheelers on one side of the platform into refrigerated warehouses on the other. Stepping around boxes of asparagus from California and avocados from Mexico, wholesalers haggle over prices above the hum of dozens of trucks. Once sold, the produce will go back into a fleet of trucks and travel across New York City and much of the East Coast, supplying supermarket chains, restaurants, and mom and pop stores.

Distributing 4.5 billion pounds of food each year, the produce market is undeniably crucial to the region’s food supply – but it comes at a cost. Thousands of diesel trucks criss-cross the region to end up at the market, spewing pollutants into the air that fuel climate change and disproportionately affect the health of the dense, low-income communities of color in Hunts Point and other neighborhoods in the South Bronx.

The produce market plans to reduce its carbon footprint and has received millions in federal funds to do so. There is an unprecedented amount of money flowing from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act to spur the switch to electric trucking, but the future of that funding might be decided in the upcoming presidential election. A Kamala Harris administration is likely to expand on steps taken by President Joe Biden to incentivize and build electric vehicle infrastructure, while such policies could see rollbacks under an administration of Donald Trump, who has said he would prioritize expanding the fossil fuel industry.

Diesel exhaust and “asthma alley”

Food security for an entire region comes at a high price, and the community surrounding Hunts Point has been paying it.

“We have no illusions that the largest food distribution market in the country will be moved, so how can we make sure that at least the operations are less harmful to people living in the community?” said Arif Ullah, executive director of South Bronx Unite, a social and environmental justice advocacy group. “One important way to do that is through getting these operations off of fossil fuels.”

The distribution center is not the sole destination for diesel trucks in the neighborhood of 13,000 residents, where 40% live below the poverty line and roughly 95% identify as Hispanic or Black. Around 15,000 trucks drive each day over the highways that encircle Hunts Point, delivering to the produce market, a water treatment plant, waste facilities, recycling yards and a growing number of shipping warehouses.

Diesel exhaust is particularly harmful to human health due to the fine particulate matter linked to cancer, respiratory illnesses and heart disease. The air in Hunts Point had an annual mean of 6.2 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter, compared to 5.8 micrograms across New York City, according to a 2022 survey by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Hunts Point and adjacent neighborhoods in the South Bronx are known as “asthma alley,” having some of the highest rates of asthma in the country, with elevated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease. In 2022, children in Hunts Point between the ages of 5 and 17 made emergency department visits for asthma at a rate of 285 times per 10,000 residents, more than double the citywide rate, according to city data.

The produce market hasn’t changed much since the distribution center relocated from lower Manhattan to Hunts Point in 1967, but freight trucks have only gotten bigger with time. The trucks that line one side of the market’s platforms often turn into makeshift refrigerators when the warehouses run out of storage, leaving them to idle for hours. A $650 million proposal to redevelop the market would target trucking emissions by updating the facility and installing greener infrastructure. The plan includes expanding the refrigerated warehouse space to over 800,000 square feet and building a first-of-its-kind, freight-focused electric charging hub.

In 2022, the market received $110 million for the project through an Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The market has received an additional $35 million in federal funding and $260 million from the city and state, but it has to secure the remaining $245 million before breaking ground, and any delays could put the future of the project at risk. Phillip Grant, then the CEO of the Hunts Point Produce Market, told Bloomberg he estimates design reviews and construction will take several years, and they need to get started before much of the federal funds expire in 2031.

The future of clean trucking

Biden has made electric vehicles an important part of his climate agenda, but rollout has been slower than expected. In 2022, his administration introduced a commercial clean energy vehicle tax credit to incentivize businesses to buy electric or hybrid cars, trucks and buses. That same year, Biden announced he would build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030 through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, using $5 billion in funds from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The electric vehicle infrastructure program doesn’t require states that receive the money to build charging stations that can accommodate heavy-duty vehicles like freight trucks, which critics of the program say is necessary, otherwise states will direct all their attention to passenger vehicles. To address that concern, the Biden administration in March announced the National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy, which will help build electric charging and hydrogen refueling stations along the country’s freight corridors and hubs, with the goal of a zero-emission freight network by 2040.

That same month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a “Phase 3” rule, which sets new emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles starting in model year 2027. The rule doesn’t require those vehicles to be zero emission, so companies can comply by building improved internal combustion engines. That would reduce some pollution, but it’s not the direct pathway to a zero-emission freight industry that environmental advocates want.

Whatever happens on the national stage could affect Hunts Point as one of the country’s biggest freight hubs. If Harris wins the upcoming presidential election, she is expected to continue and expand on Biden’s climate agenda, including the push for more electric vehicles.

“Climate change will likely drive a lot of the spending and the investments that a Harris administration would make, especially for major infrastructure projects like this,” said Paul Lipson, principal at Barretto Bay Strategies, an urban solutions consulting firm that specializes in clean energy and transportation. “I can’t imagine that a Harris administration wouldn’t want to maximize opportunities for freight electrification, especially in Justice40 communities like Hunts Point,” he said, referring to a Biden initiative that promises to funnel 40% of the benefits from certain federal investments, including clean energy, into disadvantaged communities.

Trump, on the other hand, has vowed to roll back Biden policies that encourage electric vehicle manufacturing and sales, and he intends to cut back federal spending on climate issues. As the climate news outlet Carbon Brief noted in its extensive policy breakdown, the former president vowed to undo the climate aims of the Inflation Reduction Act in his lengthy Republican National Convention speech. “All of the trillions of dollars that are sitting there not yet spent, we will redirect that money for important projects like roads, bridges, dams, and we will not allow it to be spent on the meaningless green new scam ideas,” he said, using his pejorative description of the sweeping law. In the same speech, Trump also promised to end electric vehicle mandates, although Biden has not instituted a mandate, but rather emission regulations and incentives to push the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles.

Trump has claimed Harris wants to take Biden’s rules further with a full transition to electric vehicles, which she has denied. “Contrary to what my opponent is suggesting, I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive,” Harris said at a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, this month.

At a private meeting with Republican lawmakers in June, Trump reportedly said Biden was forcing people to buy electric vehicles and told them he would undo Biden’s policies once elected, according to Bloomberg. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law were both passed by Congress, which means Trump would require congressional approval to significantly alter them.

Lipson said Trump would likely discontinue Biden’s electric vehicle infrastructure program and do away with federal incentives and tax credits for commercial electric vehicles. “Initiatives like a federal rollout and a federal plan for charging stations on major highways, including the highways that feed Hunts Point, would probably be off the table,” he says.

Neither Harris’ nor Trump’s campaign responded to a request for comment.

State regulations can only do so much for a national hub like the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, where trucks come from all over the country and Mexico, but New York has made significant advancements on clean transportation. In 2021, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the Advanced Clean Truck rule, which requires manufacturers to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles.

“Strong state climate leadership is more important than ever,” said Joe Liesman, a spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund. “No matter what happens in the election, obviously we want to see this funding continue on the federal level. But regardless, there’s no reason for New York state to stop being a leader.”