Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign for a $243-million telephone users tax has received a major contribution from an unlikely source -- a Texas oilman whose company could see a windfall from one of the mayor's environmental initiatives.
Proposition S, which is on Tuesday's ballot, took in a $150,000 contribution last week from billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the co-founder of Clean Energy, which bills itself as the nation's largest supplier of liquid natural gas.
Clean Energy, based in Seal Beach, has been banking on a windfall from a plan to reduce truck emissions at the Port of Los Angeles, which is overseen by appointees of the mayor.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach plan to replace thousands of exhaust-spewing diesel trucks with vehicles powered by liquid natural gas, a fossil fuel that is marketed as less-polluting than petroleum.
The campaign contribution rattled critics of liquid natural gas, who argue that the Los Angeles Harbor Commission should rely on cleaner, emerging technologies such as fuel cells to solve its air pollution problems. Those critics fear that the donation, made in the final weeks of the campaign, could spur city officials to expand their reliance on liquid natural gas.
"The only relationship I can see between Clean Energy and Proposition S is the clean truck program," said Kathleen Woodfield, a San Pedro resident who opposes liquid natural gas on the grounds that it is not a renewable resource. "Why else would [Pickens] be getting involved in a proposition that has everything to do with California and nothing to do with Texas?"
Pickens did not respond to a request for an interview Thursday. But in an August conference call, Clean Energy President and Chief Executive Andrew Littlefair told investors that the port truck plan would result in the conversion of as many as 5,300 trucks to liquid natural gas -- a move that would allow the company to ship an additional 100 million gallons of the fuel each year
Clean Energy, the only company supplying trucks at the harbor with liquid natural gas, serves 15,000 vehicles nationwide.
"We have heard people talking about LNG because they're seeing the opportunities that we're seeing, this Port of Los Angeles opportunity. It's real and it's going to happen," said Littlefair, according to a transcript of the call posted on the company's website.
