Ferry operators and their supporters complain that your contention that ferries are, person for person, ten times as polluting as single occupant cars is true only of the very oldest ferries, not the newer boats carrying the most people. Was your sound byte an exaggeration?

We stand by our conclusions. Ironically, Cal EPA just passed new regulations that will make transit buses almost ten times cleaner by 2011 than existing buses. This is going to make even the newest ferries, which by the way are only slightly cleaner than the older ones, look even worse in future comparisons. Even with natural gas, it may be quite difficult, if not impossible, for ferries ever to be in the same league as transit buses, in terms of emissions. Clearly, the WTA will need to work very hard to try to narrow these differences if they have any chance of getting an approval by the State Legislature.

You claimed that Carnegie Mellon University researchers had validated your work yet they subsequently disavowed having done so. What happened?

Carnegie Mellon apologized to us for the confusion. They continue to agree with us — as noted in publication of their letter in the last Bay Crossings — that fast ferries are significantly more polluting, per passenger, than transit buses and cars.

Tugboats, ships and pleasure craft are also bad, arguably worse, for the marine environment than are ferries. Why the decision to highlight ferries over these others?

Ferries, unlike other vessels, expose large numbers of passengers and crew to pollutants, so they do get our special attention. But it’s not fair to imply that we’re picking on ferries: we’ve mounted campaigns to highlight environmental problems with the cruise ship industry, the tanker industry, the personal watercraft industry, and much more.

If the WTA puts their money where their mouth is — in other words, really doing everything possible to protect the environment — we’d be thrilled to help them advance the cleanest possible ferry system in the world with the legislature.

The environmental movement overall is disproportionately white and financially well off. Can you represent working people and people of color if they’re not represented in your membership?

We acknowledge that there’s a problem. There aren’t enough people of color represented in the environmental movement. However, working people and people of color are disproportionately exposed to toxics across America, and that includes workers in the marine industry. We’ve got to do what we can to protect them from further environmental injustices.

But the marine environment isn’t an exclusive domain for the well to do. Most fishers in the Bay Area are low-income people of color. We must do whatever possible to keep the environment clean for them, and for everyone.