I mentioned in my last article that Clean Energy recently opened the World's Largest Natural Gas Truck Station. You need to stop by and see this impressive accomplishment on your next visit to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The station is located at the intersection of Anaheim Street and I Street in the City of Los Angeles about 0.7 miles west of the 710 Freeway.

The station is a good example of a public-private partnership. The Ports selected Clean Energy to develop the station after a competitive selection process. The Ports jointly own the property and serve as landlords. Clean Energy is the developer and operator of the station. The station occupies a 2.9 acre site. The project involves two phases of which Phase 1 is complete. Phase 1 consists of two LNG storage tanks that hold 25,000 gallons of LNG each. There are six fueling lanes with 6 LNG dispensers and 2 CNG dispensers. Three of the LNG dispensers deliver "Blue LNG" that is optimized for the Westport compression ignition HPDI engines. The other three dispensers deliver "Green LNG" that is optimized for the Cummins-Westport spark ignited engines. CNG dispensers are located on two of the fueling lanes. The fueling lanes are shaded by a big beautiful canopy. Truck drivers are even provided with private restrooms. Phase 2 will deploy two additional 25,000 gallon tanks to give total storage of 100,000 gallons plus four additional fueling lanes.

Protecting water quality is important to the Ports as is cleaning the air. The entire station site drains to a storm water retention pond. For those few times a year when it rains in southern California, all of the storm water is collected. The water is then cleansed through a series of filtration systems before being released to the storm drain.

People I meet are often interested in the challenges of permitting an LNG truck station. We were fortunate that the permitting process with the City of Los Angeles went smoothly. In fact, permitting wasn't really the challenge with this project. The biggest obstacle we faced involved creating a new property parcel map which has nothing to do with building an LNG station. The parcel map hurdle was left over from prior uses of the property. I gained new respect for developers that have the fortitude to go through the parcel map process in order to develop their projects. We made it through with a lot of help from folks at the Port of Long Beach Real Estate Department and at the City of Los Angeles. Completing the parcel map was even celebrated with a Parcel Map Cake baked by the Port of Long Beach. I just hope our next project doesn't involve a parcel map.