The Port of Oakland will quickly resolve whether or not to permit an open-air rock and gravel storage facility on land subsequent to the West Oakland group.
The Port of Oakland will quickly resolve whether or not to permit an open-air rock-and-gravel storage facility on land subsequent to the West Oakland group. The port’s operations contribute considerably to air air pollution. West Oakland residents will endure even worse air high quality if this undertaking is accepted as proposed.
As residents who've lengthy engaged with port officers to handle all kinds of planning and operational points, now we have by no means been extra involved. Our neighbors endure dramatically larger charges of respiratory and heart problems, most cancers and untimely demise than discovered in additional prosperous elements of Oakland. A 2018 research that used localized information — all the way down to particular streets — confirmed aged residents dwelling in areas of West Oakland with the very best concentrations of air air pollution had been 40% extra more likely to endure a coronary heart assault or stroke than those that lived in much less polluted elements of the neighborhood.
Welcoming one other polluting tenant is precisely the incorrect factor for the port to do.
In 2017, our environmental justice group, West Oakland Environmental Indicators Undertaking, introduced a grievance beneath Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in opposition to the port for its longstanding sample of environmentally racist practices. In response, the port agreed to implement a public engagement plan that was supposed to scale back its impacts on our neighborhood. However that effort has not created significant change within the port’s angle or actions.
Eagle Rock Aggregates approached the port for permission to create an enormous open-air mixture storage facility, the place big piles of sand and rock would blow small particulates into the air we breathe. The port is planning to permit huge diesel ships to idle on the terminal, spewing pollution, as an alternative of requiring cleaner engines and onshore energy. The mixture facility would require eliminating 18 acres of truck parking. Similar to the tremendous particles that may quickly be blowing our approach, these vehicles will enhance visitors, spew exhaust and congest our streets as they battle to park.
Port officers have been notified not simply by group teams like ours but additionally by the California Lawyer Common’s Workplace, the Bay Space Air High quality Administration District and the California Air Sources Board that the environmental research for this undertaking are fatally flawed. However, the port has signaled it plans to approve the undertaking.
There are plenty of issues the Port of Oakland could possibly be doing proper now to enhance air high quality. Simply take a look at the Port of San Diego, which lately adopted an aggressive clean-air technique to achieve 100% zero-emissions vehicles and cargo-handling gear by 2030. On the Port of Lengthy Seashore, officers are actively planning for a zero-emissions fleet of vehicles and different gear by 2035. The Port of Oakland needs to be taking related actions to wash up its act, however as an alternative it stalls with half-measures and continues polluting.
For West Oakland residents, the time to cease kicking the can down the street was yesterday. We’re achieved with the port’s lip service and lack of motion.
If the Eagle Rock undertaking strikes ahead, it would imply greater than one other spherical of damaged guarantees to at present’s West Oakland residents. Our kids and our grandchildren shall be saddled with poorer air high quality and better charges of illness than practically anybody else within the state.
It’s time for the Port of Oakland to start out doing the exhausting work required in order that Oakland can reap the financial advantages of an energetic port with out persevering with to overburden its most weak residents with air air pollution. Say no to the Eagle Rock Mixture Terminal undertaking. The port has a possibility to be a greater neighbor. It ought to take it.
Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge are co-directors of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Undertaking, a resident-led, community-based environmental justice group devoted to reaching wholesome houses, wholesome jobs and wholesome neighborhoods.