OAKLAND — California’s prime prosecutor has joined the authorized combat towards a port undertaking that environmentalists say would worsen West Oakland’s already dangerous air air pollution.
Lawyer Normal Rob Bonta filed a petition with the court docket final week towards Port of Oakland officers and a supplies firm, Eagle Rock Aggregates, which plans to construct a plant on 18 acres of port land that might retailer giant quantities of sand and gravel within the open air.
The plant is “lower than a mile away and upwind from West Oakland, a neighborhood that has for many years skilled disproportionate air pollution impacts and associated hostile well being outcomes from numerous sources, together with from Respondents’ operations,” Bonta’s petition states.
The corporate acquired approval from the Port of Oakland Board of Commissioners earlier this 12 months, however each have been promptly sued by a neighborhood environmentalist group over considerations the plant would depart West Oakland residents weak to respiratory mud and sand particles that blow within the wind.
The lawyer basic’s petition is the newest signal that California regulators are taking a tougher take a look at industries equivalent to transport, building and oil to verify tasks take into consideration analysis that reveals how air air pollution immediately poses well being hazards and untimely deaths.
West Oakland is surrounded by the port, freeways, rail and different industries, and diesel particulates, auto emissions and different poisonous hazards that pose a big well being danger for residents. Emergency room visits or hospitalizations for bronchial asthma are two occasions greater there than the remainder of Alameda County, in response to county well being officers.
Bonta referred to as on port officers to revise their plans so these harms are curbed, saying in an announcement the terminal “will solely add to (residents’) air pollution burden, leading to shorter life spans, extra journeys to the emergency room, and persistent sickness.”
Eagle Rock didn't reply to a request for remark. A spokeswoman for the Port of Oakland additionally declined to touch upon the lawsuits, saying solely in an announcement that port officers “welcome additional discussions” on the subject with the lawyer basic’s workplace.
Port officers earlier this 12 months defended the undertaking, noting that electrical vans and conveyor belts could be used to move the supplies, a wash station could be put in and recycled water used to cut back mud, although they acknowledged that they couldn't mitigate all impacts.
“It might not be attainable to fulfill the Port objectives and function the proposed undertaking whereas additionally avoiding all important impacts,” port employees wrote in a memo after describing the optimistic affect on jobs and income.
Different regional companies — the Bay Space Air High quality Administration District and San Francisco Bay Conservation and Improvement Fee — have beforehand questioned the undertaking in public, urging the port to do extra to cut back the plant’s impacts.
However the state’s involvement will now formally lend the native advocacy group, West Oakland Environmental Indicators Mission, extra energy to problem Eagle Rock Aggregates’ environmental evaluation.
It’s about time, stated the group’s govt director, Margaret Gordon. The group has been calling on regulatory companies for over three a long time to offer West Oakland’s air high quality a more in-depth look.
Gordon says there’s systemic failure within the metropolis to handle the neighborhood’s environmental woes, primarily as a result of the board lacks representatives who're delicate to the well being points that have an effect on West Oakland residents.
“If that (choice) course of doesn’t embrace individuals who perceive the well being of West Oakland, then based mostly on this enterprise mannequin on the Port of Oakland, that makes a distinction for why this geographic neighborhood is so related to air air pollution,” Gordon stated.
The port has historically prioritized container shipments of products over these of uncooked supplies. However Eagle Rock promised to function at a big scale, receiving 2.5 million tons of building supplies on 48 ocean-going vessels a 12 months.
The plan is predicted to generate between $43 million and $60 million in earnings over a 12-year lease, and port commissioners could have choices down the road to increase it for 15 extra years.
Gordon, a West Oakland native, stated she has spent her entire life watching her neighborhood undergo from close by environmental harms, together with “what’s popping out the pipes, the ships, trains, vans, cargo-handling gear and the three freeways” surrounding the neighborhood.
“We've pushed the powers that be, the establishments on the port, to start out being held accountable for what’s coming off their websites,” she stated.