A majority of the candidates running for Oakland City Council in November’s election have pledged their opposition to coal (and are listed below). These pledges matter deeply to Oaklanders, most especially the West Oakland community adjacent to the long-proposed – and long-resisted – coal terminal developers aim to build at the foot of the Bay Bridge. The Oakland City Council faces a major change of personnel in the new year.   Dan Kalb and Rebecca Kaplan, who were staunch advocates for the coal ban, are not seeking re-election.  With Treva Reid also not running, there will be at least three new council members out of eight, and possibly as ...

On August 27, the City of Oakland filed its opening brief in its appeal of Superior Court Judge Noël Wise’s ruling requiring the City to give Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT) another 2½ years to begin construction of a marine export terminal on the West Oakland waterfront. The City terminated the developers’ lease in 2018 for failure to meet an August 2018 construction deadline set out in the lease. The developers blamed their failure on unforeseeable roadblocks (so-called “force majeure”) the City placed in their way, most importantly the passage in 2016 of a ban on storage and handling of coal in Oakland, including at the West ...