Richmond City Council urges strict regulation of coal facilities by the Bay Area Air District

  • Aerial view of Richmond, CA, June 2021. Image credit: Dicklyon, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0.

This evening the Richmond City Council unanimously passed a resolution “opposing facilities that engage in handling and storage of coal and petcoke in the San Francisco Bay region and urging stringent regulation of such facilities by the Bay Area Air District.”

The measure adopted by the Richmond City Council can be found (still in draft form as of this evening) on pub-richmond.escribemeetings.com.

The resolution “urges the Air District to ensure that any air permit it issues to the OBOT facility fully protects Oakland and other Bay area residents from exposure to dangerous coal and petcoke emissions” and to “to perform a comprehensive review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) of all potentially significant environmental impacts from the terminal.”

No review has ever been undertaken to examine the environmental impacts of shipping coal through a bulk terminal in West Oakland. The City of Richmond’s resolution expressed strong support for California’s Assembly Bill 40, which would require an Environmental Impact Review (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

During tonight’s public comment prior to the council’s vote on the consent calendar, speakers in favor of the resolution opposing coal in the SF Bay Area included Aaron Isherwood and Ashia Ajani of Sierra Club; 350 Bay Area’s Jack Fleck on behalf of the Keep Coal Out of the East Bay coalition (of which No Coal in Oakland is a member); and former Oakland City Councilmember Dan Kalb. No speakers opposed the resolution.

Residents of Richmond and their allies engaged in a recent, two-year battle against shipment of coal through the Levin Terminal in their own city, winning a victory in 2020 when the City Council voted to ban storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke, phasing out coal shipment through the Levin Terminal over a three-year period. The City Council’s ordinance was challenged by fossil fuel interests, who filed five lawsuits in an effort to overturn it. In the end, the fossil fuel plaintiffs dropped their fight against the ban in exchange for a delay in enforcement. As a result, coal shipment through Richmond will end by December 31, 2026.

Way to go, Richmond! The campaign against coal in the East Bay looks forward to many more of our cities taking a stand against developers and the coal interests who seek to make a “sacrifice zone” of our waterfront, from Martinez, to Richmond, and south to West Oakland.

 

 

Image: Aerial view of the City of Richmond, CA by Dicklyon, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0.