Trump to partially fund Oakland coal terminal
Invoking war powers under the Defense Production Act, President Donald Trump today announced a $75 million grant to help build Phil Tagami’s “Beautiful, Clean Coal” terminal in West Oakland. This grant covers only a fraction of the $350-400 million needed to build what Trump described as a “massive new export terminal.”
The grant is part of a $700 million package of giveaways to the coal industry that includes financing for new coal-fired power plants in Alaska and West Virginia, and support for coal plants in 10 states that voted for Trump. As an article by The Guardian explains, the Defense Production Act is “a cold-war era statute used to accelerate American industrial output in times of national need.”
“As a result of the $700m investment that I’m announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coal mines, a tremendous number, and build two new coal plants, and one massive new export terminal,” Trump boasted at the press conference.
The grant rests on the absurd premise that building a massive coal export terminal in Oakland to ship Utah and Wyoming coal to Asian markets addresses a national defense emergency. On the contrary, shipping coal through Oakland would exacerbate the real emergencies of global warming and public health in vulnerable communities along the Union Pacific tracks that would bring the coal to Oakland.
If the terminal is built, coal dust and diesel exhaust will spew from multiple mile-long coal trains passing through our communities each day.
But this nightmare project of local developer Phil Tagami, the coal industry, and Donald Trump can be derailed. No Coal in Oakland and our many allies in the Keep Coal Out Coalition are organizing grassroots resistance. This an “all hands on deck” moment. Please join a community meeting on Thursday June 25th 7-8:30 pm at La Peña (3105 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley) to further our demand for action by state and local political and regulatory bodies to protect our communities.
No Coal in Oakland maintains an evolving list of what you can do to help stop this dystopian project.
CBS coverage of today’s development can be viewed on YouTube.
Image credit: Coal Train Wreck, Waterloo, IN, March 2010, by rsteup via Flickr, Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0