SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
petroleum coke
Oakland Ban on Dirty Coal Kills Plan for Massive Export Terminal
Port developers were quietly planning new port facility which would have shipped up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year, increasing national coal exports by 19 percent.
Jun 28, 2016
The City of Oakland, California, took a bold step towards protecting the health of its citizens and the global environment on Monday after city council members voted unanimously to ban the storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke in the city.
The ban, sought by local environmental groups for over a year, is expected to derail plans for a massive export terminal on the city-owned waterfront, the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT).
According to the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club, the port developers "have been quietly soliciting a partnership with four Utah counties to export up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year. The partnership would make Oakland the largest coal-export facility on the West Coast and increase national coal exports by a whopping 19 percent."
Community members opposed to the planned facility rallied in and outside Monday's overflow hearing. The San Jose Mercury News reports:
Hundreds of people filled the council chambers, spilling into overflow rooms, and offered several hours of commentary frequently punctuated by cheers, applause and outbursts from audience members on both sides of the issue. Following the vote, audience members burst into song, filling the chambers with a chorus singing, "No more coal in Oakland, I'm going to let it shine."
"This is what grassroots organizing looks like," Bruce Nilles, senior campaign director for Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, declared on social media.
The vote came three days after city staff released a long-anticipated report that recommended the ban based on its findings that OBOT "would pose a serious health risk to both workers at the planned terminal and West Oakland residents, who already suffer from high levels of asthma and other respiratory illnesses," the Mercury News reports.
The ordinance, which requires a second vote on July 19th to become finalized, was proposed by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilman Dan Kalb, who argued that such projects pollute the air and pose serious risks to workers and community members. While the new rule specifically pertains to future projects, the council voted unanimously on a resolution to apply the ordinance to OBOT.
The proposed terminal had sparked a fierce local debate, which developers and other project supporters framed as a choice between local jobs and the environment.
Following the vote, councilmember Rebecca Kaplan deemed it "a proud day for democracy."
"I think this vote proves that we understand the importance of protecting the health and safety of our community," Kaplan said. "It also shows that we were able to push back against the lies from the industry that were so deceptive."
"When I heard about the possibility of coal coming through this port, I just had a really bad feeling come over me," said Derrick Muhammad, an International Longshore Workers Union representative. "Oakland families are already worried about asthma and other sickness because of highways and port activities. It's not right to ask them to take on the worry and risk of nine million tons of coal passing through their neighborhoods on trains each year."
"Allowing coal exports through Oakland not only harms the community and the environment but is also inconsistent with the progressive climate goals set by the City of Oakland and the State of California," added Irene Gutierrez, an attorney with Earthjustice.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Midwest Battlecry Goes Up Against Tar Sands as Thousands March in St. Paul
'Increasing the amount of toxic tar sands crude flowing into this region is not in keeping with a much needed transition to clean energy. Rejecting tar sands means fighting for clean water, clean energy, and a safer climate. There is simply no place for dirty oil in America's future.'
Jun 06, 2015
With the marching crowd stretching "as far as the eye can see" in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota on Saturday, thousands of people from across the Midwest came together to protest the construction of new pipelines and other infrastructure projects which they say will deliver only harmful climate impacts for the planet and irreparable destruction to the region, not the jobs and energy security promised by big oil companies and their political backers.
Under the social media tag of #StopTarSands, Saturday's Tar Sands Resistance March was sponsored by dozens of groups, including national and local environmental organizations, Indigenous communities, and various social justice groups who all agree it will take a unified front to fight back against the pipeline companies and fossil fuel interests pushing for expanded development of tar sands, shale oil, and gas deposits, and other forms of extreme energy in the region.
In a statement, the coalition behind the march explained that the climate justice movement in the U.S. and Canada has far more targets to fight than just the Keystone XL pipeline.
"It's not just Keystone XL. Big Oil is trying to build and expand an enormous network of tar sands pipelines -- some even bigger than Keystone XL -- from Canada into the Great Lakes region. These tar sands pipelines, including the Alberta Clipper, along with crude oil trains and tankers, pose a growing risk to the Great Lakes, our rivers, our communities, and our climate," the statement said.
"The movement promoting clean energy prosperity in place of polluting fossil fuels is growing and being heard in every corner of the country," said Terry Houle, co-chair of the Sierra Club's Northstar Chapter, which helped organize the event. The march, said Houle, "picks up where last year's Peoples' Climate March in New York left off -- people from all walks of life are calling on the Administration to keep dirty fuels in the ground for the sake of clean air, clean water, and a stable climate."
According to NRDC's Anthony Swift, "Increasing the amount of toxic tar sands crude flowing into this region is not in keeping with a much-needed transition to clean energy. Rejecting tar sands means fighting for clean water, clean energy, and a safer climate. There is simply no place for dirty oil in America's future."
Billed as the biggest anti-tar sands march and rally the Midwest has ever seen, Aaron Mair, board president of Sierra Club, trumpeted the coalition's diversity and unwavering commitment as essential to its ultimate success against the pending Sandpiper pipeline and similar projects.
"With climate disruption, we face the greatest environmental challenge of all time," Mair wrote in a blog post ahead of the march. "To meet it, we'll need to change almost everything about how our country works. And to do that, we're going to need everyone. It's a big job, but it's not impossible. We're already gaining steam. We're building a strong, authentic movement to confront climate disruption and to galvanize humanity's response -- and in so doing, we can shift the world."
And Tom Goldtooth, head of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said this week, "The frontline communities are strengthening the resistance. They're concerned, and we are linking up the pipeline resisters in Canada, northern Minnesota, out east and more."
To help explain why the Mideast region has become such an important battleground for the climate fight both in the U.S. and Canada, the organizers behind the Tar Sands Resistance March offered these reasons:
- The Midwest is a primary import zone for dirty oil from Canada. Refineries in the Midwest get virtually all of their imported oil via pipeline from Canada. The diluted bitumen transported from Canada that arrives in U.S. refineries is more corrosive than conventional crude oils and may lead to increased risk of accidents. These refineries also pose a significant risk to the climate. Refining tar sands oil emits higher levels of greenhouse gases, as such more Imports of tar sands will add to U.S. emissions.
- Various efforts are being made to expand tar sand pipelines in the Midwest to process more tar sand from Canada. Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline company responsible, is using illegal schemes to double the capacity of its Alberta Clipper tar sands (aka line 67), with no public notice and also by bypassing Presidential permit process. This illegal expansion would put Alberta Clipper on par with the Keystone XL pipeline and significantly increase the amount of toxic, highly polluting tar sands crude being moved into the U.S. We must stop this from happening.
- Tar sands spills are also of major concern. In 2010, more than 800,000 gallons of tar sands was spilled into the Kalamazoo River, causing hundreds of residents to be hospitalized from adverse health effects, including cardiovascular, dermal, gastrointestinal, neurological, ocular, renal, and respiratory. Cleanup efforts are still ongoing.
- Petroleum coke, a byproduct of tar sands that has resemblances of coal and shares many of coal's physical qualities, including similar chemical composition, has been linked to a number of other health problems, including developmental and cardiovascular impacts. This is threatening communities like Chicago and Detroit. In Chicago's southeast side, massive piles of petroleum coke are found near homes, leading to black dust clouds entering the surrounding air and exposing vulnerable residents to an array of health impacts.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
The rally takes place one day after Minnesota regulators endorsed the $2.6 billion Sandpiper pipeline that would carry North Dakota crude oil from the Bakken to Superior, Wis., where pipeline owner Enbridge Energy operates an oil terminal tied to other pipelines supplying refineries in the East and Midwest.
Enbridge, a Calgary-based energy company that operates the world's longest petroleum pipeline network, owns six pipelines that cross Minnesota, where its operations date back to the 1950s.
Despite the drop in oil prices, Enbridge has said it is moving ahead with $44 billion in investments, including two other crude oil pipeline projects in Minnesota. Those projects -- a line expansion and a line replacement -- carry Canadian oil across Minnesota to Superior, including the heavy crude extracted from Alberta's tar sands.
On Twitter:
\u201cTar sands fighters fill the streets of St. Paul as far as the eye can see! #StopTarSands\u201d— Sierra Club (@Sierra Club) 1433613813
\u201cWe're here in the heartland today to send a clear message: it's time to #StopTarSands!\u201d— 350 dot org (@350 dot org) 1433609326
\u201cDanza Azteca providing song and dance to start this march! #StopTarSands #KeepItInTheGround\u201d— Indigenous Environmental Network (@Indigenous Environmental Network) 1433611150
\u201cWe are 5000 strong! #stoptarsands\u201d— 350 Wisconsin (@350 Wisconsin) 1433615829
\u201cStop the @Enbridge pipeline invasion. #StopTarSands #BeyondOil\u201d— Sierra Club (@Sierra Club) 1433608120
Follow #StopTarSands:
Keep ReadingShow Less
Chicago-Style Petcoke Politics
New rules expected to eliminate giant mounds of polluting dust might actually make the problem worse. Time for a rewrite.
Apr 05, 2014
On windy days in the Windy City (which happen a lot, as you might imagine), an oily dust wafts into the air and settles on rooftops, patio furniture, and playgrounds all across Chicago's Southeast Side. When wiped away, the dust leaves a dark smear.
This is not a natural phenomenon. The residue comes from petroleum coke, or petcoke, a byproduct of refined oil (particularly tar sands oil) that energy companies like KCBX, owned by the notorious Koch brothers, have been heaping along the Calumet River. To see what it looks like and why residents are concerned, check out this jaw-dropping video from Vice News:
Toxic Waste in the Windy City: PetcokeSubscribe to VICE News here: https://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE-News Last fall, black dust began to blow through residential ...
Some of the petcoke is coming from the nearby BP oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, where the company just finished an overhaul that will allow the facility to process more tar sands crude shipped down from Canada. The expansion is expected to triple--yes, triple--the amount of petcoke the refinery produces.
Residents aren't happy about the huge polluting piles in their midst, which are more than just ugly; the oily dust spreading through the city's Southeast neighborhoods presents significant health concerns. Exposure to the dust can cause coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath, while also aggravating respiratory conditions like asthma. (And those are just the health problems that officials and the industry are willing to acknowledge; residents complain of quite a deal more.)
"I live half a mile from the petcoke piles, and they're half a mile from my daughter's school. Nine hundred kids go there ... you have to consider all those kids," said Olga Bautista, a city resident with two small children, at a hearing earlier this week to consider new city rules that would regulate the petcoke piles.
The outcry against petcoke has grown so strong that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been pushed into action, with talk of forcing out the existing piles and outlawing new ones with costly regulations. But when those regulations were presented for a hearing Tuesday, they lacked teeth; instead, the city unveiled an ordinance that the Chicago Tribune says "opens the door for greater use of the high-sulfur, high-carbon refinery byproduct in the city."
That's certainly not what residents and advocates were expecting and hoping for, especially after several months working with city officials to craft tougher safeguards. "We want a ban. We want it out of there," says Peggy Salazar, a member of the city's Southeast Environmental Task Force.
But a complete ban wouldn't hold up in court, according to the city's legal department. The ordinance under review would prevent storage areas from expanding, but it would allow companies that use petcoke and coal for manufacturing to store and burn it as fuel, potentially increasing the places where the piles can ... well, pile up. As Henry Henderson, Chicago's former environmental commissioner and the Midwest director of NRDC (which publishes OnEarth), explained: "Big facilities that burn the stuff, like cement manufacturers and dirty energy producers, are free to open and expand across many city districts."
NRDC wants amendments to the ordinance that would "ensure that communities will not become concentrated coke and coal centers," says attorney Meleah Geertsma. Other residents and advocates also voiced displeasure with the proposed ordinance, forcing the committee to postpone a vote until next month. In the meantime, petcoke opponents will be pushing for stronger safeguards, planning a protest march, and hoping for a forecast without any wind.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular