Pittsburg, CA is a small city across the Bay and up the Sacramento River from the San Francisco. (Truth to tell, despite living in the area, until recently I couldn't have even located Pittsburg on a map.) But of a sudden, like its on-the-bay neighbor Richmond, CA, it finds itself in a struggle against some of the biggest powers on Earth - oil companies and insatiable thirst for profit.
Richmond, CA has duked it out with mega-corporation Chevron over its refinery many times, and is now attempting to take on Wall Street over foreclosures. Pittsburg has found itself having to take on Big Oil over the rail transport of dangerous cargo from North Dakota through the city and into a depot for shipment by pipeline to local refineries.
A company called WesPac Energy wants to start bringing the substance, known as Bakken shale oil, to the Delta town by rail and to store it there before shipping it to the Bay Area's five refineries via pipeline...
"These trains are like bombs on railroad tracks. When they derail, they explode," said protester Lyana Monterrey outside a city council hearing on the issue Tuesday night.
At least 13 killed, 50 still missing after Canadian oil train blast forces town evacuation
The struggle in Pittsburg began in August of 2013.
WesPac had been developing its proposal with the Pittsburg planning department for two years, but it wasnt until a sunny Sunday in August 2013 that anyone really knew about it.
... longtime Pittsburg resident Lyana Monterrey happened upon a tiny notice in the Contra Costa Times for a public hearing on an environmental impact report. Alarmed at the tremendous risks and dangers... Lyana knocked on her neighbor Kalli Graham's door to tell her about the story she had read. Kalli and Lyana immediately started going door-to-door to alert their neighbors of WesPac's plans. Neither of them had participated in community organizing before. They attended the city hearing the following day, met a few other concerned residents, and decided to take action.
And that grew into a movement:
... we've gathered over 4,000 petition signatures, organized a riveting Toxic Tour of the city's heavy industrial sites, and conducted a bucket brigade air monitoring project that reveals striking levels of pollution in the community. We've flooded downtown Pittsburg with lawn signs, mobilized a January 11 march and rally that brought out over 300 residents, and organized a rally that packed Tuesday's City Council meeting.
Community leaders are meeting with city officials, training and empowering volunteers, and generating dozens of media hits. We're gearing up to come out in full force as the Pittsburg Planning Commission and City Council vote on the project in coming months.
Then lighting struck. Kamala Harris, The Attorney General of California, intervened,
weighing in on the inadequacy of the environment report attached to the project.
An environmental report on a proposed oil storage and transfer facility in Pittsburg fails to disclose an array of potential impacts on neighboring communities as well as elsewhere in the Bay Area, according to an 11-page letter from the office of state Attorney General Kamala Harris...
According to the letter... the draft report does not adequately disclose and analyze impacts on local air quality and does not address the risk of accidents that could result from moving and storing new varieties of crude oil, among other objections.
Even if Pittsburg wins its battle - and it seems like it just might with the Attorney General holding to a position that many activists themselves have been proclaiming -
the war is just beginning.
The WesPac project is only one of 34 crude-by-rail terminals being proposed throughout the US today, along with countless pipelines, tank farms, and marine terminals. And despite the rapid increase in spills and accidents, the oil expansion rush continues. These terminals represent the unwavering haste of the oil industry to chase profit, regardless of the cost...
Countless other towns will need such front line leadership and committed organizing to confront the onslaught of oil proposals throughout the US.
With the Keystone pipeline on the cusp of being approved, stopping Big Oil and its associates from doing yet more damage - to the globe and to individual municipalities - takes on all the more importance. A clean victory in Pittsburg will be a signal for resistance across the country, and a way forward without fossil fuel dependence:
Pittsburg resident... Lisa Graham told the city's political leadership that she is working with a solar developer on a possible counter-proposal for the WesPac project site... Pittsburg residents are already envisioning a clean energy future for their city. Perhaps in a few years, the view from Highway 4 will glimmer with solar panels instead of power plants. Perhaps Pittsburg will become a model for community-driven, environmentally just power.
Power for the people.
