Northern Alameda County Group

The Northern Alameda County Group represents members from Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and San Leandro. We meet on the fourth Monday of the month at 7 pm at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St. in Oakland, in Conference Room A on Floor "M".

Group chair is Andy Katz at (510) 220-1122 or andykatz-at-cal.berkeley.edu

Conservation chair is Aaron Priven at (510)601-6463 or sclub-at-priven.com

The Group focuses on making our cities more livable so that people will prefer to live in them, rather than in housing projects in distant green lands. Some recent and continuing issues are:

• Oakland Uptown proposed park and streetscape;
• downtown Berkeley UC hotel complex;
• Oak to Ninth proposal for the Oakland Estuary;
• Berkeley Creek Restoration Study;
• Marin Avenue reconfiguration in Berkeley and Albany;
• promotion of multi-family housing in Alameda;
• air quality in West Oakland;
• Reuse of Oakland Army Base.

The group also has an Oakland Subcommittee. To confirm its meeting date and location, contact Joyce Roy at (510) 655-7508 or joyceroy-at-earthlink.net

Northern Alameda Group members visit Port of Oakland

Tours focus on learning how the Port of Oakland operates and what is contributing to air pollution

As part of a project to investigate and learn about air pollution problems facing the West Oakland community, several members of the Northern Alameda County (NAC) Conservation Committee toured the Port of Oakland in September. The first tour included explanation and commentary from Conservation Committee member Margaret Gordon. Besides explaining basic concepts of the Port's operations, Margaret highlighted problems facing the local community, especially in regard to air pollution. She gave us a few statistics:

• 150,000 trucks per day either arrive at or pass through West Oakland;
• About 25,000 residents in West Oakland are surrounded by three major highways (I-880, I-580, 24), a railroad terminus, and a shipping port;
• West Oakland residents are breathing 5 - 6 times more diesel soot ("particulates") than the average Californian.

Among the problems we investigated and hope eventually to help alleviate are:

• long truck waiting and idling on Middle Harbor Road (only about 10% of the Port's cargo pick-ups are currently done by appointment);
• lack of a clearly designated truck route that directs trucks away from local neighborhoods;
• lack of low-cost truck parking and rest-stop facilities that would facilitate truckers turning off their engines;
• lack of enforcement of anti-idling laws.

Approximately three weeks after the first tour, we took a second tour, this time on a small chartered bus, chaperoned by environmental and government-affairs staff from the Port of Oakland. Both Port representatives were friendly and patiently listened to all our questions. They described some of the Port's past and present projects to lower air pollution (upgrading of diesel-burning equipment to natural gas, and subsidies for replacing older trucks). They also took us to the Chappell Hayes observation platform in Shoreline Park, where we could view some shipping and cargo handling. We asked the Port representatives many questions about the issues mentioned above, and what their plans were for addressing them. They did their best to answer and were quite informative.

We learned a lot during these two tours: not only about air pollution, but also about the economic and political factors for new regulations to improve air quality in West Oakland. The Port employs thousands of local residents in the shipping and transportation industry (either directly or indirectly) and enjoys much political support from the mayor's office and the City Council. On the other hand, the Port also directly or indirectly is the cause for air pollution that negatively affects local quality of life.

Our primary focus in the coming months will be to identify and highlight areas where the Port or the city of Oakland is not complying with their stated goals of being good environmental stewards. Second, we would like to promote public awareness, either through hearings or workshops, to increase community pressure for attention to this important issue. Air-quality regulations need to be enforced, while local jobs are preserved. We hope to gain recognition for the Club as we direct community action, involvement, and outreach to these issues.

For more information, and to join us in working to improve West Oakland air quality, contact Kent Lewandowski at (510) 547-1207 or email kentlewan-at-yahoo.com

Kent Lewandowski