Environment

Opinion: Coal Terminal Would Place Oakland on the Wrong Side of History

Published

9 years ago

January 8, 2016

By Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge

Local businessmen Phil Tagami, Omar Benjamin and Jerry Bridges are on the wrong side of history as they pursue the construction of a coal export terminal at the Oakland Global Trade and Logistics Center.

Oakland Global is the modern new cargo handling facility envisioned for the old Oakland Army Base, and few ever imagined that it might support the fossil fuel industry.

Oakland owns the property, but in its zeal to close a deal for development, the city gave sweeping authority over business activities there to Master Developer Tagami, in exchange for a fixed annual income.

Now Tagami says he has the right to generate those lease payments by any means possible, including building facilities for a failing industry like coal.

There is a national sea change in attitude on fossil fuels, as demonstrated by U.S. leadership at the recent Paris COP21 conference and ongoing public statements against coal by Gov. Brown and Mayor Libby Schaaf.

One wonders why the developer would be willing to burn political capital for a project with near universal opposition.

The answer is as old as capitalism itself, money. Tagami’s development company California Capital Investment Group (CCIG) has never had deep enough pockets for a project of the scale and complexity of Oakland Global.

The Port of Oakland has broken off negotiations with CCIG on numerous occasions for Port projects because Tagami couldn’t produce adequate financial statements.

To fill that void Tagami has brought in a series of larger development partners, including ProLogis, one of the largest logistics developers in the world.

But Prologis didn’t sign on to underwrite the entire project, only to build their own small parcel in what is called the Central Gateway. In fact, Tagami stands to make millions of dollars as overall landlord of Oakland Global for the next 66 years – if he can hold on to the deal he struck.

But despite having too much responsibility with too little resources, Tagimi’s deal shares the City’s funding woes. Financial complications abound in the deal, starting with the need to match a state transportation grant of $242 million.

With a private investment estimated at $250 million, a loose bulk commodities terminal, as facilities handling grain, gravel, ore or coal are called, would by itself cover the entire matching funds requirement.

However, there are political solutions that don’t require selling out to fossil fuel development.

CCIG hasn’t got that kind of money or the apparent business ties to get it. Enter Bridges, Benjamin, and complex links to community development money in Utah. If the Federal Department of the Interior and the State of Utah were to allow it, $53 million of mining lease rebates intended to help working communities in Utah coal mining towns could instead be used to increase health impacts on communities all along the rail line from Utah to Oakland.

Tagami, Bridges and Benjamin can then use this bucket of public money to leverage Wall Street investments in their get-rich scheme.

According to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, former Port of Oakland Executive Director Bridges has been shopping concepts for a coal export terminal somewhere in the country ever since he left his job as chief of the Virginia Port Authority.

That Port Authority rejected the coal idea, as did a port city in Florida. A very similar coal project was rejected in Oregon just last year, but Bridges and Benjamin are now in Oakland selling something no one else wants.

Even longshore workers, who are guaranteed the few potential jobs that a coal terminal would provide, have rejected the proposal for health and safety reasons.

Things have changed. Oakland no longer has to accept reject ideas. We’re not that broke any more. The Oakland economic Renaissance may bring its own problems of equity and opportunity, but we’re no longer holding out the begging-bowl to profiteers.

Oakland is an economic attraction on its way to being a new regional powerhouse. Emerging green tech industries don’t want to share the streets with dusty 19^th Century dinosaurs like fossil fuel.

The Port of Oakland has signed lucrative deals to develop bulk grain and frozen food export facilities. Coal has no place in their business mix.

The amazing thing about this coal proposal is how it has galvanized opposition between groups in the region who don’t always see eye-to-eye: Big environmental groups, local grassroots coalitions, organized labor and the faith community all say we must put the health and safety of our communities ahead of money.

Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge are co-directors of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP).

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City Government

San Pablo Appoints New Economic Development and Housing Manager

Kieron Slaughter has been appointed as the economic development & housing manager for the City of San Pablo. Since 2017, Slaughter has served as chief strategic officer for economic innovation in the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development. Previously, he served in a 2.5-year appointment in the Pacific West Region as one of 10 Urban Fellows in the United States National Park Service.

Published

12 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Kieron Slaughter. Photo courtesy of the City of San Pablo

The Richmond Standard

Kieron Slaughter has been appointed as the economic development & housing manager for the City of San Pablo.

Since 2017, Slaughter has served as chief strategic officer for economic innovation in the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development. Previously, he served in a 2.5-year appointment in the Pacific West Region as one of 10 Urban Fellows in the United States National Park Service.

Before that he was an associate planner in the City of Richmond’s Planning and Building Services Department from 2007-2015.

San Pablo City Manager Matt Rodriguez lauded Slaughter’s extensive experience in economic development, housing and planning, saying he will add a “valuable perspective to the City Manager’s Office.”

Slaughter, a Berkeley resident, will start in his new role on Nov. 12, with a base annual salary of $164,928, according to the City of San Pablo.

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Bay Area

Alameda County Judge Blasts Defendants Over Delay in West Oakland Fire Trial

Judge Kimberly Lowell excoriated the RadiusRecycling/SchnitzerSteel defendants in court for causing delays in prosecuting this case. Since the defendants first appeared in court on July 23, they have obtained three extensions of the arraignment date.

Published

23 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Criminal charges announced this week are related to the August 2023 scrap metal fire at Radius Recycling Inc., formerly Schnitzer Steel. Photo courtesy of Oaklandside.

Special to The Post

District Attorney Pamela Price announced that a hearing was held on October 30 in the criminal prosecution of the Radius Recycling/Schnitzer Steel involving a fire at the West Oakland facility on Aug. 9-10, 2023.

The Alameda County criminal Grand Jury indicted radius Recycling and two of its corporate managers in June 2024.

The court clarified that the defendants will not receive more extensions on their arraignment and plea.

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price agreed with the court that defendants should not get preferential treatment. Price and her team appreciated the court for clarifying that future delays by Radius will not be tolerated.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) public data shows that during and after the fire, the smoke plume traveled across Alameda County with high levels of PM 2.5 (Particulate Matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter) detected around Laney College in Oakland, Livermore, Pleasanton, and West Oakland.

PM2.5 is particularly harmful to infants and children, the elderly, and people with asthma or heart disease.

“This fire posed a great health hazard to the people of Alameda County,” said Price. “High, short-term exposures to a toxic smoke plume have been shown to cause significant danger to human health.

“Additionally, in this case, Oakland firefighters battled the blaze under extremely dangerous conditions for 15 hours with assistance from a San Francisco Fire Department fireboat and a fireboat from the City of Alameda Fire Department,” Price observed.

The team prosecuting the case from the DA’s Consumer Justice Bureau looks forward to resolving any future motions and having the defendants arraigned in court on Dec. 9.

The media relations office of the Alameda County District Attorney’s office is the source of this report.

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Community

Advanced Conductors Provide Path for Grid Expansion

Utility companies in the United States could double electric transmission capacity by 2035 by replacing existing transmission lines with those made from advanced materials, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Published

6 days ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy UC Berkeley News.

By Matthew Burciaga

UC Berkeley News

Led by Duncan Callaway, professor and chair of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), and Amol Phadke, an affiliate and senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy, the first-of-its-kind study details a faster and more cost-effective way to expand the grid and connect the more than 1,200 gigawatts of renewable energy projects awaiting approval. The analysis was first published last December as a working paper by the Energy Institute at Haas and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Heatmap News, and other news outlets.

“Expanding transmission capacity is critical to decarbonization, and we sought to study ways to build it faster and cheaper,” said Callaway.

It currently takes 10 to 15 years to build a new power line and the U.S. is building transmission lines at a lower rate than it was in the past decade. Without sufficient capacity, renewable energy projects often sit in limbo for years as transmission operators study what upgrades—if any—are needed to accommodate the increased loads.

The authors modeled various scenarios to determine if replacing existing transmission conductors with those made with advanced composite-core materials—a process known as reconductoring—could provide a pathway to faster grid expansion.

Several reconductoring projects have been initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands, and utility companies in the U.S. have used the material to string transmission lines across wide spans like river crossings. That technology, however, has not made its way to the majority of overhead power lines that feed residential and commercial customers.

“As we learned more about the technology, we realized that no one had done the detailed modeling needed to understand the technology’s potential for large-scale transmission capacity increases,” said Phadke.

Based on the authors’ projections, it is cheaper—and quicker—for utility companies to replace the 53,000 existing transmission lines with advanced composite-core materials than it is to build entirely new transmission lines.

They assert that doing so would reduce wholesale electricity costs by 3% to 4% on average—translating to $85 billion in system cost savings by 2035 and $180 billion by 2050.

“The level of interest we’ve received from federal and state agencies, transmission companies and utilities is extremely encouraging, and since our initial report, the Department of Energy has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to reconductoring projects,” said co-author Emilia Chojkiewicz, a PhD student in ERG and an affiliate of the Goldman School of Public Policy. “We are looking forward to learning about these projects as they unfold.”

Additional co-authors include Nikit Abhyankar and Umed Paliwal, affiliates at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and Casey Baker and Ric O’Connell of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive technical grid expertise to policy makers and advocates.