Two dozen East Oakland residents gathered recently in a small building in Oakland’s Castlemont neighborhood. Another 20 people, a mix of community members, government officials, and nonprofit leaders joined via Zoom. They gathered to create what is known as a community emissions reduction plan, a community-led, long-term strategy to reduce harmful pollution emissions in the area.
Over two hours the group discussed their concerns and used games and workshops to identify shared interests. They zeroed in on illegal dumping, truck traffic, and dust as some of the major issues they’d like to see addressed. As they chatted, officials from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, a regional government agency charged with keeping the air clean, and non-profit leaders from environmental and social justice groups listened in, taking notes and helping facilitate.
At the end of the meeting, the conversation transitioned into familiar territory, according to Carly Cabral, East Oakland clean air project coordinator for Communities for a Better Environment, a non-profit group focused on environmental justice. Community members are happy to talk about plans for the future, but they want to see action now. Several East Oakland residents asked why the process is so slow, or when they will see action.
“Meeting after meeting, I’ve been feeling it get more and more tense,” said Cabral, whose group is co-leading the project alongside the air district.
East Oakland has been heavily burdened by air pollution since industry, freeways, and the port rapidly expanded after World War II. Residents in the most heavily trafficked areas face higher asthma-related hospitalization rates, compared to people who live in other parts of the city.
In 2017, California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 617, which was focused on addressing air pollution impacts in environmentally burdened communities like East Oakland. The law requires local air districts and the California Air Resources Control Board, or CARB, to reduce air pollution in those communities. CARB created the Community Air Protection Program to implement the law statewide. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, a government agency responsible for monitoring and protecting air quality for the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, southwestern Solano, and southern Sonoma, has been working with community organizations to implement the law locally.
The law states that the control board must select particularly burdened communities and work with them to create a plan to reduce air pollution through a “community emission reduction plan.”
Communities for a Better Environment has helped organize environmental justice campaigns across California since 1978. They are co-leading the process of creating a community emissions reduction plan with the air district and a community steering committee that is composed of East Oakland residents.
Air pollution in deep East Oakland
Studies conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund in between 2015 and 2016, found high rates of carbon, nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide in East Oakland air. These toxins can increase a person’s risk of heart attacks, cancer, and respiratory problems.
Deep East Oakland’s population is mostly non-white and lower income. A 2017 study conducted by researchers at San Jose State University in East Oakland found that, “in areas where lower socioeconomic-status groups lived, there was a stronger correlation between the amount of pollution and hospital admissions for respiratory conditions.” The study also found that low-income families are much more likely to live in areas with lots of vehicle traffic where there are elevated levels of pollution.
The air district, in partnership with the community, has identified five key categories of concern for the area: the built environment and land use, commercial and industrial sources, illegal dumping, public health and community wellness, and transportation and mobile sources.
“For each of these focus areas, the [community steering committee] is working on identifying specific air quality concerns and solutions that will be the building blocks for developing emissions reduction strategies for the CERP,” said a spokesperson for the air district.
Community leaders and youth involvement
Mykela Patton started working in environmental justice when she was in high school. She is a deep East Oakland resident and has long seen the effects of environmental injustice firsthand.
“There’s people going to the hospital right now for asthma attacks,” said Patton.
In 2020, Patton began working at Communities for a Better Environment. At the time she was a youth organizer but she started facilitating conversations with the air district to get a community emissions reduction plan process started for East Oakland and have Communities for a Better Environment be the co-lead on the project. Patton originally got involved when she helped out on the West Oakland emissions reduction plan, which was finalized in October 2019.
“I really enjoyed the process. I really thought it was impactful also in bringing in so many different stakeholders, from industry to government officials to residents and community members in the same room talking about the same issues,” said Patton. “I wanted to see that process in deep East Oakland”
After working to start the process, Patton left her role at Communities for a Better Environment to start work at another non-profit, however, she came back on board as a member of the community steering committee in 2022.
As someone who has always been passionate about Youth involvement in community-led action, Patton works as the youth co-chair for the committee and focuses on ways to bring the community’s young people into the conversation. And for Patton they’re a key part of the process for getting this work done.
“I think especially when it comes to engagement and accessibility, and how to get people involved, youth are the ones that are like, in the streets at all the climate protests and actions, they are the ones like organizing a lot of that stuff in the Bay,” said Patton. “They’re also a really big stakeholder and especially because like they’re gonna have to live with this world, whatever ends up kind of coming out of this plan.”
The emissions reduction plan could be approved sometime next year
For East Oakland, the development of the plan itself is in its early stages. According to the air district, the emissions reduction plan is on track to be approved for adoption in the second quarter of 2025. Once approved, the air district will work with Communities for a Better Environment and the steering committee to start implementing the plan over five years.
This timeline, according to Cabral, is where a lot of the community’s frustration comes from. Her role is to keep people informed and engaged in the process, a tough job when the community doesn’t trust government agencies that have often failed them. She recently held a meeting solely focused on community concerns for the process itself and ways in which they could better feel incorporated into decision making.
The main concern is that people are confused about the complicated plan and process and want to know what impact they can really make, said Cabral. “The main thing I took away is that people want more clear goals of the plan. ”
Cabral hopes that with more clarity there will come more trust and involvement from community members. According to both Cabral and Patton, enthusiastic community involvement is vital.
East Oakland community members are the ones dealing with air pollution and according to Patton, they bring a level of knowledge to the area that cannot be gained by outsiders.
“The people who live here, they’re experts,” said Patton. “We know what we’re seeing. We know what blocks have the highest rates of truck traffic, even if that’s not documented on some air district map. It’s so important just to have that local knowledge and expertise on the project, aside from like, the technical knowledge and expertise.”
