On the one year anniversary of the tragic crude by rail accident in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, which claimed the lives of 47 innocent people, we will launch a grassroots campaign to build a deep and wide base of community opposition to coal and oil trains running through the city of Oakland. 

West Oakland residents are already twice as likely to visit the emergency room for asthma than the average Alameda County resident and are also more likely to die of cancer, and heart and lung disease. The future Oakland Army Base Port could begin to export coal and petroleum coke by 2020. The increased freight traffic carrying coal would intensify the air pollution already plaguing West Oakland, threatening local public health and safety. Coal is transported on open-top rail cars that lose 600 pounds of coal dust per car; this translates to 60,000 pounds of toxic fine particulate matter entering our air and water every trip a coal train makes.

The people who live in West Oakland, the people most dramatically and personally affected by the air pollution coal exports will cause, need to know about the threat of coal transport in their neighborhood and need to be given the opportunity to raise their voice.

Join us on Sunday, July 6th, to canvass the Prescott neighborhood of West Oakland. We will be spreading the word about these serious threats, engaging community members in the campaign to save Oakland's air quality, and invite our neighbors to a town hall in August to learn more about these issues. 

This event is sponsored by West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, Communities for a Better Environment, the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter, Earthjustice, San Francisco BayKeeper, 350 East Bay, and the SunFlower Alliance. 

Contact Jess Dervin-Ackerman at jess.dervin-ackerman@sierraclub.org or (510) 848-0800 x 304 for more information.