On Wednesday (August 5) The Oakland Athletics have decided to sue California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control over alleged pollution at Schnitzer Steel’s metal shredding facility in West Oakland, next to the Howard Terminal. Oakland A’s president, Dave Kaval, mentioned that the facility, which is located less than a mile away from 23,000 West Oakland residents, produces material which exceeds the toxicity threshold for hazardous waste.
In a series of Tweets detailing the lawsuit, Kaval says:
“We want our ballpark project to be a catalyst for environmental justice in West Oakland. We’ll fight this fight regardless of what happens with the ballpark. This is bigger than baseball.”
Mike Jacob, who is a key member of the port community and the East Oakland Stadium Alliance released a statement saying:
"This aggressive action by the A's proves what we have been afraid of this whole time: they are intending to shut-down and push back on the current operations of Oakland's working waterfront. It proves that the obvious incompatible land uses of putting new housing, offices, and baseball fans right next to our heavy industrial maritime uses pose the very real and direct threat of potentially shutting down existing operations at the Port.
We have seen this play out countless times up and down the coast - developers trying to push out industrial jobs in exchange for housing and tourist and entertainment venues - and we've already let it happen in San Francisco. We have to fight to make sure that this doesn't happen again in Oakland and that we don't lose blue-collar longshore jobs only to potentially replace some of them with Pier 39 jobs."
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Photo: GettyImages.