Action Alerts

Stop the Port of Oakland’s pollution-generating expansion

What's At Stake

The Port of Oakland and the Army Corps of Engineers are moving forward with an expansion project that will allow more polluting megaships into the Bay Area — despite an inadequate environmental review that fails to consider how the expansion would impact the region and the neighboring environmental justice community of West Oakland in particular.  Join us in speaking out against the project at in-person meetings in the coming weeks.

Read More

The proposed project will widen the Turning Basins at the Port of Oakland to allow megaships more than 1,300 feet long, with the capacity to hold 19,000 containers, to dock at the Port. Right now, these vessels visit the Port very rarely — just once or twice a year.  If this plan moves forward, it will invite dramatically more megaships into the region, heightening the demands on Port infrastructure and generating increased air and water pollution as well as worsening truck traffic in nearby communities.  

Earlier this year, the Army Corps released a flawed environmental study that ignored the serious impacts of this project on air quality, water quality, the climate, and public health. Despite over 1,400 comments from our supporters and concerned members of the public telling the Army Corps to fix its analysis, it is choosing to move the project forward.  

Now, as the Port of Oakland conducts its own environmental report as required by law, we have an important opportunity to tell the Port that it cannot repeat the Army Corps’ mistakes and must thoroughly study the impacts of this project on West Oakland residents and the surrounding region.

This plan is unacceptable — the Port is already producing far too much pollution in the region, with acute impacts in West Oakland. In fact, West Oakland is one of the most pollution-burdened areas of the state, with elevated levels of diesel particulate matter, fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and toxic air contaminants. Diesel emissions billowing from trucks, trains, equipment, and ships at the Port are contributing to an ongoing public health crisis in West Oakland and nearby communities.  

Localized air pollution has serious consequences. 70% of West Oakland’s residents are people of color, and half of new childhood asthma cases in West Oakland are due to traffic-related air pollution, compared to about 20% of new childhood asthma cases in the nearby affluent and mostly White neighborhoods in the Oakland Hills. Asthma hospitalizations for West Oakland residents are 88% higher than the Alameda County average, and heart disease deaths are 33% higher. Allowing more megaships to visit the Port will further harm West Oakland and local communities along the freight corridor.  

We can’t allow the Port to double down on a failed and harmful status quo. Tell the Port to redo its analysis and recirculate a new Draft Environmental Impact Report that properly analyzes the air quality and other impacts of a major port expansion. 

The Oakland skyline, behind the Port of Oakland.
The Oakland skyline, behind the Port of Oakland. The Port is one of the largest container ship facilities on the West Coast. (Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice)

Delivery to the Port of Oakland

Important Notice

Your message is delivered to a public agency, and all information submitted may be placed in the public record. Do not submit confidential information.

By taking action, you will receive emails from Earthjustice. Change your mailing preferences or opt-out at any time. Learn more in our Privacy Policy. This Earthjustice action is hosted on EveryAction. Learn about EveryAction’s Privacy Policy.

Why is a phone number or prefix required on some action forms?

Trouble Viewing This Action?

If the action form is not loading above, please add earthjustice.org as a trusted website in your ad blocker or pause any ad blockers, and refresh this webpage. (Details.) If the action form still does not display, please report the problem to us at action@earthjustice.org. Thank you!

Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.