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LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS. HEALTHY COMMUNITIES.

Fall 2007

West Oakland Toxics
Reduction Collaborative

West Oakland, California, is a low income community of 25,000 people,
90 percent of whom are people of color. Since recovering from the 1989
Loma Prieta earthquake, the community has been on a trajectory of
redevelopment. Occupying four square miles and entirely surrounded
by freeways, the community is directly adjacent to the Port of
Oakland, the fourth largest container port in the United States with
throughput projected to triple by 2020. Despite facing economic,
environmental, and social challenges, the community has maintained
a culture of involvement and activism.

Step 1: Joining Together

Community members first joined together in 2000 to tackle
environmental health conditions, forming the West Oakland
Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP). Out of that success grew
the West Oakland Toxics Reduction Collaborative (the Collaborative),
which was subsequently funded by EPA through a CARE Level II
grant in September 2006. The WOEIP and EPA negotiated a joint
partnering agreement, which includes having a community
representative and an EPA staff person co-chair each action team and
using a neutral facilitator. The Collaborative is open to all
stakeholders, meets three times a year, has a paid neutral facilitator,
and is coordinated by a steering committee. The Collaborative has
formed eight action teams, each tackling a specific problem.

Step 2: Identifying Problems, Solutions

After reviewing West Oakland sources of toxic pollution with
stakeholders, each of the eight action teams developed a work plan
and goals and has been meeting to identify and implement toxic
reduction efforts.

About CARE

Community Action for a
Renewed Environment (CARE)
is an EPA technical assistance
and grant program that offers an
innovative way for a community
to organize and take action to
reduce toxic pollution in the local
environment.

Level I, Level II Grants

Awarded at two monetary levels,
over two years, CARE grants
help communities tackle their
problems using a four-step
process (diagram below). Level I
grants (up to $100,000) enable
communities to progress through
the first two steps, which are: 1)
build a broad-based partnership,
and 2) identify a range of
environmental problems and
solutions. Level II grants (up to
$300,000) fund the next two
steps, which are: 3) take action
to reduce risks; and 4) become
self-sustaining.

EPA Cooperative Agreements and Technical Support

Deborah Jordan, EPA Air Division Director,
center, giving CARE grant check to
Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge of the
West Oakland Environmental Indicators
Project


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Step 3: Implementing Solutions,
Reducing Risks

Overall, the teams have successfully taken on
the challenge of addressing a wide range of
West Oakland's environmental impacts.

•	The Indoor Air Team has surveyed and
trained many residents in indoor air
assessment and practices.

•The Healthy Home Team has been providing
health impact assessments requested by
residents and developers to implement best
indoor air practices on a voluntary basis.

•The Alternative Fuels Team has helped
convert more than a dozen heavy-duty trucks
to compressed natural gas, and has developed
a feasibility study for a biodiesel plant.

•The Truck Team has worked with the Port of
Oakland in the first phase of an emissions
reduction program that has grown from about
60 trucks to approximately 2,000 trucks.

•The Brownfields Team has transformed the
state-run program into one overseen by the
community as well. With community input,
the team has developed a "roadmap" of the
"brownfields process" in order to bring the
community and implementing agencies
together to resolve brownfields issues.

•	The Land Use Team has targeted 30 to 70
acres of a closed army base to relocate and
centralize port-related truck services outside
of the community to reduce exposure to diesel
pollutants.

•The Port Emission Reduction Team has
targeted all emissions related to ports and is
grappling with finding ways to meet the goal
of reducing by 85 percent port-related diesel
risk by the year 2020, as required by the
state's Emission Reduction Plan.





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Step 4: Becoming Self-
Sustaining

In the Collaborative, members "vote with their
feet,"; one measure of sustainability is that, two
years after their convening, the number of
stakeholders and their productivity continues
to grow. The WOEIP has also developed
numerous funding sources in addition to EPA,
with one team funded entirely by a state agency
partner. A budget for sustaining the
Collaborative has been developed and used in
fundraising with partnering stakeholders.
Beyond that, the Collaborative's strategy has
always included as a goal the development of
the capacity of the WOEIP and other
community p artner s.

Partners

AB Trucking Co. • Alameda County Health
Department • Bay Area Air Quality
Management District • California EPA •

City of Oakland • Federal, State and Local
Elected Officials • International Longshore
and Warehouse Union • Natural Resources
Defense Council • Pacific Gas and Electric
Co.* Pacific Institute • Port of Oakland •
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters •
US EPA Region 9 • Union of Concerned
Scientists • University of San Francisco •
West Oakland Commerce Association •
West Oakland Environmental Indicators
Project • Many others

Richard Grow, US EPA Region 9 Project Lead

(415) 947-4104

grow.richard@epa.gov

Brian Beveridge, CARE Project Lead
West Oakland EIP
(510) 451-3227


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