OAKLAND — Environmentalists are trying something new to prevent coal from being stored at the Port of Oakland — and this time, it isn’t a legal avenue, but a personal plea to the businessman who could legally bring the product through town.
“We urge you to do the right thing and make the responsible choice: a binding pledge not to bring a coal export terminal to Oakland,” they wrote in an open letter signed by nearly 80 organizations and over 200 individuals and addressed to private-equity manager Jon Brooks.
Brooks’ firm controls Insight Terminal Solutions, the company that owns a sublease to build a West Oakland marine terminal on the port’s outer harbor intended to ship bulk goods overseas. The company is also suing the city of Oakland for at least $1 billion in damages over previous delays.
Construction has never begun on the cargo facility, because the city has spent years — and millions of dollars — fighting and mostly losing a legal battle to prevent coal from being one of the commodities shipped from there.
The saga, a seemingly endless “coal war” that began more than a decade ago, has never reached resolution.
Coal is seen locally as a reminder of a long legacy of bad air pollution in West Oakland. A 2018 study showed emergency room visits and hospitalizations for West Oakland residents are two times higher than in the rest of Alameda County.
“Residents in nearby neighborhoods will be exposed to toxic coal dust, exacerbating a broad range of health impacts including asthma, cancer, and cardiopulmonary disease that have plagued West Oakland for decades,” states the open letter, authored by the group No Coal in Oakland.
In his own 2023 letter, Brooks wrote his firm had “zero investments in coal or related industries,” though both he and the East Bay developer he’s subleasing from, Phil Tagami, have long asserted their legal right to allow the future terminal to ship the product.
Phil Tagami, left, Oakland developer and Chief Executive Officer of California Capital Investment Group, and Principal and Executive of Concord First Partners, talks with Brian Jencek, Director of HOK’s global planning and landscape architecture during a break from their Naval Weapons Station development presentation before the Concord City Council in Concord, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Tagami in particular has won multiple legal battles over the terminal, first by pointing out how city officials themselves endorsed the product in early development plans, and more recently by arguing that construction delays — stemming from the city’s legal challenges — could not justify his lease being voided.
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The subject may evoke yet more negative implications in Oakland amid President Donald Trump’s aggressive push for the coal industry’s return, despite market trends going in the opposite direction for years.
If the marine terminal is ever built, one of its first suitors would likely be Utah-based Wolverine Fuels, which had transported coal and petroleum coke to the Levin-Richmond Terminal near Point Richmond, before the terminal agreed in a court settlement to stop storing the products by 2026.
Wolverine Fuels, previously named Bowie Resource Materials, had a direct connection to Oakland via John Siegel, an ex-employee and the former owner of Insight Terminal Solutions who once partnered with Tagami to ship coal through the city’s port.
Siegel died in 2018. Brooks, a private-equity executive, picked up Insight Terminal Solutions during its bankruptcy proceedings.
Not nearly as keen on coal as his predecessor, Brooks reached a tentative agreement with city officials not to ship the product from the eventual terminal. But the deal fell apart, for reasons never made public.
The city is currently appealing a 2023 court decision that sided with Tagami, and meanwhile it is seeking to have Brooks’ lawsuit moved from bankruptcy court in Kentucky to a Northern California federal court, where Bay Area activists hope for a more favorable outcome.
A gravel pit, center, on land owned by California Capital & Investment Group CEO Phil Tagami, of Oakland, is seen along Burma Road in West Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Downtown Oakland can be seen on the upper left.(Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
One consequence of the city losing its appeal would be a judge ordering that Insight Terminal Solutions be issued permits to construct the facility, which the Oakland City Council approved more than a decade ago.
In the meantime, No Coal in Oakland has made a more personal pitch to Brooks for a “legally binding promise” not to allow the product’s storage at the port.
The letter even mentions how Brooks, in his personal time, has supported causes involved in finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Some medical research has indicated that one of the factors behind the disease may be air pollution.
Tagami has said bulk shipments to the terminal would be sufficiently covered so that errant coal dust does not make its way into West Oakland — a promise that helped convince a federal judge to rule in 2018 that coal shipments likely would not increase air pollution.
It’s unclear what kind of market coal would attract. Wolverine Fuels, the company seeking to ship the product out of Utah, was having trouble finding enough workers to staff its coal mines, the High Country News reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.
