There are two types of heroes at Spot.Us: reporters who work to tell important and undercovered stories and the community members that make it a reality.
Today we just found out that the project we supported "A Toxic Tour of the Bay" won a national award from the Society for Professional Journalists. I hope you'll join me in congratulating NewsDesk.org's Josh Wilson, the indefatigable Kwan Booth and the crime fighting Kim Komenich (no joke, he fights crime). You can view the series they won for at NewsDesk.org or on Spot.Us.
Of course our goal at Spot.Us is not to fund work that wins journalism awards - but to fund important stories that make an impact. In this case, however, we get to claim both!
MORE AWARDS
In fact, this isn't the first Spot.Us funded project to win kudos.
from the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for their exhaustive look at the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge supported by 150 donations.
Spot.Us has a big blog post that aggregated all the content from the first stop. It is here. We are also trying to keep track of who has republished our content.
This month we're taking the tour over to San Francisco's Bayview/Hunter's Point to investigate the ongoing health issues these communities are facing. Unfortunately, just like West Oakland, residents of the South East portion of the city are facing some serious challenges to cleaning up their neighborhoods.
Here are a few recent articles that shed some light on what's been happening.
We recently had an editorial call between Josh Wilson, the ever smiling Kim Komenich and the indefatigable Kwan Booth to discuss how things are going with the Bay Area Toxic Tour. We aren’t done by a long shot. The team has almost produced all the content for the first stop. Most likely the content below will continue to grow, but we thought it important to take stock in what we’ve produced.
One reason why is because we want you to…
Steal this content!
That’s right: The content below is yours for the taking and republishing. It cannot be altered without the creators permission (small styling changes are okay) and you must give credit to NewsDesk.org, Kim Komenich, Kwan Booth and Spot.Us for helping to produce the content. Aside from these small requests - we ask that you use this to inform more people about the situation of environmental hot spots and public health in the Bay Area which we will continue to explore with community support. We hope to provide more updates like these if we can continue to support the fine work of Kwan, Kim and Josh. So if you or your readers do find value in it, feel free to chip in a little - it could mean even more content for you to run.
A new ban on trucks that burn dirty diesel fuel is expected to help clean the air around the Port of Oakland.
The Port Commission approved the plan Tuesday to restrict truck models older than 1994, as well as models from 1994 to 2006 not equipped with soot filters, at the Port of Oakland.
Environmental activists who filled the port's meeting room in Jack London Square hailed the new regulations, saying they will reduce air pollution that affects both residents and truck drivers.
The long road leading to cleaner air in West Oakland was stretched just a little farther Tuesday night, as Port of Oakland commissioners postponed voting on a controversial new program to control diesel pollution from thousands of trucks serving the port.
West Oakland's high rates of childhood asthma and lifelong illnesses, such as cancer, are linked to exhaust from truck and international ship traffic through the port.
Approximately 100 representatives from the trucking, environmentalist and West Oakland communities packed Tuesday's meeting as the board considered adopting the Comprehensive Truck Management Plan, which aims to reduce diesel emmissions from the port by 85 percent by 2020.
The plan requires that all early-model trucks be fitted with new diesel filters by January 1st, 2010.
Opponents of the plan expressed cautious optimism at amendments to include a proposed truck registration system as well as a complete ban on pre-1994 trucks, as recommended by the study.
"This plan recognizes that you need to have a direct relationship with the trucking companies that operate on your property, and a mechanism to hold them accountable, that's why we support the truck registry," said Doug Bloch, Director of the Oakland Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports.
He also said that the ban on older trucks will lead to significant air quality improvements shortly after implementation.
While these amendments seemed to quell complaints, the last minute additions also pushed back voting on the project until June 16, when the board will also discuss whether to adopt more specific recommendations from a 2008 study by Beacon Environmental Services.
The most contested issue is whether trucking companies should be required to hire independent truckers as full time staff, thereby making companies responsible for any necessary upgrades.
Supporters of this motion, including Alexandra Desautels of the Alameda County Public Health Department, said it will give the port more leverage as future details of the plan are hashed out.
"[It] will set the board up to be able to move towards holding the shipping and trucking industries accountable once the laws are changed at the federal level," she said.
Yet many truckers said they opposed losing their independent status, further complicating regulatory efforts.
In the next two weeks, some of these organizations are planning to meet and discuss issues before port commissioners reconvene for a vote on June 16.
Oakland Port Commissioner Kenneth Katzoff, left, makes a point as Commissioner Anthony Batarese, center, and Commission Second Vice President Margaret Gordon listen. Katzoff and Batarese voted against passage of the Port's Comprehensive Truck Management Plan because of uncertainty about the legality of a last minute amendment, while Gordon voted for the plan. (Photo by Kim Komenich)
Tuesday June 2 was a long day of reporting for the Toxic Tour of the Bay team. The group arrived at the scene of the Oakland Port Commission meeting around 3:30pm and didn’t leave until nearly 9, only to find that the official vote on the Comprehensive Truck Management Plan–intended to cut port pollution 85 percent by 2020–was postponed until the June 16 meeting. The delay was caused in part by a recent amendment to the plan, which would ban all pre-1994 trucks from the port due to their older designs which spew more diesel exhaust than the newer trucks. Because the new amendment would change the CTMP’s requirement to retrofit all trucks that go in and out of the port to only post-1994 trucks, while banning the older ones, the commission asked for more time for review.
It was a day of mixed emotions and frustrations for environmentalists, truck drivers, Oakland residents and port commissioners alike. But even after all of that, our dedicated Spot.us reporter Kwan Booth rushed home to give us a recap on the Spot.us BlogTalkRadio show.
Funding for this project is 78 percent complete! You know what that means, only 22 percent and $307 to go and only you can make it happen! Donate here to support our talented reporting team as they continue to enlighten us about the environmental injustice in West Oakland.
Just about any long term West Oakland resident can rattle off a list of health issues effecting their community: diesel emissions from large trucks entering and leaving the area, toxins from cargo ships docking at the Port of Oakland, pollution from the 2 freeways that border the neighborhood, illegal dumping and lack of accessible health care.
These are not new concerns. Studies conducted by the Environmental Indicators Project, a research initiative funded by the Pacific Institute, found thatsome of the area's 403 toxic hot spots date back to post World War II construction. The EIP has estimated that nearly 82% of West Oakland residents live near one of these potentially contaminated sites.
Living in close proximity to these toxins has taken a definite toll over time. A 2008 study by the California Air Resources Board indicates that West Oaklanders are exposed to diesel toxins that are almost three times the levels of the rest of the city. As a result, children living in the 94607 zip code are seven times more likely than other California youth to be hospitalized for asthma and related health issues.
This is the reality that West Oakland residents have been living with for years. And while incremental changes have been made on both state and local levels, including the port's current Comprehensive Truck Management Plan, many feel that significant improvements are still a long way off.
"There's a lot of talk. People talk about how 'this needs to be done, we're going to do this'" says Shirley Burnell, a community activist and Co-Director of West Oakland Acorn, "but still things are being pushed out. Instead of doing something today or tomorrow or next week we're still talking years."
Disraeli Hives knows hazards associated with living in this community for years. The 41 year old mother was born and raised in West Oakland and has seen the poor air quality has effect her family for 3 generations. Both Hives and her mother have been diagnosed with asthma, as have 8 of her 10 children. The family is on a regular rotation of inhalers and respiratory pumps and Ms. Hives only recently started breathing without the use of an oxygen tank.
"It's hard, you know, dealing with it and having to take care of the kids and get their medications and worrying about (asthma) on top of everything else" she explains.
Hives estimates that approximately 70 percent of the children living on her block have some form of respiratory illness. But getting regular care has proven to be another uphill battle for these families, many of whom rely on public transportation for everything from daily commutes to doctor's visits.
"A lot of kids down here got asthma and their parents can't afford to afford to buy a new car, or a used car for that matter, so they're on foot or catching buses and you know how long you got to sit at the AC Transit."
Nurse Mary Frazier of the Prescott Joseph Center has seen how the dearth of accessible health care contributes to larger social issues. "How long does it take for you to get to Kaiser from here or to the Children's Hospital or Highland (by bus)" she asks. "It's an all day outing, so you lose time at work, kids lose time at school, the kids don't get good grades in school, you lose your job, so it's part of this cycle of the diseases of poverty-like diabetes, obesity, asthma and respiratory problems."
This cyclical pattern is what inspired activists like Ms. Burnell to champion environmental causes, after initially focusing on other social concerns like job security. "After I got involved I saw that it wasn't just the jobs it was the environment, and that needed to be cleaned up because so many people have asthma so even if you do have jobs you're sick all the time" Burnell says.
"In an area like here, in West Oakland, the low economic status of the residents has a bearing" explained Dr. Washington Burns, Prescott Joseph's Executive Director. Burns and other organizers have found that auxiliary issues including violence, drug use, lack of jobs and the general stress of day to day survival are all intertwined. "I'm not saying that air quality isn't a factor but there are multiple factors."
The Prescott Joseph Center, Acorn, the EIP and several other organizations have been working across multiple platforms to address the tangled web of health concerns. The center is home to one of the only clinics in the area and also hosts the West Oakland Asthma Coalition, a network of community groups that address health concerns at both the grassroots and policy levels. Some initiatives, like the soon to be certified Breathmobile, deliver services directly to the community, while groups like the EIP focus on providing hard data and policy advice while others like the Bamboo BioFilter project, take a more experimental approach to solving the problem.
And while there are challenges, there is also measured optimism. Most of those involved in the fight for a healthy West Oakland understand they are part of a long battle involving community awareness and responsibility as much as regulation and research statistics. "We're a strong community" says Ms. Hives. "we been through a lot but we're going to be here. We're going to keep fighting."
Today was the first BlogTalkRadio show we’ve produced in which we interview our own reporters working on Spot.us pitches. I had the opportunity to interview Josh Wilson from Newsdesk.org, Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer Kim Komenich and all around rock star (as David put it and I happen to agree) Kwan Booth, who are all collectively working on the “Bay Area Toxic Tour” series, documenting toxic hot spots around the San Francisco Bay and their impact on the lives that take place on the fringes of these industrialized zones.
The Spotus Radio show was an example of live digital journalism in the making. Both Kim and Kwan were out in the field when they called in.
“I’m at the stage right now where I’m kind of establishing sort of a sense of place for the idea of where a lot of the problems are arising,” Komenich said when he called into the show.
It was also an opportunity to tell the journalists’ story behind the story — they relayed the inside scoop on what has been uncovered, the hunches of conflict they sense, the process of putting the story and photos in context, and the challenges in gaining the trust of West Oakland residents… and so much more.
I learned a lot more about this developing story from the 45-minute conversation I had with the journalists covering it, than from all the reading I have done on the subject thus far. Below is an edited transcript of the first half of the interview. But be sure to listen in (scroll down to the bottom) to hear the full story.
Spot: First of all, Josh, could you just give us a little background about this pitch and why it’s such an important issue facing our communities?
Josh Wilson:About five or six years ago, a colleague of mine at the time who was working at SF Gate, the San Francisco Chronicle’s newspaper was a photo editor and honestly feeling a little board. All he was doing was prepping images of pop stars and sports stars and felt that there was a lot more that could be done with photojournalism to serve the San Francisco Bay Area community. An idea I had for quite a while was to do some photo essays of industrial facilities around the Bay and he added to that the idea of not just looking at the facilities but also looking at the people who live near and around those facilities, the refineries, the port facilities, the chemical plants and all that stuff. So this idea has been floating around for a while to try to identify the people who live with the pollution that results from our industrial economy. We were never really able to do it. Getting the resources together was really challenging. Definitely the funding to do so was hard to come by so the idea kind of became fallow and my colleague eventually moved to Alaska. So the idea has been sitting there so when Spot.us came along, it really revealed to me the opportunity of connecting with communities around a particular story.
Kim Komenich: I’m at the stage right now where I’m kind of establishing sort of a sense of place for the idea of where a lot of the problems are arising. The initial stage for me as a photographer is to set the scene, show the trucks, show some of the loading and the unloading and the things that are happening in the port. And then later today, I’ll probably go to the neighborhoods a bit more and show the neighborhoods in the context of some of this.
Josh Wilson:Live Journalism
[laughs]
Kim Komenich: Well it’s a real good contrast for me because I worked 26 years in print and the last couple years we were making the transition to a print/multimedia hybrid so for me, this is kind of a continuation of the way it was heading even in print at this point. We’re going into more web based stuff, more video, more audio recordings and podcasts and slideshows, which is what I’m going to be doing here with Fotovision, Spot.us and Newsdesk.org.
Spot: So far, it seems like most of your reporting has been about the Port of Oakland. Is that the primary focus or are there other areas you’re going to examine as well.
Josh Wilson: The port of Oakland is the first stop on the toxic tour. We have a number of other places we’d like to be checking out including Richmond, but that has to happen after this particular project is done. We’re fundraising for each one individually. But I have to emphasize that we need to finish this piece first which we’re actively fundraising for as we write it, as we produce it.
Kwan Booth: I’m doing a lot of research and the more I find that the Port of Oakland is the main crux of this story but I’m seeing that West Oakland in general has a huge amount of health problems and honestly some of these problems have been dating back all the way since World War II. I’m at this point now where I’m trying to figure out how to put what’s going on at the port in context to what’s been going on historically throughout the years. Right now we’re going to focus on the port because this is the first major issue but hopefully we can come back and revisit some of these issues happening on the larger scale. We have these toxins coming from the port but we also have illegal dumping going on, there are all types of large machine businesses coming in doing things from the illegal dumping to toxin dispersals and I think there was a study done in 2008 that says that the toxins in West Oakland are more than three times the level of the rest of the city. In 1997 there was as study done that says that 82 percent of the people in West Oakland live within and eighth of a mile of a toxic industrial area. So the port is the main issue now but there’s a lot of smaller things I think need to be addressed as well. This is going to be a multi-phased process.
Spot: What have you discovered so far about Oakland. What’s happening there? What kind of pollution is being created in the ocean or by diesel exhaust from the trucks. What are some of the main problems there?
Kwan Booth: The truck pollution is a problem. It’s a relatively small number of the overall pollutants but the fact that the trucks travel throughout the west Oakland streets. That was the initial contention between West Oakland residents, environmentalists, the actual truck drivers and the ports about how to actually clean up those trucks that are going into the communities. Because of the way the port system operates, a lot of times the guys have to sit and idle in their trucks for three to four hours and that’s just pollutants constantly being spewed out into the air. Some environmental groups, The West Oakland Health Council and the West Oakland Environmental Indicator’s Project, realized that the first way to target the immediate things going on is to retrofit the trucks with filters that reduce the toxins that they are spewing out. But along with that, illegal dumping has been going on. In 2008 they ran a study where the City of Oakland removed almost three hundred tons of illegal garbage that was dumped in West Oakland. Some out of residences and others from the manufacturing companies coming out of there but all these things combined would really go to increasing the cancer and asthma rates in the community.
Spot: What types of violations have been broken in terms of air and sea pollution?
Kwan Booth: Well that’s the thing. I haven’t found too many actual “violations” because there’s not a lot of rules. There was one study done in 2000 and another done in 2008. But because the rules are relatively lax, they’re not breaking too many laws. It’s just a recommendation that these things really need to be changed.
Let’s make sure this important story gets funded! There’s only $500 to go to for the first portion of the series about the Port of Oakland to be fully funded. Donate now!
Talking to Dr. Washington Burns the other day I learned some pretty shocking information. 37% of the adults and 20% of the kids living in West Oakland have asthma and children living in this community are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for breathing related illness than any other children in California. And Alameda County as a whole is no prize, with one of the highest overall hospitalization rates among 5-17 year old youth.
I learned this bit of info while sitting inside the Breathmobile, the new mobile asthma testing facility run by the Prescott Joseph Center, where Dr. Burns is executive director. And while the numbers are shocking on the first mention, it's something West Oakland residents have been battling for a years.
For the last 14 years the Prescott Joseph Center has been somewhat of an oasis for west Oakland residents seeking information on a variety of health and wellness issues. The center, located only a short distance from the Port of Oakland, is home to the Asthma Education Center, the only place in the area where those without insurance (a large percentage of the residents) can receive care and instruction on breathing related illnesses. And while the education center has been around since 2001, the Breathmobile is a new solution to an old problem: access to quality health care in low income communities.
As I've been reporting over the last few weeks I've repeatedly heard residents express their frustration at how hard it was to see a qualified doctor. Many people I spoke with were working 2 and 3 jobs to support their families and taking time off for doctor's visits usually just wasn't an option. The goal of the Breathmobile is to take the hospital to the people, instead of the other way around. Beginning in July, the clinic will be traveling to area events to provide on the spot diagnoses and assistance.
But while providing quality care is one issue Dr. Burns and Mary Frazier, the Breathmobile's RN, brought up another important point. Even if the resources are there, the people have to value and use them or they still won't work.
Ms. Frazier talked about a series of informal surveys they conducted with various Prescott Joseph clients. When asked their most pressing concerns, most people listed lack of money and quality jobs as the main issue. After this was violence followed by a list of other concerns. Even with the abnormally high level of documented cases, asthma and breathing related illnesses ranked somewhere between 5-7th with most people. These estimates were echoed by the chairwoman of West Oakland Acorn Shirley Burnell, who we mentioned in the initial Newsdesk story. Ms. Burnell and her team asked similar questions and nearly identical answers.
How do you help people who, for whatever reason, aren't inclined to receive the help?
As much as this story is focusing on the immediate dangers posed by the Port of Oakland and the diesel particulates produced by the trucks, it's clear that there's a much bigger and more complicated issue at hand. More soon.
With a major vote on the Comprehensive Truck Management Plan coming up on June 2, my goal as the Newsdesk.org representative is to help get our coverage of diesel exhaust, the conflict between union and non-union truckers, and the needs of the West Oakland community itself properly represented!
No easy task! This is an emotional and complex story.
I've been thrilled to work with Kwan and Kim so far -- they are aces, have really clear understandings of the story, and lots of skill in the telling. Kwan's prose moves fast and packs context; Kim's photos -- he IS a Pulitzer-winner, after all -- pack more than thousand words each.
(Seriously -- who woulda thunk an advisory board meeting would be an opportunity for action photography? And yet Kim captured that exactly -- the emotion, the confrontation, the different faces and communities and their needs.)
Also, I'm super-pleased with the audio drops ... they relay the fever-pitch emotion of the moment where words and even images fall short.
This last article was a DIY type of multimedia reporting. We just used whatever open-source resources for image, text and sound we could access, and brought it all together in a central article on Newsdesk.org.
For our NEXT piece on this, we're shooting for something much more coherent as a continuous multimedia piece combining photography and audio, with the goal of revealing the communities, the industries, the people and the institutions affected by the issue.
Thanks for your support and stay tuned for updates!
Another exciting aspect about this project is the reporting team behind it which includes Pulitzer prize winning Kim Komenich all around rock start Kwan Booth and the editorial vision of Josh Wilson from NewsDesk.org.
This Saturday Kwan and Kim went to a community information & INPUT meeting on the ports in Oakland which is a politically charged environmental issue. The Oakland port wants to reduce seaport diesel pollution by 85 percent by 2020 - the question is how. Various groups appear to be butting heads and they have till the end of this year to come up with a comprehensive plan.
Kwan will be writing up something about the meeting soon but I also know he is actively reporting with interviews set up Monday through Wednesday.
On the Spot.Us blog we will be publishing some of the raw reporting, but it should be taken as such - raw and unedited. Meanwhile the team outlined above will be producing more polished pieces over the next two-three weeks.
This past Thursday Spot.Us had its first big fundraising event to help support our ongoing collaboration with NewsDesk.org that will examine toxic hotspots in the Bay Area. Thanks to the folks at New Delhi Indian restaurant we had space and finger food. All that was needed was music and guests to have a good time.
With the feeling of momentum and a community behind us reporting has started (see below).
In the end we raised $400 or 26 percent of our goal in one night!!!! When we started fundraising for the event we had just over 30 percent of our goal which is $1,500.
And now we have more than 50 percent of our goal. A BIG thank you should go out to all who participated.
I hope that a good time was had by all…
This event was a successful experiment and I hope we can have more in the future. If you are interested in helping Spot.Us have a house party or any other kind of in-person fundraising event - please contact us. I believe there is something to learn here for nonprofit journalism. Identify the cause and then gather a community of people together to fundraise.
Oakland Board of Port Commissioners
and the CTMP Technical Advisory Committee (TAC)
Invites you to participate in a
Community Information & INPUT Meeting
PORT OF OAKLAND
MARITIME COMPREHENSIVE TRUCK MANAGEMENT PROGRAM (CTMP)
Safety & Security š Air Quality š Community š Business & Operations
Saturday, May 2, 2009
9:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon
Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 1
1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
Oakland, CA 94612
Join the Port of Oakland and the CTMP Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for a community and stakeholder input meeting on the proposed Comprehensive Truck Management Program (CTMP) for the Port of Oakland.
š CTMP Overview š CTMP Stakeholder Input š Public Input on the CTMP š
Sign-In & Open CTMP Informational Stations - 9:00 a.m.
Presentation/Remarks - 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
Public Input - 10:45 a.m. to 12:00 noon
(CTMP Informational Center Open from 9:00 a.m. -- 1:00 p.m.)
The Oakland Board of Port Commissioners is scheduled to consider adoption of a
Final CTMP at its June 2, 2009 Board meeting.
If you have questions about the community meeting, please contact the Port of Oakland Social Responsibility Division office at (510) 627-1135 or via email at: CTMP@portoakland.com<mailto:CTMP@portoakland.com>.
The nation's fourth largest container port still faces tough decisions about how to reduce diesel emissions from trucks, ships and trains after Tuesday's adoption of its first comprehensive master plan for reducing the toxic pollution.
Bay Area, state and federal clean air agencies and environmental groups criticized the Port of Oakland plan for postponing or dodging many decisions about cutting pollution — including setting a container fee to fund pollution reductions.
What is still needed, however, is a view of how this pollution affects the lives of those who live in the community. And that is where you can help by supporting our work.
A Spot.Us community member is hosting an informal dinner party to raise awareness about environmental hazards that are having a negative impact on the communities who live close to industrial runoff.
We will learn more about it, discuss it and what we can do together to raise awareness! It will be a fun, informal dinner with a purpose on March 28 from 5 to 8 PM.
We hope we can get 30 Bay Area residents to attend this event, so feel free to invite your friends!
If you're unable to come but would still be interested in donating $25 or $5 or $1 to the community-funded journalism piece, check out the link below. Your tax-deductible donation can be made directly on the Spot.Us pitch page: http://spot.us/pitches/156
Also, if you would like to host a house party please do not hesitate to contact kara at spot dot us.
Can you take photos, help report, sift through documents and records, or contribute to reporting in some other way? If so, get in touch with the authors.
