A toxic foundry finally left East Oakland. Then the city allowed in a new polluter

Three years in the past, the AB&I metallic foundry ceased all operations in East Oakland. After years of group advocacy, the plant’s 200 union jobs had been gone. So had been its foul-smelling poisonous emissions, the topic of a $1.2 million settlement with the State of California, which stated the plant had launched air contaminants in violation of the regulation.

The closure of the plant, on San Leandro Avenue close to the Oakland Coliseum, got here as a reduction to many residents of the East Oakland group. However final 12 months they started to note one thing unusual occurring there. 

The years of metallic smelting had left contaminants equivalent to arsenic and lead within the hardscape, soil, and groundwater, and the polluted lot was purported to be present process a yearslong remediation course of. The property’s new proprietor, Prologis, had taken over a voluntary settlement between its former proprietor and Alameda County’s Environmental Well being Division to handle the cleanup forward of future improvement on the property. However group members had been already witnessing new enterprise actions there: tow vehicles exhibiting up with damaged down, deserted, and burned-out automobiles. They quickly got here to appreciate the positioning was getting used as a tow yard by an organization known as Auto Plus Towing. 

Auto Plus Towing is the only real firm contracted by the town of Oakland to tow away automobiles which can be parked illegally or deserted on metropolis streets — on this case bringing them to quite a bit the place a significant poisonous cleanup was underway.

An environmental watchdog group closely concerned within the struggle in opposition to AB&I reported the exercise, and the county despatched a hazardous supplies technician to test it out. Public records show that in the course of the go to the technician noticed rows of automobiles already on the lot, together with burned autos leaking chemical substances into the already contaminated floor. 

“We lastly — after a long time of combating this — we lastly acquired it shut down and now, inside a 12 months or two, that is taking place once more,” stated Gabrielle Sloane-Regulation, an East Oakland resident and organizing intern with Communities for a Higher Atmosphere, the watchdog group.

CBE finally discovered that the town had issued the corporate a zoning allow to dump automobiles on the former AB&I web site — a allow the town in the end needed to revoke. The episode would illuminate the dangerously damaged traces of communication between the town of Oakland, its weak residents, and the county authorities, with every making an attempt to parse out who was accountable.

In keeping with Alameda County, Prologis wasn’t purported to lease the positioning to a tow yard — or another operation that would irritate current environmental circumstances — as topic to deed restrictions positioned on the property by the county in 2011. In March, the county emailed Prologis a letter of noncompliance saying that Auto Plus Towing’s actions on the positioning had been “in violation of the circumstances within the Deed Restriction.”

In keeping with Prologis, the corporate was effectively inside its zoning rights to enter into an settlement with the town’s towing firm and operated with the “good religion” perception that their allow was authorized till they had been notified in any other case. Data, paperwork, and emails posted to the state’s public GeoTracker database make clear the interagency breakdown. 

Now an array of organizations — the town, the businesses, the watchdog group, the county, the state’s Division of Poisonous Substances Management, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water High quality Management Board — try to cope with the fallout, and ensure the polluted web site lastly will get cleaned up. 

“It’s extremely irritating,” Sloane-Regulation stated. “We have now regulators and so they’re not regulating.”

100 years of air pollution

For over 100 years, AB&I operated out of a 14.5-acre web site on San Leandro Avenue in East Oakland, manufacturing largely forged iron pipes and pipe fittings. And for a few years, close by residents had filed complaints with the Bay Space Air High quality Administration District, which regulates emissions and air high quality, reporting disagreeable odors and poisonous fumes emanating from the positioning. Many residents had been significantly involved over its proximity to Acorn Woodland Elementary Faculty, which sat lower than a half a mile downwind from the foundry. 

Neighborhood members joined forces with CBE round a decade in the past to advocate for AB&I’s elimination. Alongside the best way, they shaped a “bucket brigade” to observe air high quality themselves utilizing a DIY air quality sampling system made from buckets and different low price instruments. Additionally they created a neighborhood telephone tree to observe the positioning’s fumes and report them to the air high quality district. 

“It wasn’t simply in that neighborhood, typically on days, it might unfold all around the metropolis, so we’re like, ‘Properly, if individuals in numerous neighborhoods are calling, then possibly they’ll reply to it extra,’” stated Sloane-Regulation. “We had a telephone tree so that you’d get a textual content or a name or an electronic mail to go outdoors and in the event you odor the foundry, name the air district.” 

Then, in 2021, got here two worrisome reviews. One, a web site evaluation by the Oakland Unified Faculty District, discovered elevated levels of three cancer-causing chemical substances on the Acorn Woodland campus. One other, a health-risk assessment from the Bay Space Air High quality District, discovered that AB&I’s operations had been producing a variety of dangerous emissions, together with hexavalent chromium, benzene, and arsenic, which were linked to an elevated danger of most cancers, delivery defects, and respiratory illnesses. In 2021, the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment discovered that individuals dwelling close to the foundry confronted increased air pollution impacts than the vast majority of Californians.   

“Our communities are dying underneath the load of air pollution,” stated Angela Scott, an activist with CBE.

Utilizing these findings, CBE filed suit against AB&I and its dad or mum firm for violating the state’s protected consuming water regulation, Proposition 65. The next 12 months, state lawyer common Rob Bonta filed suit against the company as effectively, claiming AB&I had violated Proposition 65 by failing to reveal doable exposures to cancer-causing chemical substances. The go well with claimed that AB&I used to be the county’s largest single emitter of hexavalent chromium — the carcinogen on the heart of the Erin Brockavich case. 

Lower than a month after the state filed go well with, the foundry introduced that it might be shutting down the East Oakland web site and transferring its operations to Texas. Duke Actuality purchased the property in April 2022, which was acquired by the actual property firm Prologis quickly after. An environmental assessment commissioned by Duke on the time of buy discovered that soil and groundwater on the web site had ranges of unstable natural compounds and petroleum hydrocarbons above limits set by the air high quality district, and that stormwater samples had elevated ranges of aluminum and magnesium.

The identical 12 months, Duke entered into a voluntary agreement with Alameda County to remediate the positioning’s environmental hazards. In July 2024, AB&I settled with the state and CBE for a complete of $2.5 million, protecting the reimbursement of authorized prices, a $500,000 fee to an area well being clinic, and $150,000 to fund a mission geared toward involving highschool college students in group air monitoring. AB&I paid $150,000 in penalties.

A metropolis tow firm dumps burned out automobiles

When Prologis acquired Duke Realty in 2022, it took over the corporate’s voluntary remedial agreement with the county. Prologis agreed to conduct danger evaluation on the web site, submit remedial motion plans, full all remediation, and put danger administration measures in place.

Underneath a clause titled “Harmful Situation,” the corporate agreed to inform the county “instantly upon studying of any situation which will pose a right away menace to public well being or security or the setting.”

Dilan Roe, the chief of the Land and Water Safety Division for the county’s Environmental Well being Division, has been overseeing remediation on the San Leandro Avenue web site on behalf of the county. They stated that due to the positioning’s contentious environmental historical past, they needed to ensure issues had been executed proper from the beginning.

“There was numerous hurt executed,” Roe stated. “However realizing the group and their considerations I made a really concerted effort from the start that we might interact with them.”

Early on, group activists informed The Oaklandside, the remediation work appeared to be going effectively. Sloane-Regulation, the environmental activist, stated that Prologis was open to assembly with group members and listening to group considerations. However in October 2024, issues modified.

That’s when group members confirmed as much as a CBE assembly and stated they’d seen tow vehicles on the web site, in keeping with Lauren Gallagher, a authorized fellow with the group. 

Public information present a CBE workers member shortly reached out to the county, and the county’s environmental well being division despatched out an inspector to confirm the claims. What the inspector discovered was rows and rows of automobiles, a few of them much less automobiles than burned out stays, leaking toxins into the already contaminated soil — thought Janet Galvez, an funding officer for Prologis, just lately informed The Oaklandside the corporate’s marketing consultant solely discovered leakage in a single small space.

On the entrance of the yard there was a brand new signal for “AutoPlus & Towing,” the towing firm contracted with the town of Oakland by means of the Oakland Police Division. In keeping with Roe, the county environmental official, Alameda County had no concept any of this was taking place. 

In an Oct. 10 electronic mail to a Prologis worker obtained by The Oaklandside, Roe writes, “The dearth of transparency from Prologis” with county environmental officers and the group “relating to using the positioning as a tow yard is unacceptable.”

Roe requested for a gathering after which outlined how fully the county had been blindsided. “I request that you just present info to ACEHD [Alameda County Environmental Health Department] on when the contract was signed to permit use of the positioning as a tow yard, the connection of the tow yard with the Metropolis of Oakland, the preliminary date that automobiles had been moved to the positioning, and the variety of automobiles which can be presently saved on web site, and the variety of automobiles that had been dropped at or faraway from the positioning as of in the present day.”

“The tow yard operations weren’t acceptable for this web site; they need to have by no means been placed on there and we weren’t notified of it,” Roe informed The Oaklandside just lately. “There have been numerous releases coming from these automobiles that had been burned out, crashed inoperable leaking fluids leaking contaminants of concern throughout the positioning.”

Auto Plus Towing didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. However paperwork present a collection of web site visits and emails to Auto Plus Towing ensued within the following months, and a January 9 notice of violation for hazardous waste. The tow yard was bringing not solely automobiles that had been left unattended, but in addition autos that had been concerned in crashes or had been in any other case inoperable. Automobiles on this situation can leak contaminants which can be unsafe for each environmental and human well being, which Alameda County deems “hazardous waste.” One county inspection, final November, discovered that “quite a few burned autos had been noticed with unstabilized burned particles with potential chemical substances of concern together with however not restricted to PFAS and SVOCs,” or semivolatile natural compounds. PFAS has been linked to a variety of cancers, whereas SVOCs have been linked to asthma and lung cancer.

This was a shock to the group and to CBE workers, stated Adele Watts, the group’s co-director of northern California applications.

“We had been all fairly offended as soon as we confirmed the positioning was getting used as a tow yard,” stated Watts, who works out of CBE’s Oakland workplace. “We had been face-to-face with Prologis. We had shared our tales with their workers members. On these calls that we now have with Prologis, they talked about the truth that they had been rooted in group that they had been, , they had been happy with their headquarters being in Oakland, they’d a workers member who expressed that she was from East Oakland and that this group was vital to her and to their group, and that they had been going to be attentive to that and to us all through this redevelopment course of.”

She stated that at no level in these conversations did the corporate point out that they had been going to make use of the positioning as a tow yard. 

After the shock wore off, Watts stated she was left with a well-recognized feeling.

“Our communities are sometimes handled this manner,” she stated. “We have now individuals who come, whether or not it’s a regulator or a improvement enterprise — no matter it’s — they’ll are available and speak to us, after which go and do one thing the other that impacts us with out that consideration.”

Representatives of the county reached out to the town of Oakland for solutions. Town was not a celebration to Alameda County’s settlement with Prologis, however metropolis officers have entry to a public database that reveals the place the county is concerned in poisonous cleanup efforts. On January 23, 2025, Peterson Vollman, a planner with the Metropolis of Oakland, wrote to Roe, “I had no concept that this enterprise was transferring into this location.”

“I seemed up the information,” Vollman continued, “and apparently there was a Zoning Clearance granted for the Outside Storage Exercise on the web site by the counter workers right here.”

It shouldn’t have been, he stated. Not as a result of the previous AB&I property was a contaminated cleanup web site — however as a result of it was situated inside half a mile of the Coliseum BART station.

Because it was “granted erroneously,” he stated, “I’ve reached out to the operations supervisor for the counter workers and requested that they rescind” the clearance.

Joe DeVries, a deputy metropolis administrator with Oakland, described the town giving a inexperienced mild to the tow operation as a “small error” that was instantly remedied. Afterward, he stated, the town started working intently with different companies, together with county environmental regulators.

Roe, the top of land and water safety for the county, stated they see the dearth of interagency dialogue and collaboration as problematic. Any web site presently present process a clean-up with Alameda County might have a wide range of environmental hazards on the property. Even properties the place remediation is full should face restrictions on their use. And all of these cleanup websites dwell on the publicly obtainable GeoTracker database. Roe confirmed that the town has entry to GeoTracker and will search for properties there earlier than issuing permits. 

However Roe additionally stated that the county and the town don’t routinely talk about websites present process remediation.

DeVries stated he was uncertain whether or not such communication happens or not. “However I’d say the extent of coordination proper now on this web site is heightened,” he stated, “simply due to the way it all unfolded.”

Jean Walsh, a spokesperson for the town of Oakland, stated that each Geotracker and one other database, Envirostor, run by the state’s Division of Poisonous Substance Management, “are referenced within the Metropolis’s Improvement Utility and checked by workers as a part of assessment of improvement functions.”

Walsh stated when questions come up, the town reaches out to the related mission lead listed by the county or state for the positioning. “No single Metropolis entity is ‘monitoring’ these websites,” Walsh stated, but when the town is notified by a regulatory company {that a} compliance motion is required, the town’s environmental safety and compliance unit “is the first preliminary contact.” For the previous AB&I web site, she stated, the primary contact inside the metropolis would have been the division of planning and constructing. 

Requested whether or not a zoning clearance was acceptable for the San Leandro Avenue web site, Walsh famous that the clearance was revoked. 

“In any case, a Zoning Clearance (ZC) is just not a improvement allow,” she stated. “A ZC doesn’t waive another laws or allowing processes required by different accountable companies.”

There are actually a number of regulatory companies concerned in the way forward for the San Leandro Avenue property. Town of Oakland is working to relocate Auto Plus Towing’s yard. The county’s Environmental Well being Division is working with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water High quality Management Board and the state’s Division of Poisonous Substances Management in overseeing the subsequent steps within the cleanup. 

The Oaklandside requested Roe what Alameda County would do to sanction Prologis for violating the deed restrictions imposed by the county in 2011. “No Proprietor or Occupant of the Burdened Property shall act in any method that may irritate or contribute to the present environmental circumstances of the Burdened Property,” the restriction reads. Roe stated the county’s Environmental Well being Division doesn’t, by itself, difficulty fines for violations of deed restrictions. If remediation phrases are usually not met, and the state of affairs must be escalated, Alameda County passes enforcement off to an company “with an even bigger stick,” Roe stated, equivalent to California’s Division of Poisonous Substances Management or the regional water high quality management board. 

When requested by The Oaklandside if Prologis was conscious of any restrictions on the positioning that will have forbidden the tow yard operation, Mattie Sorrentino, an organization spokesperson, stated by electronic mail that Prologis was working effectively inside the parameters of what was allowed on the web site, because the property was zoned for “a spread of commercial and industrial makes use of.”

The towing firm “secured a zoning clearance from the Metropolis for its operations,” she stated. “Prologis relied in good religion on this clearance as proof of land use/zoning compliance.” For the reason that zoning clearance was rescinded, she stated, the corporate has been working with the town, the county, and Auto Plus Towing “to wind down operations.”

Data present Duke Realty had an environmental web site evaluation executed on the property in April 2022, the identical 12 months it was acquired by Prologis. This evaluation, addressed to Jason Bernstein, then vice-president of improvement for Duke Realty, is a 3,316-page document that references the deed restriction inside the first 5 pages, and several other instances after. Inside months, Bernstein posted on LinkedIn that he had taken on the identical position at Prologis. 

Galvez, who oversaw and procured the lease with Auto Plus for Prologis, stated the phrases of the deed restriction are “subjective” and Prologis believed it was working in keeping with what was allowed. “Our intent was by no means to cover something from anybody,” she stated. “I believed we had been in full authority to signal the lease.” 

She stated that when Prologis grew to become conscious of the problems on the positioning, the corporate labored shortly to take away any autos of concern. 

‘That is an Oakland drawback’

As of July 31, Auto Plus Towing has ceased operations on its East Oakland web site — almost 10 months after group members alerted the county to the tow operations going down there. In keeping with DeVries, Auto Plus Towing will take away all automobiles from the positioning by September. It takes time for the autos to be disposed of, he stated, as the town is required to maintain impounded autos for 30 days in order that house owners can retrieve them. Town stated it is going to be transferring the operation to a different location with out the identical historical past of contamination. 

DeVries emphasised that choosing up autos is a necessary service for the town, one he sees as being of specific want in East Oakland. 

“The issue of inoperable autos on metropolis streets is absolutely epidemic particularly in numerous our East Oakland neighborhoods,” he stated. “The exact same, high-priority fairness neighborhoods which were disproportionately impacted by environmental injustice, by lack of funding. , these are the identical neighborhoods the place we see so many deserted autos on the road.”

He stated that towing these autos helps neighborhoods like East Oakland by eradicating them, and any hazards related to them, from residential and industrial streets.

Galvez made a lot the identical level, saying she got here from a group in Los Angeles that was much like East Oakland and feels a sure kinship with the group.

“I believed we had been doing a superb factor for the group and the town,” she stated. 

This argument leaves Watts unmoved. 

“As an East Oakland resident, there are nonetheless automobiles which can be deserted and there are nonetheless automobiles that want towing,” Watts stated. “Myself or any of the group members who expressed considerations about this web site, we’re not asking for the town to not do their job and to go away deserted autos and the roads. That’s not the answer. However it’s also not honest and never an answer to make use of this web site.”

As operations of Auto Plus Towing wind down, and new remediation actions start, Roe stated they’ve gone out on a number of events to verify on progress on the San Leandro Avenue web site. They stated the county is now working to evaluate any new environmental hazards and remediation wants which will have been launched to the positioning by the tow operations. As soon as Auto Plus autos have all been relocated, Roe stated the county will do one other full evaluation. 

The county, the town, and different organizations have been holding group check-ins in regards to the web site, however many residents informed The Oaklandside that they nonetheless really feel like they’re being left in the dead of night. 

Sloane-Regulation stated their group continues to be combating for transparency. One time when the group requested for a key planning doc, they stated they had been informed they’d must submit a proper public information request.

“Why would you make us soar by means of these further hoops?” they stated. 

The ordeal has left East Oakland environmental activists feeling exhausted, at the same time as they are saying they’ll proceed to watchdog the positioning for the protection of themselves and their group. 

“We actually need individuals to simply hear and perceive that we’re not going away,” Scott stated. “We’re not one thing that you could put behind a barrier as a result of it’s ugly to take a look at, and we want individuals to know that that is an Oakland drawback, not simply the East Oakland drawback.”