Trump wants to put a $75m coal terminal in this liberal California city. Residents aren’t having it

Residents of West Oakland, which suffers from toxic waste and high pollution rates, rally against a coal export facility

W est Oakland, a California neighborhood known for its rich history of Black activism from the Pullman Porters’ union to the Black Panthers, might not seem like the site of the country’s next great coal project.

But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is pushing for – with the injection of $75m to build a sprawling coal export terminal in the nearby port of Oakland .

Last week, Donald Trump announced he was using wartime powers to hand $700m to coal projects around the US, including the one in Oakland. The news has breathed renewed energy into a decade-long battle against the coal terminal, which Trump hopes will break ground as soon as this summer.

Anti-coal activists were already planning a gathering about the project in Berkeley this month. But Trump’s 4 June announcement “accelerated everything”, said Veronica Eady, executive director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, a grassroots organization focused on environmental justice in West Oakland, which has a high pollution burden from the nearby port, highways and other industry. “Now there is even more urgency, particularly since President Trump said he wants it to start this summer.”

Since the president’s announcement, Bay Area organizers with the No Coal in Oakland and Keep Coal Out of the East Bay coalitions have met to discuss strategies to continue their fight against the coal terminal, which has faced years of delays and lawsuits from the city, which has tried to ban coal storage.

In a progressive city such as Oakland that has worked to remedy environmental disparities over the past decade, Trump’s investment in one of the dirtiest fossil fuels sets California up for another clash with his administration.

“By injecting millions of taxpayer dollars into a coal terminal that Oaklanders have fought for a decade to stop, this administration is sentencing West Oakland, one of the most pollution-burdened communities in California, to generational harm,” the California state assembly member Mia Bonta said in a statement . “The families who have fought the hardest to keep this terminal out of their neighborhood will bear the highest cost.”