Schnitzer Steel - CLEAN UP YOUR ACT OR GET OUT OF TOWN

East Bay residents demand Schnitzer Steel clean up its act or get out of town.

Environmental Democracy Project (EDP), West Oakland Cultural Action Network (WOCAN), Oakland Cannery Collective, and the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP) have joined together to collaborate and call for environmental justice for our communities.  We are horrified and angry at the latest fire that erupted on August 9, 2023 at the Schnitzer Steel scrap metal facility in West Oakland, California. However, we are not surprised. Our community has been fighting for tighter regulation, stronger enforcement, and cleaner practices at Schnitzer Steel for as long as we’ve been neighbors.

Schnitzer Steel—which sits within one mile of more than a dozen daycare centers, eight schools, four senior housing facilities, 10 public parks, and two hospitals—is a notorious polluter with a long history of releasing toxins into a historically Black community already overburdened by industrial pollution. It has a decades-long history of Notices of Violation from multiple Federal and State agencies, including a lawsuit brought by the California State Attorney General that required Schnitzer to install emission control systems on the mega-shredder that reduces entire automobiles into fist-size chunks. Plastic, fabrics, steel, brass and copper are extruded into huge flammable piles to await sorting and export. These piles catch fire almost yearly. The owners of Schnitzer Steel say there is nothing they can do to avoid the fires. By their account, toxic fires in Oakland are actually part of their business model.

Schnitzer itself has stated that at any given time, 70,000-80,000 tons of material may be found in outdoor piles awaiting shredding, in addition to 300-500 tons of partially processed material and 350 tons of chemically-treated material. This is what our community is breathing this morning as the fire still smolders and pollutants hang in our air. 

The West Oakland community has had enough. We have been actively pushing to install on-site air monitors at the Schnitzer facility for years but continue to hit roadblocks. We urge local regulators, including the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, to classify Schnitzer’s toxic stockpiles as hazardous waste, something the company successfully lobbied against when fighting the Oakland A’s Howard Terminal Project. We fully support the Oakland City Council’s recent authorization of The Civil Protection Of The People Of Oakland Ordinance, which now gives the City Attorney the ability to bring civil action against polluters like Schnitzer Steel, and urge the City Attorney to seek action here. 

It is the people of color, who live in the flatlands, and our youth, elders, and sick, with their increased health risks from exposure to Schnitzer’s toxic emissions, who carry the disproportionate burden of this company’s profit-driven pollution. Yet, as Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Hayward and other East Bay residents discovered again during the latest toxic fire, we all breathe this air.

As residents, we must push agencies and regulators for stricter controls and more enforcement. We must partner with local agencies, community organizations, engineers, and residents to bring cleaner infrastructure to West Oakland, such as indoor air filtration in residential housing facilities, like the ones recently installed at Saint Mary’s Center in the Hoover-Foster neighborhood. But we cannot continue to clean up Schnitzer’s mess.

The City, State and Federal government must put a stop to this. And Schnitzer Steel must CLEAN UP ITS ACT—OR GET OUT OF TOWN.

Sign the petition today to push agencies and regulators for stricter controls and more enforcement. Our community deserves BETTER!