By Melissa Yu
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is the agency responsible for permitting “stationary sources” of emissions such as refineries and other industrial facilities. On December 6th, for the first time in many years, the Air District will consider revisions to its permitting process. The Air District’s permitting record indicates a very bad habit of rubber-stamping projects that endanger community health and destabilize the climate. Can that behavior be reformed? Only if we show up and speak out!
Please join us on Wednesday, December 6th to demand permitting rules that prevent increased emissions of carbon dioxide and toxic co-pollutants.
WHAT: Public hearing of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board of Directors on permit rules
WHEN: Wednesday, December 6th, 9:45 am
WHERE: First floor auditorium, 375 Beale Street, San Francisco
The Air District reports that climate targets cannot be met if refinery greenhouse gas emissions increase, and that toxicity from the deadliest air pollutant (fine particulate matter, or PM2.5) kills an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people in the Bay Area each year.
Yet current permit rules allow refineries to increase emissions by using pollution-trading schemes like buying “offsets” for increasing PM2.5 that purport to decrease its emissions elsewhere in the region. Such "offsets" disproportionately impact the environmental health of low-income communities of color living near Bay Area refineries. Refineries are the highest-emitting industrial sector in the region for PM2.5.
Currently, Air District staff’s proposed “improvements” to permitting rules do nothing to control future carbon dioxide emissions. The result is that dangerous projects — like the proposed expansion of crude-by-ship into the Phillips 66 marina at the Rodeo refinery — will continue to be rubber-stamped. As currently proposed, the permit rule updates would fail to prevent the increased emissions that inevitably follow from projects that allow refineries to switch to dirtier crude sources.
Join the Sierra Club, Communities for a Better Environment, and many other green, environmental justice, climate, and health-protection groups on December 6th to demand that our elected representatives on the Air District board vote to fix these rules. Show up to tell your elected representatives on the Air District board that our region’s air permit rules should be fixed to:
- Reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other toxic air pollutants; and
- Close the pollution-trading loophole that lets polluters increase deadly PM2.5 air pollution in nearby communities by purchasing environmentally unjust “offset” credits.
What You Can Do
We hope that you can join us on December 6th to demand that our elected Air District representatives fix permit rules to protect our climate and the health of the Bay Area's most vulnerable communities.
If you can't be there in person, send a message to your board member. You can find your representative online here or email the clerk of the board at mhiratzka@baaqmd.gov.
Image credit: Cartoon by Richmond artist David Moore