By Martha Kreeger with contributions by Dr. Marlina Rose Selva
After a year and a half of devastating job losses and health impacts from the pandemic, Hayward is facing tough decisions on which path to take on the road to a just recovery. Nowhere is that more clear than with two proposed Amazon last-mile delivery warehouses near Hayward’s sensitive shoreline. Sierra Club has partnered with environmental justice organizations, community leaders and groups, and local labor unions to demand that Hayward officials put safeguards in place to protect its shoreline and vulnerable communities. As proposed, these delivery warehouses would disturb Hayward’s wetland ecosystems and significantly increase the amount of vehicle exhaust in the area, worsening air quality, harming public health, and exacerbating healthcare costs, all while providing low-income jobs without employment protections. The communities that live, work, and play in these neighborhoods already struggle disproportionately from COVID-19 impacts, high air pollution levels, and economic inequality. As a partner in environmental justice movements, we have the responsibility to fight for equitable treatment of all people who live on this planet and the lands we reside upon.
Amazon has purchased two sites within Hayward’s industrial zone on West Winton Avenue and Clawiter Road that could provide close to a million square feet of warehouse space to send out last-mile deliveries to Amazon facilities and customers within a six to twenty mile radius. At a recent Hayward Economic Development Division meeting on the Clawiter Road Amazon site, officials stated that 50 Amazon delivery vehicles are scheduled to leave the warehouse every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day to deliver packages on the last leg, or “mile,” of their journey directly to consumers’ doorsteps.
The two Amazon last-mile delivery facilities are at the center of a network of Amazon sites along the East Bay coastline and will service communities throughout the Bay Area. The hundreds of workers Amazon needs to hire to operate these warehouses will initially come from the already hard-hit neighborhoods in Hayward and unincorporated Alameda County. Wages could be relatively low, between $15 - $17 dollars per hour, and these jobs come without the worker protections and earning potential of union jobs.
Dangers of Last-Mile Delivery on Environmental and Public Health
The Sierra Club has fought to keep the Hayward shoreline protected, clean, and accessible to East Bay residents for decades. The Hayward and East Bay roadways that would be impacted by these projects are within an area that is already disproportionately burdened by pollution, particulate matter (PM), and toxic substances, and has some of the most vulnerable populations in southern Alameda County. Those delivery vehicles will be emitting additional pollution into our neighborhood streets and raising vehicle emission levels, including carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emission levels, unless we require them to be electric. The potential pollution burden into our East Bay neighborhoods is estimated to be between 28,000 and 48,000 miles traveled every single day and would result in increased childhood asthma rates, hitting our vulnerable Hayward communities hardest. When Hayward City Councilmember Aisha Wahab questioned Amazon representatives and developers in June regarding whether or not Amazon could commit to any number of electric vehicles at the two sites, Amazon and developers responded that they did not know if even a single vehicle would be electric.
A recent study from the Environmental Defense Fund shows East Bay communities like Oakland, Castro Valley, Hayward, and Fremont have the greatest health impacts from childhood asthma, highest fatality rates, and larger healthcare costs in neighborhoods where air quality is ridden with vehicle exhaust. Without mitigations and requirements placed on Amazon by Hayward officials, there will be no protections for the residents and children living within the delivery areas of the two last-mile stations.
“Amazon warehouses have historically expanded around working-class communities predominately made up of households of color,” said Dr. Marlina Rose Selva, a Sierra Club leader and Indigenous environmental activist. “Our vulnerable communities in Hayward already have less access to nature, parks, and open space. Many people cannot get away from the pollution and stress by driving out to hiking trails or regional parks. They have less access to traveling farther to ‘get away.’ Our home should not be a place we need to get away from anyhow. We are meant to live in nature as it is an integral part of our health and happiness. As Sierra Club literature states, ‘everyone deserves access to nature.’ In addition to air and land pollution and land degradation, light pollution and noise pollution from the activity at these warehouses significantly affects physical and mental health of all living things. Wildlife and plants at or near the wetlands will also be significantly disturbed.” These effects on quality of work life, family life, and the health of the shoreline species must be understood and respected.
Putting This in Perspective on Dollar and Cents
During the pandemic, while communities like Hayward experienced disproportionate COVID-19 impacts compared to other more affluent Bay Area communities, Amazon’s profits increased by 84 percent over earnings in the year prior, achieving a yearly increase in annual revenue of over $100 billion dollars. Amazon achieved this in part through a well-documented history of poor working conditions, including impossible delivery schedules, high stress environments, and low wages, along with having a reputation for one of the worst worker injury records in the warehouse and delivery industries.
In contrast, union workers at USPS and UPS delivering Amazon Prime packages during this time were paid fair wages and enjoyed all the protections and benefits provided with their union jobs — privileges that Amazon workers do not have, even as many of them demand more accountability from Amazon. In the past decade, California communities that house Amazon warehouses often have higher levels of both air pollution and poverty over time, another indication that we need more safeguards put in place in Hayward to protect our most vulnerable communities.
California lost jobs at a rate that was almost 20 percent higher than American job losses overall, with the brunt of those job losses experienced in communities of color where the intersection of low-income workers and people who could not continue their jobs from home was at its highest, like those in Hayward and unincorporated Alameda County. And to make matters significantly worse, it was within these vulnerable communities that COVID-19 hit the hardest, with higher levels of adverse effects from the virus throughout every stage of the pandemic. Across California, we have experienced this pandemic very differently depending on the neighborhood we live in, if we retained employment, and what that job looked like. It is critical that we make decisions moving forward that prioritize a just recovery for our whole community.
The state’s economy is recovering, but our only path to a just recovery is through demanding that gains be equitably shared. For the just recovery California and the planet require, we need a commitment to provide and support good jobs, with fair wages and protections for working families, access to universal healthcare, and a climate stabilization program that first reduces pollution in neighborhoods where it is highest and then for communities across California. We need Hayward to require these steps from Amazon for all our sakes.
Next Steps in Achieving a Just Recovery
When Amazon comes into a community, the burden to negotiate revenues and community benefit agreements that protect neighborhoods falls on city officials and community leaders. This opportunity Hayward has to fight for a just recovery for all our residents is critical to the future of the East Bay — but they do not need to act without our support and guidance. The voices of local leaders, Sierra Club volunteers, labor groups, and our environmental justice partners must advocate for clean air and water, and a stronger, more just recovery because we know that the path to sustainability is narrow and critical to our survival.
To join in this critical discussion of achieving a just recovery in the East Bay, sign up for our community meetings for yourself and/or your organization. We plan to hold our first community meeting in the end of September, with more meetings and action opportunities to come. Please check the Activities and Events calendar for details on our first meeting and future events and actions.
Martha Kreeger is the chair of the Sierra Club Southern Alameda County Group Executive Committee, Dr. Marlina Rose Selva is a member of the Executive Committee.
Photo credit: An Amazon Prime delivery van by Tony Webster via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).