Current Cases

CBE's unique strategy combines grassroots organizing, environmental research and legal advocacy to empower underserved urban communities.  CBE and its attorneys equip residents and communities most impacted by industrial pollution with the tools to inform, monitor, and transform their environment.    Our legal team continues its successful record of using environmental and civil-rights laws to secure environmental justice for low-income communities of color.  Along with organizing and research, our legal work also helps local communities make their case before state and local government agencies. 

Transportation Justice

Transit Equity for Bus Riders

In April 2005, CBE and co-plaintiffs filed suit in federal court against the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission for maintaining a “separate and unequal” transit system by discriminating against AC Transit riders, who are nearly 80 percent people of color.  AC Transit riders are lower income and more likely to depend on public transit than users of BART or CalTrain, yet those systems receive much larger subsidies per passenger than AC Transit.  Co-plaintiffs include individual AC Transit riders and Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 192, who are represented by Public Advocates and Altshuler Berzon, respectively.  Representing CBE are attorney Bill Lann Lee of Lewis Feinberg Lee and CBE legal staff.  Lee is the former head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. 

We are currently in the case’s discovery phase.  Local governments support our cause.  On May 23, 2006, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling for MTC to provide “equitable financial support” to AC Transit riders.  Their support follows similar resolutions by the city councils of Oakland, Richmond, and Berkeley.

Toxics

Protecting Children From Dirty Diesel

        Information coming soon!

Clearn Air Act

Pacific Steel

CBE and Golden Gate University Law Clinic filed a complaint on July 6, 2006 asserting that Pacific Steel Casting Co. violated the Clean Air Act by exceeding emissions limits for precursor organic compounds (“POCs”) by 12 times the legal limit, and failing to comply with the federal reporting and record-keeping requirements.  POCs contain hazardous air pollutants that cause respiratory problems, and also react with nitrogen oxides to form smog.  The third largest foundry of its kind in the U.S., Pacific Steel also has been a source of noxious odors in West Berkeley for over two decades.

West Berkeley is a densely-populated community and is home to many low income people of color, as well as several daycare centers and schools.  Community residents have long complained about odor, headaches, nausea and chest tightness, which they believe are caused by the facility. CBE is working with concerned residents to solve both the problems of pollution and noxious odors. 

Richmond Crematorium

We worked with community members in Richmond to fight a proposed zoning change that would allow crematoriums to operate wherever the city is zoned for retail or commercial operations.  The first crematorium, proposed for a space on Hensley Street, near our members in Atchison Village and Liberty Village, would have processed 3,000 bodies a year and added to already unacceptable levels of mercury and other industrial pollution in Richmond.  Due to legal and organized community pressure, the Richmond City Council voted to issue a moratorium until the city’s General Plan is complete.

Priority Reserve Petition.

In September 2006, South Coast Air Quality Management District (“SCAQMD”) approved amendments to Rule 1309.1, concerning its Priority Reserve, and adopted Rule 1315, concerning its tracking of New Source Review (“NSR”) offset accounts.  CBE has petitioned the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for a public hearing to determine whether these new rules violate the Protect California Air Act (SB 288), which forbids “backsliding”, the creation of less stringent pollution rules for new and modified plants.  For more information on Priority Reserve, go here.

Power Plants

Vernon Power Plant

The City of Vernon is proposing a giant 914-megawatt gas-fired powerplant to be located in the city, which currently needs to import only 70 megawatts of electricity.  This project benefits almost no residents as less than 100 people live industrial Vernon, but it will cause pollution and health impacts for hundreds of thousands people who live in adjacent Huntington Park, Maywood, and other communities.

The power plant will emit 900 tons of air pollution annually, and 147 tons of PM, for which the South Coast Air Basin is in serious non-attainment.  The project proposes to use credits from the challenged Priority Reserve to meet air quality requirements. CBE is assisting members and other residents of Southeast Los Angeles in the California Energy Commission power-plant siting process.

Priority Reserve

In October 2006, CBE and allies filed suit against SCAQMD demanding that it revoke two rules that created new emissions credits for power plants in the "Priority Reserve”, which is normally restricted to essential public services such as schools and hospitals.  SCAQMD is charged with violating the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when it approved these rules without studying its potential impacts on the environment and public health.

Power plant sites identified in the rules include Vernon, Carson, the City of Industry, Grand Terrace, Romoland, Palmdale and Victorville.  The rules will allow these potential polluters will emit thousands of tons of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds, which will devastate the health of local communities, and contribute 3 million pounds of greenhouse gases

Among the groups joining us are Natural Resources Defense Council and California Communities Against Toxics.

Romoland Power Plant

General Electric has a permit to construct a 775 megawatt power plant in a low income community of color 1000 feet from an elementary school in Romoland, in Riverside County.  The plant would increase local emissions of particulate matter (PM) by three times due to the new H-style turbine plant that is claimed to reduce greenhouse gases.  We are represented by Adams Broadwell on this case, which is currently on appeal.

Clean Water

EPA Compliance Case

Since 1999, the San Francisco Bay Water Board and other regional boards have included so-called “compliance schedules” in pollution permits.  Instead of making progress toward ever-smaller discharges, these new permits allow polluters to delay compliance, and continue discharging the same level of pollution for up to 20 years.

In response, CBE sued to secure a decision from EPA that California’s compliance schedule authority does not comply with the federal CWA.  EPA had not acted to approve this provision of the State Implementation Plan (SIP), but it did nothing to prevent the issuing of illegal compliance schedules. Soon after we filed this lawsuit, EPA rejected the state’s most egregious SIP provisions.  We also filed an Administrative Procedure Act claim over related issues, which is still ongoing.  Joining us as co-plaintiffs are San Francisco Baykeeper, Humboldt Baykeeper and Ecological Rights Foundation.  Our co-counsel are Environmental Advocates and Lawyers for Clean Water.

Potrero NPDES Permit

Located in Southeast San Francisco, Mirant’s Potrero Power Plant is one of the largest polluters in the city.  In addition to air pollution, Potrero has immense negative impacts on San Francisco Bay.  The plant’s “once-through cooling” system sucks in water from the Bay and kills an estimated 290 million larval fish every year. This system then discharges heated waste-water, stirring up polluted sediments containing cancer-causing PCBs and mercury, and harming residents who fish and swim nearby. 

After years of work, the San Francisco Regional Water Board issued an order requiring Potrero Power Plant to demonstrate by the end 2008 that its once-through cooling system is not harming the Bay, upgrade to eliminate the negative impacts, or shut down the plant entirely.

Oil Refineries

CBE v. SCAQMD and ConocoPhillips

We are appealing our case against SCAQMD and ConocoPhillips for Conoco’s proposed Wilmington Refinery ULSD project.  This project would significantly increase NOx emissions from the refinery and increase the use of anhydrous ammonia. SCAMD allowed the project to proceed without an EIR and without requiring best available technology, which violates CEQA and California’s Clean Air Act.

CBE continues to coordinate this case with Adams Broadwell, who represents Southern California Pipe Trades District Council 16, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry (UA), Local 250. 

Refinery Flaring

At the urging of CBE and its labor union allies, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board (BAAQMD) strengthened its 2005 refinery flare control rule. It now requiring remedial investigation when flaring emits high concentrations of sulfur pollution. The amendment requires oil refineries to perform root cause analysis of flaring events that emit more than 500 pounds per day of sulfur dioxide emission and report its
results within 60 days. CBE members and labor unions who represent refinery workers identified the need for this remedial analysis of  high-emission flaring, and supported this amendment.  Successful enforcement of the new flare rule may reduce maximum episodic air pollution levels at fenceline communities by an estimated 50%.