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Trucks Carrying Medical Waste Blocked at IES Incinerators, 499 High Street, East Oakland! Tuesday, August 7, 2001
See Also: Video of the blockade at indymedia.org Press coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle
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Coalition For Healthy Communities & Environmental Justice Three Arrested
in Successful 8-Hour Blockade Oakland, CA -- Local East Oakland and Alameda residents, community, health, labor, religious and environmental justice activists took nonviolent direct action at the Integrated Environmental Systems incinerators in Oakland, Tuesday, August 7, 2001 beginning at 10 a.m. sharp. Community protesters blocked the entrance to the IES incinerators, risking arrest by nonviolently putting their bodies in front of trucks carrying waste. The Coalition for Healthy Communities and Environmental Justice decided to take this unprecedented and dramatic action in response to IES' insistence that they intend to keep burning millions of pounds of medical and non-medical waste every year. The coalition has offered to work with IES to phase-out virtually all incineration, but IES has rejected our generous offer. The coalition wants IES to phase-out incineration and replace burning with non-incineration technologies that are available to replace virtually all incineration. The coalition is also willing to work with appropriate government agencies and IES to address the best way to deal with the approximately 3% of hospital waste streams currently requiring incineration if treated within the state. Unfortunately, at the last face-to-face negotiations on July 23, IES general manager Richard Stryker informed us of IES' intention to keep the incinerators operating at 100% capacity. In response, our coalition again reiterated in writing our position that IES must move towards a complete phase-out of incineration within a reasonable time period. Local residents and our coalition are further outraged by the failure of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to follow through on the promised "order of abatement" enforcement action against IES months ago. In addition, the Air District is sitting on the long overdue permit decision on IES' Title V Clean Air Act permit application. IES' incinerators burn medical waste from hospitals and other health care institutions, as well as non-medical waste from government contraband and other sources. IES' incinerators routinely emit dioxin, mercury and other highly toxic pollutants even when the incinerators operate perfectly. Unfortunately, IES' incinerators have a notorious track record of permit violations, excess emissions, uncontrolled bypasses of pollution control devices, broken monitors, and other violations. IES has failed to remedy problems as evidenced by the recent thirty day suspension of their permit. During the permit suspension and in the weeks since the permit was reinstated, IES has been sending some waste to be burned at a controversial commercial incinerator on the Gila River Indian Community reservation in Arizona.. Our coalition is united in our position that it is unacceptable for IES to burn medical waste in Arizona or East Oakland! We will no longer allow this environmental racism and injustice to continue. |