PrintAugust 3, 2007
The tragedy of 'environmental injustice'
Christopher Alleva writes today about the Society for Environmental Journalists, and their forthcoming meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here is one of the excursions the journalists are going to be taking (in their words);
"Amid the extraordinary wealth and environmental consciousness ringing San Francisco Bay, two communities at the center of it all wallow in poverty and pollution."The East Bay cities of Richmond and Oakland are the industrial entrepôts for the economy of Northern California and beyond. Both surround the massive Port of Oakland, the nation's fourth largest, which fouls water and air with toxics and exotic creatures and is suspected of causing sharply higher rates of asthma and premature death from other diseases.
As usual with this crowd, doom and gloom emotionalism prevails over rational assessment of the facts and dangers. To be sure, older industrial and port areas suffer from toxins disposed of foolishly in an era when the dangers were not properly understood. But the above description is exaggerated almost as much as global warming fears. Environmental remediation is able to accomplish impressive feats of renewal.
I happen to know a little bit about the Ports of Oakland and Richmond. I have a longstanding interest in the history of the nation's transportation infrastructure and industrial archaeology. I also recognize that the journalists are going to see what they want to see. So I want to show American Thinker readers what the propaganda factory doesn't want you to see. Here are some pictures I recently took of one of the formerly worst-polluted sites, now cleaned up and re-born: the former Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, industrial marvels created by Henry J. Kaiser that applied mudular building and assembly line technology to the production of thousands of Liberty Ships during World War II. The crews at Kaiser Shipyards shocked the world by producing one ship in five days.
Take a look at what this Kaiser Shipyard looked like during the war. Imagine the asbestos, solvents, acids, and other industrial chemicals, the lubricantsand fuels that were spilled, dumped and buried on this site. Adjacent to the Kaiser Shipyard was the Santa Fe Railway docks, where Santa Fe trains from the east deposited and picked up freight for ships headed across the Pacific.
Must be some really bedraggled and oppressed victims living around there now, you would think. Surely the sensitive environmental journalists are ready to chronicle the depths of exploitation. Oh, the injustice!
Here is what they will find:
The rather nice high tech office building in the background offers its occupants views of the marina and San Francisco Bay. There are townhouses, condos, and even luxury houses, many of them with Bay views and marina views:
Those tall structures you see in the background are cranes on the container docks in the Port of Richmond, a modernized successor to the old Santa Fe Railway docks. Here are some of the many townhouses:
Obviously the oppressed masses here need rescuing by journalists.
