OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — Oakland’s former mayor Libby Schaaf took the stand Wednesday in a trial over whether the city violated a lease agreement with a developer at Port of Oakland by banning coal shipments.
Schaaf testified in a long-running state trial on Oakland Global Rail Enterprise’s claims that the city, under Schaaf’s leadership, violated a 2013 deal to build an export terminal at the port's old West Oakland Army Base.
Schaaf — who was mayor from 2015 until 2023 — bluntly opposed any possibility of the developer shipping coal through the new terminal, once local protests of the developer’s discussion with Utah coal shippers began. The developer claims that the city's anti-coal resolutions caused a loss of more than $148 million in profits.
Oakland Global president Mark McClure testified for two days describing how Schaaf and other city staff opposed discussions of shipping coal. He and partner Phil Tagami sued for breach of contract, and a federal judge in 2018 ruled that the city’s anti-coal ordinance breached the terms of agreement.
Before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Noël Wise in Hayward, the plaintiffs’ attorney Barry Lee questioned Schaaf about answers she gave in her deposition. He frequently moved to strike her responses as nonresponsive, which Wise nearly always overruled.
Schaaf said that she had fully supported the terminal project, but had never thought that shipping coal was required to make the project financially viable. She said she has known Tagami and McClure since high school, and thought they understood public opinion against coal transport in Oakland. A Sierra Club Yodeler article in 2015 reported how an estimated 6 million tons of Utah coal traveling on Bay Area rail lines would cover communities with toxic dust, and quoted Tagami promising that his company had "no interest or involvement in the pursuit of coal-related operations."
The former mayor testified she was “shocked and angry” to learn about discussions to ship coal after all. She said that when she contacted Tagami about it in May 2015, the city was rocked with protests over labor at the port and police brutality. She added that in her opinion, such protests must be prevented because “It has long been an impediment to economic development.” Oakland’s residents are known for protesting even the possibility of coal transport due to its potential long-term effects on the city — pushback that has renewed since the trial kicked off.
But Schaaf said her chief concern was bringing coal and the associated emissions back to Oakland, seeing it as a public health risk. She said she worked closely with McClure while working in the port’s public affairs office, surveying the health impacts from soda ash on the community adjacent to the port, West Oakland.
“I was looking for a win-win solution to make a no-coal terminal. I felt like with time, the plaintiffs would come to that conclusion, too," Schaaf testified.
To the city’s counsel Daralyn Durie, she said: “To see the death toll, the cancer cases, the missed days of school among children with asthma, had a tremendous effect on me and made me very aware of how burdened this community was by port activities.”
On cross-examination, Schaaf acknowledged that she does not know what effect transporting soda ash could have on Oakland and only had evidence of coal’s adverse impacts on health and the ozone layer. She also did not know if the city completed an economic analysis to determine the planned terminal’s profits without coal shipments.
McClure faced cross-examination by the defense after Schaaf stepped down. The city’s secondary attorney Danielle Leonard questioned his testimony that the city did not grant his company access to the port land so that it could perform infrastructure improvements as agreed.
McClure said that the only way for the new terminal to make money was to complete track connections and create an operating railway system. He avoided Leonard’s questions about whether his company knew constructing one piece of the track would meet its obligation and deadline under the city agreement multiple times, until forced to answer, “Not to my understanding.”
Leonard pointed out that land where the city had not finished improvements did not affect the land where McClure’s company needed to start work. He continued to claim that the city, despite executing a lease in 2016, did not give his team full unrestricted access to begin work.
The city and the developer have disagreed on whether the city deliberately caused delays and made it impossible to complete infrastructure improvements to move the project along.
McClure’s cross-examination continues Thursday.
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