For four and a half years community and climate activists, health care workers, teachers, longshoremen and first responders in the Portland-Vancouver region have been working hard to stop the largest oil-by-rail terminal in North America, from being built at the Port of Vancouver, Washington. On January 29, 2018, their persistent organizing paid off when Washington State governor Jay Inslee rejected the Tesoro-Savage oil shipping terminal as "not in the best interests of the state and its people." That afternoon at least 100 activists and elected officials gathered across the street from Vancouver City Hall to celebrate.
On this episode of Locus Focus, we celebrate with them the near-certain demise of this behemoth threat that has hung over the community since 2013. We talk with Linda Garcia, a neighborhood activist from the Fruit Valley neighborhood in Vancouver, just blocks from where the terminal would have been sited, and Regna Merritt, with Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, one of the lead organizations in the fight to stop the terminal.
- KBOO