Advocates: Reparations are the answer for sea level threat in West Oakland, Calif.
Toxic waste lurking in the soil under the San Francisco Bay community of West Oakland, and places like it, is the next environmental threat in a neighborhood already burdened by pollution. Residents in these communities of color are calling for climate justice as a form of reparations. The stability of buried contamination from Oakland’s industrial past relies on it staying in the soil. But once the rising waters of San Francisco Bay press inland and get underneath these pockets of pollution, a certain amount of that waste will not stay in place. Instead, it will begin to move. More than 130 sites lie in wait. Human-caused climate change is already forcing this groundwater rise in West Oakland and other parts of the Bay Area.
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