Open-topped coal trains dump pollution into the Bay & neighborhoods

The coal industry transports millions of tons of coal through the Bay Area every year. Coal dust—linked to bronchitis, asthma, and heart disease—blows out of the cars and into the Bay and neighborhoods near train tracks. Each car pollutes nearly 500 pounds of coal per trip.

That’s why Baykeeper and partners at frontline groups across the country recently petitioned the EPA to regulate coal cars. The Clean Water Act gives the EPA the authority to control this source of pollution, but the agency has failed to do so.

As the Bay’s lawyers, Baykeper is asking the agency to do its job, so the Bay—and you and your neighborhood—can be free of toxic coal dust.

Baykeeper also needs your help. In order to make the strongest case possible Baykeeper is looking for photographs of open coal cars and evidence of coal pollution in Richmond, Martinez, Vallejo, Stockton, and other Bay Area neighborhoods located near train tracks or coal terminals. With your permission, Baykeeper will include your photos as part of the evidence in advocacy and legal efforts to stop coal trains from polluting the Bay Area.

"We’ve been on patrol on the boat and seen coal trains traveling along the Bay’s shoreline and through Martinez and Richmond," said Baykeeper’s executive director Sejal Choksi-Chugh. “There’s absolutely no excuse for the coal and railroad industries to pollute the Bay and poison people this way.”

Please post your photos and any notes to Baykeeper’s pollution hotline. You can also sign up here to receive updates about Baykeeper’s legal action to curb coal dust, as well as pollution around the Bay.