When Pinole made headlines last month for becoming the primary East Bay city to ban recent gas stations, the small community of 18,000 took advantage of a trend that has been spreading across the Bay Area for 3 years.
It all began when Petaluma became the primary city within the country to ban recent gas stations in 2021. But the activists who originally launched this primary effort had no idea it might grow to be a movement – in truth, JoAnn McEachin, a Petaluma resident, helped. She founded the group NoGasHere a decade ago, but says she had no intention on the time , to grow to be an activist, and she or he wasn't even fundamentally against recent gas stations.
Their issue involved a 16-station gas station proposed by supermarket chain Safeway in 2013. Petaluma, a North Bay city of 60,000 people, already had 16 gas stations, but its specific problem was location – the food market I would like to construct on the corner of McDowell Boulevard and Maria Drive, directly across from a campus that houses an elementary school Child development center and a preschool were situated.
McEachin believed the youngsters could be vulnerable to poor air quality in the event that they drove into the wind of the estimated around 2,000 vehicles a day coming out and in of the station. She connected with a gaggle of other concerned residents – a lot of them local moms – who banded together to form NoGasHere, bringing skills from their day-to-day work as lawyers, marketers, teachers and administrative assistants to their cause.
“(Safeway) has upset a lot of women,” McEachin said. “It makes my blood boil when I think about it.”
Despite their efforts, the group did not stop the gas station plan from being implemented after a vital City Council vote in 2018. Former Petaluma council member D'Lynda Fischer said the council's hands are tied – Safeway's proposal complied with all laws required for approval.
“Even though many of us didn't want to vote for the gas station and agreed it shouldn't go there, there was nothing in our laws that said it couldn't be done,” Fischer said.
However, the fight didn’t stop. A small group of NoGasHere members, renamed Save Petaluma, appealed the council's decision and took Safeway and the town to court to force the corporate to conduct a more comprehensive environmental review. After a troublesome two-year legal battle, Save Petaluma won and Safeway withdrew its plans. The site is currently being expanded right into a healthcare facility.
In 2021, the Petaluma City Council declared a climate emergency and adjusted its zoning laws to ban the development of latest gas stations.
Fischer, who played a number one role in each policy proposals, said she was grateful that Save Petaluma appealed. For McEachin and her group, the win was an excellent feeling.
“I'm super happy that we were able to fight back and it gave others the opportunity to say, 'Hey, wait, we have to do this too,'” McEachin said.
Other communities in Sonoma County took notice, starting with the small town of Cotati, where Jenny Blaker and Woody Hastings fought several gas station proposals in the agricultural a part of the county. In addition to emissions from vehicles, they were also concerned about toxic leaks from underground fuel tanks that may poison local soil and groundwater. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that there are currently about 58,000 sites nationwide contaminated by such leaks. In 2022, Safeway agreed to pay $8 million after the state's attorney general's office accused the corporate of violating gasoline leak prevention laws at its 71 California gas stations, including 18 within the Bay Area.
Blaker and Hastings' group, Coalition Opposing New Gas Stations (CONGAS), rejected one proposal but quickly learned of three others. Aware of the arduous work that will be required to stop individual gas station development proposals, they as an alternative began pushing for land use changes, taking their cue from Petaluma's ordinance.
“We had a sense of urgency because at the time it seemed like, 'Man, there are a lot of new proposals for gas stations.' “We have to stop this,” Hastings said.
The movement spread throughout Sonoma County, with similar restrictions eventually encompassing Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Cotati, Novato, Windsor, unincorporated areas and the county's largest city, Santa Rosa.
Cloverdale, Healdsburg and Sonoma are the last three cities in Sonoma County to have similar gas bans. Cloverdale leaders considered passing a ban in 2022, but voted to table the issue.
Meanwhile, cities in Napa County also followed Petaluma's example. In January, St. Helena joined Calistoga, Yountville, American Canyon and Napa — where a temporary ban is in effect — making Napa County the first county in the country to impose a ban on new gas stations in all of its communities. Fairfax and San Anselmo in Marin County have also approved similar measures.
Opponents of the gas ban policy – such as the California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, an organization that represents 300 gas station companies and trucking companies in California – claim the bans could lead to price spikes; that they disproportionately harm small, minority-owned businesses; and that they ignore the tax revenue benefits of the industry.
“Not only does a ban risk significant job losses and harm small businesses, particularly those largely owned by minorities and immigrants, it also neglects the complex economic interconnections within California,” the group said in a letter in January in response the introduction of a new gas station ban in Sacramento was published in its General Plan 2040.
Pinole Mayor Pro Tem Cameron Sasai, who worked on the policy in collaboration with Councilman Devin Murphy, said Petaluma is definitely a model for Pinole's ban.
“Given what Petaluma has done, to me the gas station ban was an obvious next step for our community to end our dependence on fossil fuels,” Sasai said. “I’m proud that our city is leading the way in the East Bay.”
Cotati's Hastings – an energy and environmental policy analyst, strategic planner and community organizer with more than 30 years of experience who currently works with the national nonprofit The Climate Center – said that while gas stations are now an essential business for millions of drivers, In most of them, however, communities are already plentiful and will become obsolete at some point.
He said the steady spread of gas station bans across the Bay Area is evidence that a grassroots political movement can still be built, sustained and grown in an uncertain landscape of national politics.
“Often it is the powerful, entrenched forces that have the resources to undo any efforts we make to achieve something,” Hastings said. “It’s important to remember that sometimes we win.”
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