Fortifying our Region Against Fossil Fuels

In addition to fighting specific terminals, Stand Up To Oil works to create local policy barriers in communities targeted by the fossil fuel industry to prevent bad projects from being proposed there in the first place.

We have successfully held the line on the bans established over the last few years, and we are seeing progress in moving from temporary moratoriums to permanent land use code changes, and ensuring these policies cover all fossil fuels, not just oil. This work is at a different stage in each community, but we have gained some important ground this past year and continue to engage in long-term planning efforts.

In Tacoma, we secured an interim regulation in 2017 barring new fossil fuel facilities, which we have successfully renewed every six months since. We continue to engage in a long-term planning process in an effort to ultimately secure land use code changes that establish a permanent ban on new facilities and expansions of existing facilities.

In Vancouver, WA, where we defeated the Tesoro Savage terminal in 2018, we quickly pivoted and successfully expanded the City’s existing ban on new oil terminals into a ban on all bulk fossil fuel facilities.

Finally, we have been engaged in Whatcom County to renew the moratorium on new or expanded fossil fuel export facilities every six months since it was first passed in 2016. Five years later in 2021, the Whatcom County Council unanimously passed permanent land-use policies prohibiting new fossil fuel refineries, coal plants, transshipment facilities, piers, and wharfs in the Cherry Point industrial zone in northwest Washington. Cherry Point is home to two of the state’s five oil refineries and is a significant source of tanker traffic in the Salish Sea.

See the other work that Stand Up To Oil has done to engage local governments!