Dimond Neighborhood News

by Daniel Swafford

Alliance for McKillop Slide

The slow, heart-wrenching movement of the earth on the 2500 block of McKillop Road has recently claimed one home, condemned three others, including the Kingdom Hall Church, and spurred the city to take extensive steps to save the road from imminent collapse.

Pinpointing the cause of the hill's movement has been a long, unresolved process. Residents in the area have largely been left on their own to address property damage and to tackle a problem dating back to a large slide in 1953. The Alliance for McKillop Road, a nonprofit company, recently formed to address the hazards faced by residents. "These are brilliant, hard-working people who have taken it upon themselves to fight for the safety and rights of fellow neighbors in what has become a hostile and uncooperative environment," says Diane Dring, who at the moment has cracks only in her driveway and retaining wall. The AMR is funded by donations from affected and concerned residents and has hired geotechnicians and legal advisors to help assess and remedy the problem.

On January 30 the City of Oakland took a leadership role by filing a lawsuit against EBMUD. The suit seeks $3 million compensation for the repairs to the road and for damages to the public land based on its failure to adequately repair leaks and cracks in the nearby Central Reservoir. Due to contingencies with the use of some FEMA funds for the repair and legal limitations of the city, there was no allowance for the recovery of private losses in the suit.

The objectives of the AMR are to find legitimate solutions for the instability and to encourage EBMUD to cooperate in determining how their 164-million-gallon reservoir affects the surrounding hillsides.

Analyzing the slide has exposed long-standing concerns about the safety of the Central Reservoir. Built in 1910, the reservoir holds over 600,000 tons of water on a hillside above thousands of Oakland residents. The proximity to the Hayward fault should be enough cause to create a safe and secure structure. Currently, there is no flood-warning system and little to no education on the dangers of living so close to the reservoir.

Picketing Dimond

The Friday-evening pickets continue at Farmer Joe's. The disagreement resulting in the UFCW's action is not whether the store should unionize, but rather how to proceed in determining if the employees do, in fact, want to join the union. The traditional method of gauging employee interest in unionization is to invite the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to conduct an anonymous vote. Farmer Joe's ownership has agreed to allow the NLRB to facilitate the voting process. The UFCW prefers to have its union representatives conduct the vote by contacting store employees directly.

Farmer Joe's prefers to bring in a neutral party, fearing a union-directed vote is prone to coercion, citing the union's distribution of print and electronic statements containing what they consider are untruths about store practices. The UFCW wants more opportunity to share information with employees.