City leaders applauded groundbreaking on a new parking garage at the Richmond BART station during a Tuesday morning ceremony.

“I envision people parking cars in clean, safe spots, hopping on BART or Amtrak and saving gas money,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin told a small crowd. “We in Richmond are focusing on the shift away from fossil fuels.”

The new parking garage is scheduled to be completed by early 2012, and will consist of six levels and 764 parking spaces. Meanwhile, a section of existing parking lot on the west side of the station between 15^th and 16^th streets will close beginning August 16, while parking on the east side of the station will remain open, according to BART’s website.

McLaughlin, who will campaign for re-election this year in part on her green development and transportation agenda, touted the development as part of a larger trend. “We are clearly changing our image here in Richmond,” she said.

Other speakers included Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Agency; Maria Viramontes, councilmember; a representative of Congressman George Miller; Joel Keller, BART board member; and Otheree Christian of the Iron Triangle Neighborhood Council.

Men in hardhats stood waiting for the festivities to end so they could get back to work on the hulking blue equipment, which already sat in the parking lot where the garage will be built.

The project is led by Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency as part of their transit village project at the Richmond BART Station, which first brought mass transit into the city in the early 1970s.

The $25 million project is also funded with money from a variety of city, county, state and federal sources.

The parking structure is envisioned as a replacement for parking spaces on the east side of the BART Station, where a mix of retail, commercial and residential construction will comprise a new Richmond Transit Village, according to BART.

Construction on the parking structure creates about 200 jobs.

Reporting was provided by Rob Gunnison.

In a meeting that was longer on simmering frustrations than new ideas, about 40 people gathered Wednesday for the first of three planned workshops to discuss alternatives to a controversial plan to build a hotel and Indian casino at Point Molate on Richmond’s northern shoreline.

The meeting was hosted by Design, Community and Environment, a Berkeley-based company that has been hired to gather alternative development ideas for the Point Molate site. The company will ultimately vet and present any feasible ideas to the Richmond City Council, which in turn will have the option of requesting that those ideas be included in an Environmental Impact Review and studied further.

However many of the city residents who gathered for the meeting, which was hosted in the basement of the city council chambers, voiced their disapproval with the criteria by which DCE will judge new ideas, arguing that in addition to fiscal feasibility, new ideas should be assessed on the basis of their environmental credentials and value to the greater public, among others.

“This is a rigged [process],” said Richmond resident Michael Beer, who argued that other developers have been shut out of the bidding process. “You’re just pretending to look at these [new ideas].”

David Early, the president of DCE, stressed that his company, although it is being contracted by Upstream, the developers of the current Point Molate plan, will judge any new ideas on their own merits and without prejudice.

Members of the group Citizens for a Sustainable Point Molate handed out fliers before Wednesday’s meeting that called the workshops “a sham.”

“The timing of these workshops reflects Upstream’s desire to go through the motions of soliciting ‘public input’ on their casino-driven project,” the flier says. “The Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement are already under review.”

The first draft of Upstream’s EIR currently includes a preferred project plan – including housing units, an Indian-run casino, hotel and convention center – plus five other options, ranging from a no-casino plan to a plan that would include no construction whatsoever. City Council will not consider a final draft of the EIR until it has received a report on alternative ideas from DCE. That report should be presented sometime in either December or January.

Don Gosney, who previously served on a blue-ribbon committee to study closing the old Navy fuel depot at Point Molate that shuttered in the mid-1990s, said Wednesday that he supports the hotel-and-casino plan currently on the table – a preference that appeared to put him in the minority at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The project has to be an engine for economic progress,” he said. “I like the project that’s being proposed. I don’t see it as the ruination of our world, as so many people here have suggested.”

After Wednesday’s meeting, Early said he had no idea how many ideas his company expects to receive.

“This is a unique project,” he said. “I admire what the city council has done. Even though we’re six years in, they’re not afraid to open up to new ideas and even take steps back. So there are very few precedents.”

Anyone interested in submitting an idea for developing Point Molate can upload a proposal online at www.ci.richmond.ca.us/pointmolate. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 15, which will be preceded by a second public meeting to discuss the ideas Sept. 8.

Starting next July, sewer rates for residents within the Richmond Municipal Sewer District will go up 5 percent annually until July 2014. The rate increase will affect about half of Richmond residents, including more than 16,000 single-family residential units and approximately 2,000 multifamily residential units and 2,000 commercial units.

The rate fees for the Richmond Municipal Sewer District started climbing in 2000 and haven’t stopped ever since. In 2000, the annual fee for a single unit residence was $195. Today it is $506. With the fee increase it will be $633 in the year 2014.

Chad Davisson, city of Richmond’s wastewater manager, said that the city needed to increase the rates because the sewer system is so old. Richmond’s Water Pollution Control Plant at 601 Canal Boulevard was built in 1953 and the pipes are 60 to 90 years old. Much of the city’s infrastructure is at the end of its service life; that’s the cause of sewer spills into the bay, he said.

According Davisson, in 2009 there were 22 spills—a total of nearly 2.2 million gallons. So far in 2010 there have been 36 spills, a total of 12.3 million gallons.

Davisson said that the rate increases since 1999 have been to pay for projects to fix the Richmond Municipal Sewer District plant and the city’s sewer collection system. Since 1999, the city has spent approximately $51 million on different projects related to the upgrade of the collection system, plant or its administration. At least $11 million of that has been spent on plant improvements.

Richmond’s Water Pollution Control Plant at 601 Canal Boulevard was built in 1953. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

The upcoming rate increase, however, will help to fix only the collection system, not the plant, said Davisson. The increase is to pay a $30 million bond to rebuild the infrastructure. The upgrades are mandated as part of a 2006 settlement between the city of Richmond and Baykeeper, a nonprofit environmental watchdog based in San Francisco. In 2006, Baykeeper filed a lawsuit stating that the City of Richmond had been spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the bay every year. The city agreed to reduce spills 90 percent by the year 2014.

Davisson said that having an old collection system that needs to be fixed is a problem that affects many Bay Area cities. “Discovery Bay, San Carlos, Vacaville are raising their sewer rates,” he said, citing a few examples.

Deb Self, the executive director of Baykeeper, agrees with Davisson that many cities have sewage leak problems. (Click here for a Google map that shows the sewage system overflows in the Bay Area.)

In fact, this year, Baykeeper sued Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, Piedmont, and the Stege Sanitary District (which serves Kensington, El Cerrito and part of the Richmond Annex) for illegal sewage spills. The nonprofit alleged that these cities are accountable for leaky sewage collection systems that inundate the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) treatment plant with massive amounts of rainwater and sewage and cause major spills in the bay. While EBMUD is responsible for wastewater treatment, it does not own, and therefore cannot repair, the cities’ collection systems.

Some residents blame Richmond’s recent sewer rate hikes on Veolia, the French multinational that contracted with the city of Richmond to take over the treatment plant in 2002. Two years later the city contracted it to run the collection system as well.

Charles Smith, a retired Richmond resident who worked for EBMUD for 25 years as a wastewater operator, is the Richmond plant’s most outspoken critic. He said that instead of contracting with Veolia, the city should have accepted EBMUD’s proposal eight years ago, which was to close the Richmond plant and build a pipeline—at no extra cost—that would take the sewage to their plant in Oakland. Smith said that if the city had contracted with EBMUD on the first place, then it wouldn’t have to charge residents to fix an obsolete plant.

Before the city approved the rate increase, Smith produced fliers claiming  “Sewer tax hikes mean big profits for Veolia at ratepayers’ expense.”

But Davisson says rate hikes are caused by the need for repairs and have nothing to do with the company’s profits. “Sewer rates increases don’t go in Veolias’s pocket,” he said. According to Davisson, Veolia’s contract with the city is a fixed fee contract and the increased fees go to pay for the projects, not to Veolia.

Davisson said that the city is considering the possibility of working with EBMUD in the future. However, based on a study by Carollo Engineers, building a pipeline from Richmond to the EBMUD plant in Oakland could cost as much as $95 million. That is more expensive than making improvements to the current treatment plant, said Davison.

EBMUD engineer Ben Horenstein, who headed the bidding for EBMUD eight years ago and is now the utility’s manager of wastewater environmental services, said that while the $95 million estimate for EBMUD to build the pipeline “seems fairly high to me,” things have changed since 2002. “I don’t know if EBMUD can replicate the proposal we made 10 years ago about not charging for the pipeline. Those are decisions that will have to be made by our board,” Horenstein said.

Horenstein said that EBMUD would have to do an engineering analysis to see whether they are even able to handle additional flows from Richmond to the EBMUD plant.

Davisson said that many other Bay Area cities are now facing similar problems with outdated infrastructure.  “This is not unique to Richmond,” he said. “The Bay Area is very old and a lot of the communities are dealing with the same issue.”

Dogs of all sizes and breeds run unleashed, fetch balls, meet other dogs, swim and enjoy Point Isabel Park in Richmond. Afterwards, dogs and their owners can stop by the only businesses at Point Isabel: Mudpuppy’s Tub and Scrub, where the dogs can get baths, and the Sit and Stay Café, where their people can get coffee and food.

These two businesses, run by the same owners, are located one next to another in a small, one level rectangular building. The café is a walk-up counter with seating at a nearby patio. Mudpuppy’s is a pet store that has lots of dog toys, treats and supplies with bathtubs where the dogs get washed.

“You came here, you take your dog for a walk, it gets all dirty, then you wash your dog and then you go home. It’s a great location,” said Diane Blake who has been coming for a couple years to Point Isabel to walk her dog, Zoe.

“I love being in the East Bay, I love this community, I love dogs,” said Daniel Bergerac, one of the businesses’ three partners and owners. Bergerac, his husband Eddie Lundeen and long-time friend Todd Ahlberg run Mudpuppy’s and the café in cooperation with the East Bay Regional Park District.

Jay Villamor, an employee that has been there for five years, at the front counter of Mudpuppy’s Tub and Scrub. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Mudpuppy’s began about 15 years ago at Point Isabel, but it was much different back then. Original owners Cynthia Sloan and Holly Stockton started washing dogs in a small RV with one tub. A year later they got a 12 by 28 feet “mobile modular” with four tubs, a little sales counter and a ramp so that the dogs could come inside. Lundeen worked as their employee in 1997; soon after that the two original owners decided to move to the country and open a pet wash and a pet store.

Lundeen and Bergerac took over the business in 2000. Since then, they worked with the East Bay Regional Park District to build a permanent building for the dog wash. The park district also wanted to add a café; that became the building where Mudpuppy’s and Sit and Stay Café are now. A percentage of every sale goes to the park district and the building is owned by the East Bay Regional Park District.

“I loved this park even before we got the business. We were coming here with our dogs,” said Bergerac.

Before running Mudpuppy’s, Bergerac was an executive recruiter, and not thrilled to be sitting in an office for ten hours a day, he said. “It was good money but I wasn’t loving it. I just felt that I needed a job that I could love,” said Bergerac. “Finally I quit my recruiting job and started doing this full time and never looked back.”

Ahlberg joined the partnership more than a year ago. “I joined to help the company grow,” he said.

Ashley Gonzales gives a full service bath. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

And the company has grown a lot over the last 15 years. Mudpuppy’s and the Sit and Stay Café now have 10 employees; seven work full-time. Mudpuppy’s sell toys, leashes, collars, training supplies, treats and nearly everything for dogs except food. The dog wash service is very popular. The washer will ask each new customer about their dog — if they have any skin or shedding problems or nail issues, for example. They make sure to pick the right shampoo. They do hair conditioning, nail trims and a flea dip if necessary. Weekends can get busy at the dog wash, so they recommend that people book online or walk in to make appointments.

The dog washers get to know their canine clients very well. Jay Villamor , who has been working at Mudpuppy’s and at the café for five years, said that when you have a regular customer, “the dogs tend to bond with you. It’s fun that way.” Villamor started working at the café and after two years was trained to work at the dog wash. “I fell in love with it, because working with a variety of different dogs is not the same as serving the same cup of coffee every day,” he said.

Bergerac said that there have been situations where bathers have spotted a dog’s health problem, like when Claudio Eleccion, a employee that had been working there for seven years, found a small tumor on a dog. “When the owner’s took him to the vet, they cut it out on time and the dog is still with us,” said Bergerac.

Ahlberg said that he knows the dogs’ names better than their owners’ names —“When we book the dogs for washes, we put the dog’s name, not the person’s name,” he said. He’ll address people by saying, “Hey, Fido’s dad!” Ahlberg thinks that the dog owners enjoy it. “They like that we are all about the dogs,” he said.

The Sit and Stay Café does have some treats for humans — a full espresso menu plus chili, soups, deli sandwiches, hot dogs, ice cream, smoothies, and bagels. “Boy, do we sell bagels,” said Bergerac.

“I think it’s the best job I’ve ever had,” said Simone Granada, who has worked at the café for five years. She started working at the café because she liked the dogs, and found that her employers helped her go to college by giving her flexible work hours. Granada describes the work environment as being like a family, and a good place to network because business is always good and different people are always coming into the café.

“Having the café is like when you have a party and people congregate in the kitchen. It gives them some place to eat and have a good time,” Lundeen agreed. Bergerac said that people bring family and friends that are visiting from out of town “to see Mudpuppy’s, to see the café and to see how incredible this park is.”

Dog and owner stop their walk to pose for a picture at Point Isabel. The view in the background is the Golden Gate Bridge . Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Point Isabel is a 23-acre park at the west end of Central Avenue in Richmond. Visitors get a wide view of San Francisco, the Golden Gate and Marin County from the park. Its attractions include bird watching, fishing, jogging, running, bicycling, kite flying and picnicking— but the main attraction for locals is that it’s a place where dogs are allowed to run off-leash. (However, owners are expected to have a leash with them and have their dog under voice control and within their sight.)

People come to the park all the time, even during weekdays and the winter, but the place is filled up on sunny days, specially Sundays. On weekends people start arriving at 8 am. People drive in from as far as Walnut Creek and Concord; Mudpuppy’s owners say they have seen people come from Sacramento when it’s too hot down there during the summer.

Tameka Beaudreaux, who’s been coming to the park for about two years, didn’t know about Point Isabel until she got a dog. She drives from West Oakland to Point Isabel three times a week. She likes Mudpuppy’s services. “They seem to have a good rapport with all the dogs and take good care of them,” she said.

There is a community of dog owners who keep coming week after week. “We’ve seen people that have met at the park, then they start showing up at the park together, then they get married, then we see their kids, then we see their second dog and then their third dog,” said Bergerac.

The dog walkers have become a community of friends for Mudpuppy’s owners. “After we got married, we kept it very quiet”, said Bergerac referring to his wedding to Lundeen. “A couple park users found out about it and they threw a wedding party for us at their home,” he said.

Next week they are going to the 90^th birthday party of one of the park’s users. “It’s an honor to be that much part of someone’s life that they want to share with us,” said Bergerac.

Mudpuppy’s become so successful that the partners are now expanding their business to other parks. “Suddenly the company started to grow without expecting it or planning it,” said Ahlberg. They opened two cafés with regional parks, Lake Anza Beach Club last year and Contra Loma Beach Club this year. “It’s a fun job and we think we add a lot to the ambiance of the parks,” Ahlberg said.

The huge 500-kilowatt solar installation at the Bay Area Beverages building, which you can see while driving west on 580 just before the Canal Boulevard exit, is quickly becoming a landmark. This solar installation, along with 52 others in Richmond, was one of the reasons that the Northern California Solar Energy Association recently gave the city an award for installing more solar watts per capita than any other large city in California.

“I think the category that Richmond won is one of the best metrics to win,” said Adam Lenz, sustainability coordinator for the city of Richmond. “It just shows in an even playing field amongst cities, regardless of size, who is pulling their weight the most by installing renewable energy.”

Adam Lenz (left), City of Richmond Sustainability Coordinator, receives the first place watts per capita award on behalf of the City of Richmond at the Bay Area City/County Solar Award Celebration. Photo courtesy of NorCal Solar Energy Association.

Based on the 2009 Bay Area Solar Installations Report, the Northern California Solar Energy Association, on July 14th awarded prizes to Richmond and other Bay Area cities for their adoption of solar energy. Richmond won two awards in the large city category: first place in watts per capita installed and second place in total watts installed.

The report shows that the Bay Area leads California in new solar installations. Since 2007, with the launch of the California Solar Initiative, a state incentive program, the total number of systems and total megawatts installed have almost doubled and tripled, respectively, for both California and the Bay Area. According to PG&E, since 2007 Richmond has completed 94 solar installations through the California Solar Initiative.

According to the report, although California’s overall rate of photovoltaics installations remains strong, it has declined slightly since 2008, due at least in part to the economic downturn impacting California. Last year, however, the Bay Area showed remarkable growth relative to the rest of California, encompassing 61 percent of the state’s new installations and 55 percent of the total megawatts installed.

Richmond appears as a leading large city in the report with the most watts installed per capita —34.77. For total watts installed between 2008 and 2009 Richmond had increased by 399 percent. Lenz said that he was quite surprised that Richmond won the award. “In general Richmond has not necessarily had the best press when it comes to environmental issues,” he said.

San Jose won first place for total amount of solar watts installed, and Richmond won second place. “That’s amazing because we are not even the largest city in the Bay Area.  There are other cities in the Bay Area that are many times the size of Richmond, yet we, over-installed them in 2009,” said Lenz.

According to PG&E, in Richmond there were six new residential installations in 2007. In 2008 there were 18 residential installations and three non-residential. In 2009 there were 44 residential and 9 non-residential. So far in 2010 there have been 13 residential and 1 non-residential new solar installations.

Most solar installations in the state and Bay Area are residential — 93 percent — and the rest are commercial, government and from nonprofit organizations, according to the 2009 report.

But in Richmond, the large, non-residential installations generate most of the city’s solar power. “Large installations got us to the watts per capita and we got the award,” said Michele McGeoy, the Executive Director of Solar Richmond, a nonprofit that provides solar installation and training. She said that in Berkeley, which was awarded first place for the number of systems per capita, residents probably installed smaller systems.

McGeoy thinks that when businesses choose solar it is because they care about doing something that’s good for the environment. “It’s also is an economic decision because they save money over time,” she said.

The 2009 Bay Area Solar Installations Report listed several reasons for the adoption of solar power in the Bay Area: “solar-friendly utility rates, net metering, ample sun exposure, supportive local, state, and federal government programs and legislation, and a strong environmental ethic.”

For Richmond whether it’s a business, residence or non-profit the incentives include a 30 percent federal tax credit called the Solar Investment Tax Credit. At a state level, the California Solar Initiative rebates 65 cents per watt installed for residential accounts.

Several programs are also available to help those interested in installing solar systems. State-funded programs such as Smart Solar provide free third party technical assistance to Richmond residents and businesses. Rising Sun Energy Center manages two residential energy efficiency programs in Richmond: California Youth Energy Services and Green Energy Training Services. Grid Alternatives provides free and discounted solar installations to low-income families through the Single-family Affordable Solar Homes program, which is funded by the state.

The city of Richmond doesn’t yet provide any incentives, like rebates, for installing solar systems, although it does not charge residents for a permit fee for solar installations.

Solar panels at the Richmond Civic Center roof installed in 2009. Their combined output provides 131 kilowatts of power or about 15% of the Civic Center's electricity. Photo courtesy of the City of Richmond.

The city also supports programs that encourage solar energy use and installation. One of the city programs is RichmondBUILD, a green jobs training academy that started in 2007. Trainees from RichmondBUILD get skills for installing solar through training at a nonprofit/program called Solar Richmond. “Solar installation creates more local jobs,” said Lenz. “We have a history of being a blue collar city and we are transforming into a green collar city.”

Sunlight Electric, LLC, a solar company from San Francisco, hired workers trained at RichmondBUILD and Solar Richmond to install the solar system at the Bay Area Beverages building. Rob Erlichman, CEO of Sunlight Electric, said that his company wanted to support the Richmond community. “What was great about the Richmond Solar Program was that we were able to utilize a pull of solar-trained local people,” Erlichman said.

The city is also making other efforts to generate more renewable energy. Over the last three years, the Richmond Redevelopment Agency installed 24 solar photovoltaic systems on low-income Richmond homes as part of a low-income solar installation program. Last year the city installed solar panels on City Hall and the Richmond Memorial Auditorium. The library also has 75 kilowatts of solar installed.

This summer the city will release a request for proposal to increase solar capacity in city facilities with the goal of eventually providing 50 percent of municipal power from local, renewable energy. “We’re going to use this as an opportunity to increase our solar capacity and stimulate the local economy,” said Lenz. “We have a long way to go but we’ve made some pretty good strides in the last couple years.”

New 2009 Bay Area Solar Installations (BASI) Report Finds Bay Area Leads California in New Solar Growth

Top Large Cities for New Solar Installations (2009)

San Francisco – 1^st place Total Number of New Systems

San Jose – 1^st place Total Watts installed

Berkeley – 1^st place Systems per Capita

Richmond – 1^st place Watts per Capita

Richmond residents will get to vote on whether the City Council should approve a plan to build a casino at Point Molate, City Council decided Tuesday night. Only trouble is, the vote won’t count for anything.

The council voted 4-2 to place an “advisory” ballot measure on the November 2 statewide election ballot, asking Richmond residents whether or not they approve of a plan to build a proposed 4,000-slot Indian casino at Point Molate. An advisory measure does not carry any legal weight – rather, it serves as a public opinion poll of sorts.

The winning advisory measure, written by Councilmember Tom Butt, was approved by councilmembers Nat Bates, Jeff Ritterman, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, and Butt. Councilmembers Maria Viramontes and Jim Rogers voted ‘no,’ and Ludmyrna Lopez abstained.The motion beat out a similar measure proposed by  Viramontes. The language in the two measures was nearly identical, except that Viramontes’ proposal asked whether the city should “approve a project including a casino with shoreline and open space protections at Pt. Molate.” Butt’s proposal did not include any language related to open-space protections.

Members of the City Council listen to arguments for and against a measure to survey public opinion regarding a casino plan during Tuesday's council meeting. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

The casino is part of a larger plan for a $1.2 billion hotel resort at Point Molate being developed by Upstream Point Molate, LLC. The developers are planning to partner with the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians to operate the casino. A 2004 Land Development Agreement between the city and Upstream has been extended six times – most recently extended until April 2011 – to negotiate the terms of the plan.

Jim Levine, the project’s lead developer, sent members of the council a letter on Monday urging them to drop the advisory ballot measure entirely, arguing that voters could not make an informed choice about the plan before its final Environmental Impact Review has been finalized. The EIR is expected to be finished sometime this fall.

“We understand that opponents of the project believe they have a better chance of scoring political points by contesting the project without the facts,” Levine wrote. “Why else would they push for a project vote just ahead of the release of the EIR and prior to the conclusion of the public outreach process?”

Members of the crowd Tuesday voiced overwhelming support for the ballot measure, touting the need for community input in what has become a highly divisive issue in Richmond. John Salmon, a Napa-based executive with Upstream LLC, spoke out against the measure, but found little support from the crowd, several of whom held posters reading “Let us vote.”

Vice Mayor Ritterman said that unless residents vote overwhelmingly in one direction or another on the issue, the measure is unlikely to make much difference to policy. Ritterman, who has stated in the past that he opposes the casino plan, also said that because of the amount of money likely to be spent on advertising for the advisory measure, a vote couldn’t necessarily be considered an accurate poll of residents’ feelings.

“It all depends on how you spin [the results],” Ritterman said. “Those who’ll win will say, ‘Majority rules, so we get our way.’ My feeling is if it’s 50-50, that tells you it’s a big problem for our community – one guys feels one way, and his neighbor feels another. It’s a wedge issue that divides our community, so that’s a vote in favor of not going with [the plan to build the casino].”

In other gambling-related news, on Tuesday the council heard a proposed ordinance that would update the city’s laws relating to bingo games. The new ordinance would remove the current restriction on the number of days per week that bingo halls could host games, and updates laws pertaining to prize money, police presence and alcohol sales. All bingo games in Richmond must be conducted by nonprofit groups and for charity, and the games’ organizers must now submit to a criminal background check in order to host bingo nights.

The issue, benign as it may seem, actually stems from an incident earlier this year in which the city revoked a gaming license from the Marina Bay Bingo Club, an American Legion-sponsored club that purported to raise money for war veterans. The Legion’s post commander, Eddie Welbon, was found to have a criminal history of fraud and money laundering, leading the city to shutter the club. According to its Web site, the Marina Bay Bingo Club is still searching for a new nonprofit group to run its bingo games.

The incident caused considerable embarrassment for the city, which had made a great spectacle of the bingo hall’s grand opening in March.

The revised bingo ordinance should come back before the council for a final vote next week.

Corky Booze (left) and Jackie Thompson pose with a Perennial Purple Tree Collard, the newly minted official "green" of Richmond. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

In other news Tuesday, the council approved plans to double the funding for its popular sewer lateral grant program to $200,000. City residents can apply for a grant up to $30,000 from the city to help pay for repairs to their sewer laterals – the pipes that run under sidewalks to connect individual homes’ sewers to the city-run system.

Council also unanimously passed a resolution to oppose state Proposition 23, which would suspend AB 32, a 2006 state law regulating air-pollution standards, until state unemployment figures drop below 5 percent for an entire year. AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act, requires the state to reach 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. Councilmembers McLaughlin, Ritterman and Butt proposed the council resolution.

In a move that drew a few chuckles, Councilman Butt also proposed a resolution naming the Perennial Purple Tree Collard as the city’s official “green.” Butt pointed to the collard’s nutritional value (it’s rich in calcium, vitamins A, B1, B2, B9 and C), close historical ties to Richmond (it was brought to Richmond from the American South most likely during the city’s WWII-era boom) and toughness as reason enough for the city to adopt it. The plant is currently the “mascot” of Urban Tilth, a non-profit group promoting urban agriculture.

The motion passed unanimously.

Tuesday’s session, which was highlighted by a packed house, lasted until nearly 2 a.m., when council members ran out of gas and voted to postpone the final two agenda items until next week.

When Rebecca Newburn was volunteering at the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library in Berkeley, an organization that makes free seeds available to the public, she thought to herself, “I would like this for my community.”

Newburn has lived in Richmond for eight years, and her work as a science and math teacher in Marin County hasn’t taken her away from being a long-time gardener. “I love the idea of checking out seeds,” she said. Together with other community organizations and volunteers, Newburn helped found the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library, which opened just two months ago and is located at the main public library. Together with Catalin Kaser, she serves as the library’s coordinator.

The edibles cabinet contains seeds of vegetables including edible flowers. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

At the seed library, people can “check out” healthy seeds, use them to plant herbs, vegetables and flowers, and return new seeds from the resulting plants at the end of the season. The seed check-out process is self-service and it’s explained on the Richmond Grows website. Interested people can sign up for 45-minute orientations offered at the library several times a month and/or watch a 10 minute video at their website that clearly explains the process.

This seed library is another effort that Richmond residents are making to grow food locally and build community, and Richmond’s is the first one in the nation to operate at a more traditional public library. “We put it in a public space because we wanted the entire public to have access,” Newburn said.

The seed library is a collaborative project of the Richmond Public Library and the Richmond Rivets, a non-profit that promotes the local production of food, energy and goods. Newburn said that approximately thirty people had volunteered to make the library possible. “It’s a community effort,” she said.

Meant to be a model for other communities, the Richmond Grows Seed Library have all its informational materials available for free to be downloaded from their website so other communities can start their own libraries of this kind.

Even though the coordinators are still in the process of getting the library up and running, they’ve had media coverage already and the East Bay Express gave them the 2010 Best of the Bay Award for the best seed-lending library.

Deirdre Candelaria and her son Caleb sit at the Humboldt Edible Forest. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Other community efforts to support more sustainable food and gardening are also growing in Richmond. Urban Tilth is a non-profit that supports urban agriculture in West Contra Costa County. It is the fiscal sponsor of Richmond’s seed library, and also has a number of other projects including the coordination of ten small farms and providing technical assistance to seven community and school gardens across Richmond and San Pablo.

One of these gardens is around the corner from Deirdre Candelaria’s Richmond home, right up against I-80 at the intersection of Humboldt and Solano Avenue. Formerly a dirt lot that attracted garbage, Candelaria thought that it could be a great place for a community garden. Other neighbors were interested, too. Urban Tilth helped organize and plan the project and made donations of soil and plants. About 20 households participated in the making of what now is the Humboldt Edible Forest, a garden that has been growing for two years.

Tomatoes, chamomile, cabbage, mint and blackberries are some of the things planted at the garden. People can take what they need and in exchange there is an unspoken agreement that they take care of the garden by planting, watering, cleaning or participating in workdays. “We take and take and take from the Earth and we haven’t learned how to give back,” Candelaria said, “If someone enjoys a fruit we ask that they find an act of service, for example picking up trash or watering, that feels like a good exchange.”

Candelaria said that the experience of sharing a community garden has been sweet. “There is this one mother who would come out with her son—they planted this special pumpkin that they came and water every day,” she said.

Among other fruits and vegetables, neighbors grow strawberries at the Humboldt Edible Forest. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Candelaria recently found out about the Richmond seed library on the web and is looking forward to participating. “It’s great that people have access to the seeds for free,” she said.

As with the Humboldt Edible Forest, the concept of “giving back” is also very important at the seed library, when people take seeds they are expected to return the seeds. The seed library wants to create four videos to educate people on how to save seeds from their new plants so they can return them at the end of the season. They are starting a “kickstarter fundraising” campaign to get the videos done.

According to Newburn, seed saving had been a tradition in the past and hopes that Richmond residents can now revive it. “The seeds have value as food, but also they are connected to our family and our community,” she said.

More fires are reported on July 4th than any other day of the year in the United States, according to the National Fire Data Center.

Last year there were five wildfires in Richmond on the 4th of July. There were none this year but “We’re anticipating a lot today,” if people continue to use fireworks said battalion chief Erick Newman, who is on duty during this observed holiday.

The high numbers of fires during this holiday are usually the result of a combination of dry grass, brush and fireworks. But the danger of fire in Richmond doesn’t stop after Independence Day — fire season is just starting. Depending on weather conditions, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection determines when fire season begins. This year it started two weeks ago, in mid-June.

Residents need to trim overgrown grass and leaves. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

“Usually when we have a late winter, we have a late summer and our fire season sometimes will go until November,” said Rod Woods, a firefighter who has spent 24 years working with the fire department in Richmond.

The Richmond Fire Department has always been pretty busy during fire season. Last year there were 72 wildfires in Richmond during this period. Because of this year’s long rainy season, there’s a serious threat of wildfires this summer. A wet winter leads to the growth of weeds and grass that dry out during the summer, raising the probability of a blaze, according to Woods.

Undeveloped areas in Richmond are susceptible to wildfire. Grass, weeds and brush grow out of control in open lots. Most of the undeveloped areas in Richmond are within East Bay Regional Park boundaries. These include — but are not limited to — Point Pinole, Alvarado Park, El Sobrante Ridge and Hills, Nichol Knob and Wildcat Canyon Park. “That probably hasn’t burned in years, so that means that there’s a lot of growth,” said Woods of Wildcat Canyon Park.

Communities surrounded by wildlands are at risk of wildfires. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

However, areas where human development mix together with undeveloped wildland are also potentially in danger during fire season. Firefighters call these areas “wildland/urban interface.”

The Wildland/Urban Interface Fire Protection Program has identified four common components of interface fires:

1. Low relative humidity, high temperatures, and high winds often are in place before a fire starts.

2. Human activity such as arson, debris burning or downed electrical wires.

3. Many involve the destruction of homes were built with combustible material or have especially vulnerable features such as wood shingle roofs.

4. Considerable combustible materials surround the home, such as woodpiles and fences.

While environmentalists and foresters often believe that a natural fire is healthy for forests, and that fires in non-urban locations should be allowed to burn, homeowners in these areas expect fire protection of their structures.

One of the most destructive fires in the history of the United States was a wildland/urban interface fire. It occurred in October 1991 in the East Bay hills of Oakland; 25 lives were lost and more than 3,000 structures were destroyed.

View of an area of Richmond Heights. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Richmond has no record of a blaze of the magnitude of the Oakland Hills fire, “but we have the potential to have that though,” said Woods. “We have a lot of areas that are considered urban interface,” said Woods and cited the Richmond hills and the neighboring El Cerrito hills.

As a result of the Oakland hills fire, the Bates Bill (AB 337) was passed in 1992 requiring the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to work with local governments identifying “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones,” which are areas of the city considered to be the most at risk for wildfires. For the Contra Costa County map developed to show high-risk areas, click here.

These zones in Richmond include all of Point Richmond, Carriage Hills, and the El Sobrante Hills neighborhoods. Residents living in these areas are required by city ordinance to maintain adequate fuel and fire breaks between structures and flammable vegetation.

One side of the flyer the Richmond Fire Department hands out with the precautions to take during fire season.

Woods said that people that live in wildland/urban interface areas have to be especially careful to cut overgrown grass, trim leaves, clean pine cones on their roofs and remove anything that has potential to ignite during a fire.

In order to reduce potential fire hazards, the Richmond Fire Department hands out a flyer with a list of measures that residents who live in wildlife/urban interface areasneed to take in order to protect their property, including clearing dry grass, brush and other combustibles from at least thirty feet around each home.

According to CAL Fire, last year there were 4,657 wildfires in California that burned 80,990 acres.

The fire department hopes that Richmond residents, who live in high danger fire zones, take the necessary precautions to protect their property in the event of fire.

Despite the not-yet-distant memory of the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in the San Francisco Bay, and the ongoing worries about the spill that continues to gush gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico after an April explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana, a pair of oil disaster-response experts had a fairly simple message for the dozen or so Richmond residents gathered Wednesday at a Point Richmond Neighborhood Council meeting: Don’t worry, we’re prepared.

Heather Kostecki, a U.S. Coast Guard commander with the San Francisco Planning and Force Readiness division, and Matt Kelly, Chevron’s head of emergency services and spill response for Richmond, both assured the neighborhood group that the lessons learned both in Louisiana this year, and through the Cosco Busan spill three years ago, have served local disaster crews well, and that in the event of a future spill here, a more streamlined approach to coordinating containment and clean-up should spare the Bay Area many of the problems it experienced in the past.

“We didn’t do enough to engage local stakeholders, local NGOs [non-governmental organizations],” Kostecki said of the Coast Guard’s response to the Cosco Busan spill. Citizen groups like the San Francisco-based Baykeeper often have an intimate knowledge of sensitive local environments that government agencies lack, she said. “We didn’t do a good job here. But we’re working hard to partner with them now.”

Matt Kelly, the head of emergency services and spill response for Chevron in Richmond, addresses a citizen group Wednesday in Point Richmond. Photo by Ian Stewart.

The Cosco Busan spill resulted in 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel being released into the Bay after the ship, navigating through a thick fog, struck one of the towers of the Bay Bridge. Because of typically strong currents in the bay, the oil reached several beaches, causing closures in Marin, San Francisco and the East Bay and killing thousands of birds and fish. The cleanup effort was estimated to cost more than $70 million.

Additionally, the Coast Guard was heavily criticized at the time for grossly underestimating the amount of oil released into the bay, and for how long it took to communicate the extent of the spill to O’Brien’s Group, which was contracted by the ship’s parent company to handle the clean-up.

“We took our lumps here,” Kostecki said.

However, she said, the Coast Guard has since updated its Geographic Response Plan for the San Francisco Bay, with detailed maps of the shorelines, harbors, eddies, currents and wind patterns that should help oil spill cleanup crews better contain a spill should another one occur.

Chevron, which operates its largest West Coast refinery in Richmond and is the city’s leading importer of petroleum and crude oil, is also well prepared for a spill, Kelly said. The company conducts test drills four times a year, and is in constant contact with other cleanup agencies that can lend support to containment efforts.

“There’s a lot of connectivity here between Chevron and local and state agencies,” he said. “We’re actually resource-rich here.”

Richmond is home to 32 miles of coastline – the most of any city in the Bay Area – leaving the city’s shores, and particularly Point Richmond’s, vulnerable to a spill. The city owns five port terminals and contracts out another 10, of which liquid bulk – primarily petroleum – is the largest import. The Port of Richmond handles the greatest tonnage of liquid commodities of any port in the Bay Area.

In other news from Wednesday’s neighborhood meeting, it appears that some designs plans at the soon-to-be-reopened Plunge swimming pool are undergoing a last-minute change.

Crews that had been pulling the old fiberglass off a mushroom-shaped fountain that was once located inside the pool’s kiddie area stumbled into some interesting local history over the weekend.

The architectural firm handling the pool rehabilitation had presumed that there wasn’t any archival record of what the old tile that adorned the fountain looked like, since the fountain was covered in fiberglass during a renovation sometime in the 1970s. Instead, the design team had planned to simply re-imagine a tile mosaic for the fountain, which will now be placed outside the Plunge, in a front yard. The re-imagined design was going to feature a colorful underwater scene complete with red and orange seahorses.

A drawing of the original tile design on a mushroom-shaped fountain at the Plunge swimming pool shows the fountain's original design. Image courtesy of Todd Jersey Architecture.

But in the course of removing the fiberglass, crews actually found, to their great surprise, the original tile. “We pulled the fiberglass off, and low and behold, the tile’s there,” Todd Jersey, the lead architect, told the crowd. “This changes the whole game. Now we know exactly what the tile looked like, and where it was.”

In keeping with the historical faithfulness of the project, Jersey said he’ll likely scrap the seahorse design on the fountain. The Save the Richmond Plunge Trust will have final say on the design switch-a-roo, but with opening day scheduled for Aug. 14, there isn’t much time for debate. The Point Richmond Neighborhood Council, which has some informal say in the matter, didn’t formally vote on the change in plan, but a straw poll showed unanimous support for moving forward with the historic version of the fountain.

More than a hundred Richmond residents were happy to get a free food scrap pail during the Juneteenth event on June 19th at Nichol Park. The environmental staff from the Manager’s department of the city was handing out pails to promote its new food scrap collection program that makes it possible for residents to mix food leftovers and yard trimmings to be composted.

“I can’t wait,” said Victoria Weatherbee, a Richmond resident, to a neighbor about being able to start composting.

The city of Richmond is moving forward with two initiatives for composting beginning on July 1. Starting then, styrofoam and plastic food to-go containers are no longer going to be used for food prepared in Richmond. All food providers including restaurants, mobile food vendors, delis, gas stations, nonprofit organizations, public events, and city facilities will be required to give away compostable food containers, including tableware such as spoons, forks and knives. The exceptions are straws and lids.

Additionally, residents will be able to have food scraps and other compostable items picked up from their homes for transport to a composting facility.

The food scrap collection program

Residents of Richmond currently divide their refuse between three waste carts that they leave on the curb for pickup. The brown cart holds regular garbage, the blue is for recyclables and the green is for yard waste.

Illustration courtesy of the City Manager’s Department.

Starting this Thursday, the rules have changed for the green cart. While residents can still use it to dispose of yard waste such as twigs, flowers, grass and yard trimmings, now residents may also put food wastes and compostable items into it. Accepted items include fruit, vegetables, bread, pasta, meat, bones, dairy products, eggshells, and coffee grounds. Additionally, biodegradable materials such as coffee cups, paper plates, paper bags, napkins, tea bags and milk cartons may be added to the green cart.

People who compost in their own backyards are often advised to not put meat, bones, dairy products or seeds in their compost, it is fine to put those types of food scraps in the green bin, because it will go to a composting facility that will break it down into soil faster than a home backyard composting bin.

“You can put anything in the green cart that was alive at one point in time. Anything that is from a plant, tree or animal that can decompose,” said Adam Lenz, Sustainability Coordinator for the city of Richmond. Lenz said that the city’s goal is for residents to put as much accepted material into the green bins as possible.

According to Lenz, the amount of compostable material a household produces depends on the lifestyle of its residents. A resident could divert up to 40 or 50 percent of the waste that goes into their trashcan by using the green cart and could therefore save on their garbage bill. Lenz said that 80 percent of West Contra Costa County residents have a 35-gallon trash cart — if they are able to transition to putting their food scraps to the green cart, they might be able to use a 20-gallon mini can instead and pay less monthly. Click here to see the payment options depending of the size of the cart.

The food scrap pail

In between pickup days, residents can collect items to be placed in the green curbside cart using the free food scrap pails that the city is giving out. These plastic bins allow food scraps and food-soiled paper to be stored in a resident’s kitchen before being added to the green cart on trash day. Food scraps wrapped in newspaper or a paper bag can also be added to the green cart, but plastic bags will not be accepted.

Food scrap pails have been handed out at different public events and will continue to be given away during events at City Hall during which the environmental staff will talk about the program. Starting in mid-July, residents can come to City Hall anytime to pick up the bins. For more information call (510) 412-2096 or click here.

Recyclables vs. Compostables

The blue cart is still to be used for the materials that the Richmond Sanitary Service, the company that provides waste management services to the city, is able to recycle. These include aluminum cans, foil pans, plastic narrow neck bottles, milk and water jugs, water, soda, and juice bottles and clean paper and cardboard materials.

Compostable materials such as food-soiled, waxed or dirty paper, and paper bags, containers, cups are not acceptable in the blue cart, but now they can be placed in the green cart.

A lot of to-go containers offered by food providers include plastic cups, tubs and clamshell containers.  The Richmond Sanitary Service does not recycle those. The only plastics that are recyclable in Richmond are narrow neck bottles, which means that the mouth is smaller than the body. (Laundry detergent bottles are a good example.)

The composted soil

Once the program is up and running, the City Manager’s office plans to have compost giveaways for the community, so that people can use this soil in their backyard and in community gardens. “We are excited to bring it back to the community, because when people get it back that is truly connecting the loop and getting the people excited about filling up the green bin with the best materials,” said Lenz.

According to Lenz, much of the composted soil will also be sold to farms and vineyards in California that will use it instead of synthetic fertilizers and materials. “Vineyards notice that they can decrease their water consumption by 50 percent after using compost for three years, because of all the microbes,” he said.

Richmond’s new composting program received a grant to fund outreach materials and kitchen sink pails from Recycle More, which is a joint powers agency that operates as the Waste Management Authority in West Contra Costa. San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda have similar composting programs. The neighboring city of El Cerrito will start the same program this Thursday together with Richmond, and the city of San Pablo will join on October 1. “I’m really excited that they are on board for this fall. By a having a regional approach, it is going to make it easier for the West County community to move forward with the composting program,” said Lenz.

The food scrap collection program is meant for city residents only and it’s voluntary. According to Lenz, the City Manager’s office is planning to introduce the voluntary program to residents first, and then hopes to expand the program to commercial accounts in 2011 and give them technical assistance.  The city may later consider drafting a mandatory resolution as part as a long term goal. Last year, San Francisco became the first city in California to require mandatory composting recycling.

To raise awareness of the new program, the city is leaving informative cards hagers on the green cart, adding inserts to garbage bills, and has mailed a bilingual postcard with information about the composting program. The city is planning future events to educate people about how the program works. Residents with questions about the program can call (510) 412-2096 to speak to city staff. To order a free green curbside cart you can go to the Richmond Sanitary Service website or call (510) 262-7100.