Oil Refineries
Family, friends, co-workers and community members gathered at Lucky A’s North Richmond Baseball Field on Saturday to celebrate the life and legacy of Henry Arthur Clark, a pioneer of the environmental justice movement in Richmond and beyond. Clark passed away on June 2, at 77 years old. To a gathering of more than 50 people, speakers recounted the leadership that would be a hallmark of Clark’s life. He grew up in the shadow of the Chevron Refinery and Richmond’s industrial…
After a nearly 10-week strike, about 500 steelworkers will gradually return to Chevron’s Richmond Refinery in the next four weeks, replacing contract workers hired to fill the gap left when workers walked off the job in March. Their return comes after United Steelworkers Local 5 ratified a four-year contract with Chevron on Saturday, Jess Kamm Broomell, a union spokesperson, confirmed. Neither the union nor the refinery has released details of the agreement. Reuters reported that the new contract does not…
Fifteen months after about 800 gallons of diesel spilled into San Francisco Bay from a leaking pipe at the Richmond Chevron Refinery, the public is still waiting for a promised investigation by Contra Costa County Chevron has filed a half dozen follow-up reports with the county between February and October 2021, as required by law. But Contra Costa Health Services has not produced the independent investigation that county officials said would take six to 12 months. In fact, the contractor Health…
Amid the hum of the Bay Area’s cities, it is easy to forget that to live here is to live alongside a vast ecosystem. The biggest and most vital is the Pacific Ocean. And once a year, the ocean reveals its abundance to herring fishers. “‘The water will be white, that’s when you know,” said Keith Nguyen, a kayak fisher from San Jose. Nguyen is describing the herring spawn, an annual event from November to February, when adult herring migrate…
A day after the Richmond Chevron refinery belched a plume of heavy smoke that wafted across the Richmond skyline, the company said the issue prompted a low-level community warning and was “quickly corrected.” Richmond interim fire Chief Michael Smith told the San Francisco Chronicle that the billowing smoke captured in photos on social media Tuesday afternoon was caused by a low-level flaring incident. The level is the company’s lowest and was issued “to keep residents informed,” Tyler Kruzich, a Chevron…
It could take as long as six months before people in Richmond know what caused a Chevron pipeline to leak hundreds of gallons of a diesel product into San Francisco Bay in February. An independent firm will investigate what caused a quarter-inch hole to open in the line, allowing 500 to 750 gallons of a diesel-water mixture to pollute the bay, Randy Sawyer, deputy director of Contra Costa County Health Services, told Richmond City Council. He said the work will…
Richmond locals begin installing more than 100 air quality sensors throughout the city in an effort to improve the city’s air pollution and health outcomes.
As Wanda Cooper biked home through the thick haze of smoke rising from a fire at the Chevron oil refinery, her eyes began to burn and her throat to close up. “I couldn’t hardly breathe,” she says. Six years after a pipeline fire at Chevron U.S.A. Inc.’s oil refinery in Richmond sent Cooper and thousands more to the emergency room, the company agreed last month to spend more than $160 million to make major safety improvements at all of its…
Richmond is about to begin a unique process to identify a group of community leaders to work with the state and local air resources boards to determine key drivers of the city’s pollution and put together a plan to reduce it. This Wednesday, Nov. 7, leaders of community environmental organizations and other members of the public are invited by County Supervisor John Gioia to attend a meeting on the new plan at the Richmond City Recreation Complex on MacDonald Avenue….