Earth Day came and went on Thursday, but the environmental work in Richmond continues.

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin’s office commemorated the 40th annual holiday in part by issuing a release noting that the city has netted more than $6 million since last year in federal grant funds for “green” jobs.

According to the mayor’s office, the majority of the funds that have flowed into Richmond stem from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, which was funded under the federal stimulus plan last year. The grant freed up $3.2 billion for cities and counties nationwide to improve energy efficiency and spur green job growth.

Richmond’s unemployment rate is about 17 percent, according to the mayor’s office.

Marilyn Langlois, a community advocate in the mayor’s office, said much of the $6 million in Richmond is being used to fund energy efficiency upgrades to municipal buildings and low to moderate housing stock in the city. Brownfield remediation projects and solar panels are also being funded by the grant.

Richmond has drawn national attention in recent years with its Solar Richmond project, which creates green-collar job opportunities in the solar industry. The organization runs a 14-week training program in partnership with RichmondBuild, another local jobs program.

The city has dozens of green businesses, including SunPower Corp., a solar panel manufacturer whose renown drew Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who held a press conference on its production floor late last year.

McLaughlin is the only Green Party mayor of a city of more than 100,000 in the United States.

Earth Day was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental awareness event in 1970.

Owing in part to its industrial legacy, Richmond is a city with urban environmental challenges.

Which is why Mayor Gayle McLaughlin hails the establishment of a local nonprofit dedicated to cleaning, restoring and reusing urban parcels of land that lay dormant.

The new nonprofit, named Groundwork Richmond, will “operate in areas adversely affected by industrialization and within poor urban communities with significant numbers of brownfields,” McLaughlin said during a ceremony Monday at City Hall celebrating the completion of a feasibility study and strategic plan. The completion of the documents is a key step toward securing funding, she said.

Groundwork Richmond is part of a network of independent community ventures aimed at improving urban environments through local action by linking local people, business, government and other organizations, according to a program summary.

The Groundwork USA network works with the Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Program and the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program. Brownfields are lands previously used for industrial purposes, which may contain hazardous residue.

The city has agreed to an annual contribution of $25,000 toward the nonprofit’s mission.

The initial focus of Groundwork Richmond will be areas within the city’s Iron Triangle, said Nicole Valentino, a community advocate within the Mayor’s Office.

“It’s one of the most negatively impacted areas of the city, in terms of toxic residues and land that needs to be remediated,” Valentino said. “And it suffers a high rate of poverty and high rate of crime.“

Within the Iron Triangle, and extending beyond it, the venture will focus on the Richmond Greenway, a trail project linking public transit and cutting through the heart of the city. The city’s Parks Department and local representatives of the National Park Service are also likely partners, according to the executive summary.

Valentino said a key component to the initiative will be the formation of a Green Team, a group of local youths who will work to renew unused and toxic parcels within the city’s urban core.

“The vision that we have is that the team would reforest areas, plan and develop urban tree canopies, work on building parks out of brownfields and learn leadership skills on the way,” Valentino said. “This will be a group of local young people who are trained to be stewards of the projects.”

CLARIFICATION: Council member Jeff Ritterman, who is quoted in the story, told Richmond Confidential that his position on the casino wasn’t portrayed accurately. In an effort to ensure the council member’s position is clear Richmond Confidential has agreed to publish his complete clarifying remarks.

Opposition to a Las Vegas-style casino resort in Richmond is collapsing as casino backers hand over promises for millions of dollars, thousands of jobs and major environmental concessions.

A formerly divided Richmond City Council has softened its stance. Residents and officials are clamoring for employment, and the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday reversed its initial opposition to the project in exchange for a $12 million annual cut of casino profits.

“The project is dynamic,” developer Jim Levine said. “It’ll be one of the major destinations of any kind—tribal or not—in California.”

The controversial casino project would grant a California tribe federal trust land to build what’s known as a Type III casino—one with blackjack, slots and other games that pit the gambler against the house. This would be the first time in the state’s history that a tribe would be given urban land for such a venture. Some opponents say the project could change the landscape of the East Bay into the urban gaming capital of the country.

“A casino in Richmond,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said, “is outrageous.”

McLaughlin is one of the few vocal opponents still standing. In September, Senator Dianne Feinstein and four other senators sent a letter to the Secretary of the Interior stating their strong opposition to taking off-reservation lands into trust for gaming purposes. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued a proclamation against urban Indian casinos and recently filed a letter of opposition with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the City of Richmond. And a local group called the Coalition to Save Point Molate is also still fighting the project.

The decision ultimately rests with the Interior Secretary, who will take into consideration local sentiment. In the face of diminishing resistance, the dominoes are falling fast toward construction of what would be one of the biggest urban casino resorts in California—right on the Richmond shore.

Empty land on the waterfront

Point Molate, with its grassy hills, prime bayshore property and sparkling views of the San Francisco skyline, fell into the hands of the City of Richmond in 2003. That year, the city bought 85 percent of the old fuel depot from the Navy for $1 under the Base Realignment and Closure Act. One of the stipulations of the deal was that the area had to be developed in a self-sustaining and economically viable way.

A collapsing sign welcomes motorists along Western Drive to the old Naval fuel depot and former Village of Point Molate. Photo by Alex L. Weber.

In 2004, the city entered into a land disposition agreement—a terms-of-sale document vaguely resembling a lease—with a development firm called Upstream Point Molate, LLC. Upstream management partner and developer Jim Levine represents the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians. The 112-member tribe currently owns 44 acres near Ukiah, and they are petitioning the federal government to take Point Molate into trust as reservation land. The petition appears to rest on whether their proposal has the support of the community and if they can prove an historical tie to the area.

While the tribe awaits a ruling from the Secretary of the Interior, Levine has been working hard to secure the property for development.

He’s paid the City of Richmond $15 million toward the final purchase price of $50 million. Levine owes another $5 million in January, said Janet Schneider, administrative chief at the Richmond city manager’s office. That’s a total of $20 million in nonrefundable deposits—money Levine won’t get back if the project doesn’t move forward. A promissory note will permit Levine to pay the remaining $30 million over a 15-year period if the City Council clears the way for the casino.

In March 2005, the city and the Bureau of Indian Affairs embarked on a joint environmental impact review of Point Molate. The draft Environmental Impact Review (EIR) was released in July and presents six alternatives for the use of the land, ranging from a casino resort to total parkland. Alternative B is the Guidiville project. It includes not just a casino but also an entertainment complex about the size of a football field, two hotels, a retail village and more than 300 residential homes—about one-third for the tribe and two-thirds to be sold on the open market, according to Levine.

The EIR also guarantees the city $20 million each year. Part of that money is a service fee for police, fire protection and road maintenance the city will provide at the resort.

Before any project can move forward, the Richmond City Council must now decide whether to certify the EIR. “What we’ve been told is that the [Department of the] Interior will view certification of the EIR as indication of local support for the transfer,” Janet Schneider said. “The assumption now is that [the City Council] will certify the EIR.”

What once looked like a significant hurdle now seems to be a simple hop. At least two council members who were once anti-gaming are looking favorably at Upstream’s plans.

The environmental payoff

City Council members Maria Viramontes and Jeff Ritterman were initially skeptical of the project and wary of urban gambling. Both are focused on environmental concerns, they said.

Viramontes said she still isn’t a proponent of casinos in her city, but she likes the project’s guarantees for open space, trail access and conservation, and she said she’s committed to follow through on the city’s promise to the Navy to develop the area in an economically viable way.

“I’m not comfortable with urban gambling as a California state policy,” Viramontes said, “but you have to judge a proposal on its merit or its lack of merit. It sounds like an interesting and lovely project.”

Ritterman concurred. “I’m not a big fan of urban gaming, so there’s a major downside to that,” he said. “But a lot of my support hinges on

A rendering of "Alternative B," which calls for a "mixed-use tribal destination casino resort with residential component," according to the EIR. Graphic provided by Jim Levine.

environmental concerns, so if the environmental payoff is considerably large, I’ll look past the gaming aspect.”

Ritterman said he’s been in close contact with conservation groups about what would constitute a large environmental payoff, and he’s waiting on the outcome of a lawsuit filed against Upstream by the Citizens for East Shore Parks. Ritterman said he anticipates a “pretty good settlement” that includes a promise from Upstream to preserve Richmond’s entire northern shoreline.

Levine said shoreline accessibility is important.

“We’ve identified opportunities to achieve some magnificent open-space goals with Citizens for East Shore Parks,” Levine said, “and we’re exploring how to finalize that.”

Representatives from Citizens for East Shore Parks would not comment on the tentative agreement.

The toxic cleanup

When the Navy’s fuel depot shut down, Point Molate housed twenty 50,000-gallon tanks of bulk fuel. According to the EIR, those containers have already been cleaned out and the fuel hauled away. Part of the city’s land disposition agreement with Upstream is that the company must dig up the old tanks and get them to a landfill before construction can begin.

Levine estimates that process will cost $32 million. The majority of that—$28.5 million—will come from the Navy, according to Janet Schneider. She said that money is due to transfer to the city “any day now.” Then the city will send the funds to Upstream for the environmental remediation. Levine said he and the tribe will contribute the rest of the money.

The California Regional Water Quality Control Board is overseeing the process. Board spokeswoman Sandy Potter confirmed that inspectors will schedule the cleanup and test groundwater quality.

The jobs

Richmond councilman Nathaniel Bates has backed the project from the beginning because Levine and the tribe are promising about 17,000 new jobs. “It’s a financial goldmine for Richmond,” he said, pointing to the stipulation in the EIR that the Guidiville Band hire city residents for at least 40 percent of its “operational” positions.

The available jobs may not call for highly skilled applicants, but that’s a plus, Bates said. “Hotel staffing, cooks, cashiers, janitors—all carry with them a living-wage salary that people can afford to live comfortably on,” Bates said. He said the city has set the living wage salary at $14 to $15 per hour.

“We’re signed up to comply with the city’s living wage requirements,” Levine said, as stipulated in the EIR, “but our average wage will well exceed that.” If Levine hadn’t signed that agreement, the tribe—as a sovereign nation not subject to city mandates—wouldn’t have had to meet the living wage requirements.

Outspoken casino opponent McLaughlin called the employment projections a “pipe dream” and criticized the jobs as low-quality and low-paying.

“A casino economy has never helped us,” she said.

Levine dismissed her criticism. “The mayor was against the project before she saw any projections, and she’ll keep coming up with reasons as to why she’s against it,” he said. “I don’t know if she even has the capacity to understand the projections.”

The opposition

A dwindling faction of opponents continues to publicly battle Upstream and the tribe. Strident resistance comes from McLaughlin, who raises concerns that the ripple effects of gambling could include addiction, substance abuse, crime, bankruptcy and domestic violence.

Andrés Soto of the Coalition to Save Point Molate speaks at a Richmond planning commission meeting in September. Photo by Phoebe Fronista.

In September, the Contra Costa County Administrator’s Office commissioned the Abaris Group in Walnut Creek to review existing studies on the impact of casinos. The review cites research into Casino San Pablo by the East Bay Coalition Against Urban Casinos. That study found that after the casino added 548 slot machines in 2006, burglary and general disturbance calls on the grounds and in surrounding neighborhoods tripled, and rates of vehicle theft nearly quadrupled.

The Abaris review also states that the negative effects on Richmond’s public health “would be significant, particularly in terms of tobacco use and asthma” in a community “already burdened with severe environmental hazards.”

Levine disputes the health and safety concerns. “The ills associated with problem gambling are the same as the ones associated with unemployment,” he said.

Also standing in opposition to the casino is a front of environmental groups, church leaders and others collectively called the Coalition to Save Point Molate—many of whose public relations consultants and interns are financed by rival card clubs in Emeryville, the South Bay and the Peninsula, according to Coalition spokesman Andrés Soto.

Soto accuses local officials of caving before the prospect of Levine’s millions of dollars. “[Levine] is trying to pick off the opposition using the appeal of money,” he said, and local government is “willing to sell out the community for a pittance.”

Soto and McLaughlin are both skeptical of the plans for traffic management and the projections for visitors to the casino resort, many shipping in on the Vallejo ferry.

“The idea of thousands of people coming to Point Molate by ferry is ridiculous,” McLaughlin said. “People don’t come to vacation in San Francisco to go to the gambling casino.”

Levine counters that he’s also in talks with AC Transit and BART to help shuttle visitors.

The final say

In some measure, the fate of the Guidiville casino resort rests in the City Council’s hands. Certification of the EIR is tantamount to the city’s blessing for the project. And, according to City of Richmond senior planner Lina Velasco, certification must be based only on whether the review meets guidelines set by the California Environmental Quality Act.

The City Council could make what’s known as a statement of overriding considerations if members find there are “unavoidable significant impacts” to the environment, Velasco said. Even then, city staffers would be directed to make the necessary changes in order for the EIR to move forward.

If it does, there will be one less obstacle between the 112 members of the Guidiville Band and a new reservation on Richmond’s shoreline—a reservation that will bring cash, jobs and an urban casino of unprecedented size and scope.

Tomorrow: A look into how a tribe acquires trust land for an urban casino.

An old man with a pair of binoculars leans against a wooden fence, intent on some unseen object inside the weedy Stege Marsh. When the tide’s up, the egrets and gulls come out and caw.

He’s standing on the edge of a paved trail that runs along the shore in Southern Richmond, where cyclists, joggers and bird-watchers often come to take in views of the San Francisco skyline.

He can’t get much closer to the birds, though. A chain-link fence encloses most of the marshlands, and metal signs warn passers-by to keep out.

Farther from the shore and the walking trail, beyond the marshes, workers in white jumpsuits are using weed-whackers to clear the brush that’s starting to grow through a white concrete sheet covering 30 acres of the lot. The cap is a quarter-inch thick and word is, it crunches under your feet like a thin sheet of ice. Under the cap lies the story of this area’s toxic past.

“It looks benign, you know,” says Sherry Padgett, shielding her eyes from the late-afternoon sun. Padgett works at a cabling shop on South 49th Street, across from this lot. From her second-story office, she can see across the entire site, over the marshes and out to the bay.

A real-estate development company called Cherokee-Simeon Ventures now owns the 85 acres that separate South 49th from the shores of the bay. When the developers bought the property in 2002, they named it Campus Bay. But the people who work around here – not to mention city officials, the Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Public Health, state Water Board, and Department of Toxic Substance Control – all call it the Zeneca site. Most everyone calls it a mess.

A TOXIC HISTORY

The problems here started miles away in a Sierra foothill mine.

The Stauffer Chemical Company bought the land in 1897 and made its business by trucking pyrite – fool’s gold – from its Sierra mine to Richmond to roast it down into sulfuric acid. In the 1950s, the company also started manufacturing chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

A view of the UC Richmond Field Station, as seen from the Bay Trail that runs along the southern edge of both the UC and Zeneca lots. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

Making sulfuric acid obviously means creating waste. In this case, the byproduct is a highly acidic ash-like substance, called cinders. According to a history of the site prepared in 2001 by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, Stauffer for years used the cinders as landfill, dumping the waste against Stege Marsh on the east of its property, and on what is now the University of California’s Richmond Field Station, a research facility, on the west.

The cinders are mostly made up of pyrite, but include toxic metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury, and selenium – all of which appear on the state-produced Prop. 65 list of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm.

By the time the Stauffer site finally closed down, the company had, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, formed into Zeneca, Inc., which has since merged into AstraZeneca, the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical manufacturer.

In 1997, as part of a company-wide reorganization, Zeneca shut down the Richmond site. The company ordered most of the buildings there – many of which stored chemicals and pesticides – razed. Only a few office buildings remain.

The next year, the state’s water board named the Stege Marsh a “high” priority on its list of the state’s most polluted hot-spots.

The water board ordered Zeneca to clean up the site, so the company hired a San Francisco-based environmental consultant called Levine and Fricke Recon to outline a clean-up plan. No strangers to Richmond, Levine and Fricke have coordinated similar remediation plans at Point Isabel and the inner harbor.

The $20 million plan, green-lighted by the water board in 2002, called for workers to dig up and load much of the contaminated soil into trucks, and take it to hazardous waste treatment facilities.

But it also – in a move activists would come to question the legality of – called for workers to excavate 300,000 cubic yards of the cinder-laced dirt from the southern end of the Zeneca property, and 50,000 cubic yards of soil from the adjacent UC field station, and mix it with ground-up limestone, aiming to neutralize its acidity. Once the soil was blended, workers spread it out over 30 acres, and “capped” it – covered it with a quarter-inch-thick top made of concrete and paper-mache. The cap is intended to repel rainwater, and keep the cinders from spreading out through the groundwater beneath.

According to a 2005 memo prepared by Levine and Fricke for the toxic substances department, the cap serves to “reduce infiltration, provide surface water and dust control, and prevent dermal contact.” The memo says the cap “will remain in place until the Site is redeveloped.”

NOT THAT SIMPLE

As the remediation work moved forward, people working in businesses around the harbor-front track began to grow skeptical of the clean-up. In 2004, a citizen group led by Padgett formed as the Richmond Southeast Shoreline Community Advisory Group to complain about the amount of dust being kicked up by the work. Some people worried, too, that the dust may contain toxic chemicals.

“I’d go out to sweep the parking lot, and it’d be different colors depending on what they were doing across the street,” Padgett said. “I knew it was bad when our white dumpster turned black.”

Padgett describes the long history of toxicity at the former Stauffer Chemical Company site. Padgett developed cancer during remediation work at the site, and suspects she was exposed to toxic chemicals in the air. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

The department of toxic substances later stated in a report on health hazards at the site, that, “prior to 2005, air monitoring (if any) was not adequate to evaluate contaminant levels in dust.”

Padgett learned in late 2002 that she’d developed cancerous cartilage growths on her ribs and chest. Padgett suspects she was exposed to carcinogenic chemicals in the air during the clean-up, but acknowledges that it is impossible to link her cancer to any particular chemical from the Zeneca site. Nonetheless, her illness helped transform Padgett into the de facto leader of what has become a years-long fight.

Padgett and the citizen group complained to local government agencies that the water board wasn’t taking an active role in supervising the remediation work. The cause attracted a number of political allies, including State Sen. Loni Hancock, and together, in 2004, they forced the water board to cede its oversight duties at the Zeneca site to the Department of Toxic Substance Control.

The toxic substance department set out to review exactly what was done during the clean-up, and how. According to Barbara Cook, site supervisor for the Zeneca area, the department found what it called “major data gaps” about what kinds of toxins were still in the ground, and where.

“One of the problems was that (Zeneca) did a lot of this as a piecemeal approach,” Cook said. “So we didn’t understand where everything was at. So first we had to define the problem – what chemicals are there, and what impacts are there.”

The department required Zeneca to hire a team of geologists to test the soil and groundwater across the entire site. That testing, the results of which were released in 2006, ultimately showed that Lot 1 – which isn’t under the cap – contained unusually high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls and three Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs): Tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, and vinyl chloride.  Those chemicals are all included on the Prop. 65 list and are known to cause cancer.

The toxic substances department also looked back at the legality of the clean-up work, and in 2007, hit Zeneca and its neighbor, the University of California, with a list of clean-up-related violations. The department found that the two parties broke the law during by trucking hazardous material across their property lines, handling hazardous material without proper permits, and a host of other charges, mostly related to how workers transported soil from the university’s field station onto the Zeneca property to bury under the cap.

In June of this year, the department announced a fine of $225,000 for Zeneca, and $285,000 against the university. That money was split evenly between the toxic substances unit and a green-collar, city-run job-training program called RichmondBUILD.

The fines angered the Community Advisory Group, which includes Richmond’s mayor, Gayle McLaughlan. As the group’s president, Dan Schwab, put it, “it was a slap on the wrist.”

Peter Weiner, a real estate lawyer for the Paul Hastings Law Firm in San Francisco, who specializes in “brownfield” development, has been working with the community group pro bono. Weiner, too, called the department’s fines mild.

“Certainly the illegal disposal of hazardous waste is usually accompanied by larger civil penalties, or criminal prosecution,” Weiner said. “As a sophisticated company, (Zeneca) is supposed to know the law.”

According to a toxic substances department spokesperson, the agency is unlikely to adjust the fines, though, regardless of public opinion.

“(The department) evaluated the case on its merits,” spokeswoman Carol Northrup wrote in an email to Richmond Confidential. “The case is closed and will not be re-opened. However, nothing in that enforcement action resolves the parties’ liability and responsibility for continued site clean-up.”

AstraZeneca, when asked for comment, issued a statement on the June settlement:

“We are pleased to settle this matter on behalf of Zeneca, our predecessor company,” company spokeswoman Laura Woodin said, “and we believe the RichmondBUILD program will provide an invaluable mark on the community through the funds we have provided.”

Representatives from the UC field station did not return calls seeking comment.

The citizen group intends to meet Nov. 12 with the head of enforcement for the toxic substance control, Gale Filter, to grill the department about the fines.

IT ISN’T JUST HERE

Padgett pointed to Richmond’s demographics as one of the reasons the Zeneca clean-up, which is just one of several such projects around the city, has been slow to gain momentum.

The lot is fenced off from the corner of Seaport Avenue and South 49th Street, in the harbor-front business tract. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

“If this had happened in my neighborhood in Danville, are you kidding?” she said. “It’d be straightened out by now. But this community has so much on its plate to just get up in the morning and put food on the table, their focus is on survival.”

Schwab, the citizen group president, said manufacturers have been able to get away with polluting the city’s land and waters in part because of Richmond’s historic lack of community activism, as opposed to cities like Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, that have a strong history of environmental awareness.

The Zeneca site is only one of Richmond’s toxic hot-spots. According to the state’s Environmental Protection Agency Web site, the city is home to more than 20 active, state- or federally-monitored hazardous clean-up sites. Nearly all of them are along the city’s 32-mile coastline. Six toxic sites are located in the roughly two miles between Point Isabel, a popular park for dog-walkers, and the inner harbor.

“Richmond is sort of California’s version of a Rustbelt city,” Schwab said. “It’s like a world-class toxic waste site.”

NOT OVER YET

The Zeneca lot is now owned by the real-estate development partnership Cherokee-Simeon Ventures, which purchased the land in 2002. The developers once proposed building a 13-story apartment high-rise there, but that plan stalled out after word got out that the building would feature giant fans on the first floor to blow away the toxic vapors emanating up through the soil beneath.

McLaughlan, the city’s mayor, said she thinks it could be a long time before there’s any sort of construction there at all.

“I think it will be decades before the site is clean,” McLaughlan said in an email. “I most definitely think it should not be zoned as residential. The risk to future residents would be enormous, and the liability for the city would be enormous as well.”

McLaughlan added that she would oppose any plan that did not include doing away with the capped waste by trucking it to a hazardous waste treatment facility.

In March, the state’s Department of Public Health released a study that determined the site poses no immediate threat to the public, so long as it remains empty.

The site’s owners say they’ve yet to settle on what to do with the property. “We’re just considering our options based on the clean-up,” said Tom Kambe, a representative for Brooks Street, a real estate firm that’s working with the developers. “It’ll be market-dictated, and this is a good market.”

Kambe said the developers haven’t taken out any development applications with the city. They’ve released a draft “remedial action plan” for cleaning up the site, but it won’t be completed until 2010, at the earliest.

So with no real conclusion in sight, the lot sits vacant, save for the birds and animals in the marsh and the occasional workers inspecting the huge white cap. Meanwhile, the metal signs on the chain-link fence warning of pollution are starting to rust.

Sergio Rios bought Bob’s Cleaners on 23rd Street in 1986. One year later, he decided to go green. Rios transformed the business from dry to wet cleaning, which allowed him to use biodegradable soap, rather than the conventional chemicals needed for dry cleaning. Rios purchased energy efficient machines and switched out the light fixtures and toilets to match green standards.

Rios, who also serves as the vice president for the 23rd Street Merchant’s Association, hopes improvements on 23rd Street will benefit Richmond’s Hispanic community as a whole.

Rios, 47, immigrated from Mexico in 1979. He now lives in Richmond with his family.

On a recent Friday afternoon, in a house converted into an office on a residential street in Richmond, two men paint the lobby walls green, while another unrolls strips of blue carpet to install in an adjoining room.  The tile on the floors is recently laid, and still damp from the clean-up mop.

These workers are graduates of a local training program, Richmond BUILD, financed by a public-private partnership.  They are among the 160 Richmond residents who have completed the program since it began in April 2007.  BUILD teaches students to weatherize houses and install solar panels in addition to giving training in the basic skills of construction, including carpentry, electrical work and plumbing.

Recent graduates said before beginning the program they didn’t have a steady job, much less a trade.  BUILD seems to have made a difference.

“I did a whole lot of everything, janitorial, cleaning up after dogs, a whole lot of stuff like that,” said life-long Richmond resident Mario Vasquez, 23. He graduated from the program in August, and is now looking for a job in carpentry as he works on the BUILD offices.

The program has a 90 percent job placement rate and an 85 percent retention rate, said Fred Lucero, project manager at Richmond BUILD.

Yet training isn’t the primary objective of the program, according to Lucero.  BUILD began as a violence-reduction program for Richmond.

“It’s not just about arresting people,” Lucero said, arguing that programs like BUILD decrease crime. “[It’s about] reeducating people, training people.”

“For a city that has 100,000 people, a lot of stuff happens here,” Lucero said.  Richmond is the third most violent city per capita in California, according to FBI crime statistics.

Students like Richard Ortega, 18, and Randy Mason, 29, said they see Richmond BUILD as a refuge from the violence of their city.

Ortega said that he had spent time in the juvenile justice system before beginning the training program.

“I started this whole thing because my probation officer made me,” Ortega said. “I never had nowhere to go.  This was the only thing ever showing me, go this way.  That’s why I wake up every morning and come here.”

Ortega was recently hired for a construction project in the Iron Triangle, where he also lives.

“When I got here in this program it’s kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel,” Mason, 29, said.  “They are helping us build our personal life at the same time they are helping us build our business life, which is helping us want to have a career.”

A focus on green collar jobs connects employment and environmentalism, while also serving as a crime reduction strategy, according to Emily Kirsch of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. The Ella Baker Center is a non-profit co-founded by Van Jones, former advisor on green jobs, enterprise and innovation in the Obama administration.

“People know they can make $20 an hour weatherizing a building,” said Kirsch, who is also the Bay Area Organizer for the Baker Center’s Green Collar Jobs Campaign.

“Given that opportunity, most people would take the higher road,” she said.

Green collar jobs pay a wage that can support a family of four, Kirsch said.  Unlike general green industry jobs, green collar jobs involve hands-on labor, explained Raquel Pinderhughes, the San Francisco State University professor of Urban Studies and Planning who coined the term.

Graduates are placed in construction jobs that pay on average more than $18 an hour as the result of collaboration between “unlikely allies” such as labor unions, environmentalists and businesses, Kirsch said.

Richmond BUILD’s job placement strategy depends on developing and maintaining these connections with businesses and unions as well as training students with green economy skills, Lucero said.

“We’ve been building relationships, sending them qualified candidates who will do well,” Lucero said.  “We are in the trenches working with people every day.”

Placing the last two graduating classes in jobs has been difficult given the slow-down in the construction industry, Lucero said.  He also said he thinks the program has had an impact on the community despite these difficulties.

The FBI recognized BUILD for taking steps to reduce violence and drug-related crime.  But 2009 has seen marked increases in homicides in the city. As of October, the homicide rate has reached 41, compared to 20 homicides all year in 2008, according to statistics released by the city of Richmond.

Graduates face challenges in finding employment in an economic downturn, and living in the same violent neighborhoods.  Some suggest that these difficulties make the lessons they learned at Richmond BUILD even more important.

“It’s like being here, I’m happy,” Mason said.  “This is where I am at peace.”