What’s happening with the Chevron settlement money?

A year ago, after reaching a $550 million settlement with Chevron, Richmond City Council promised residents it would seek their input to determine how that money would be spent. But three months after the first $50 million installment landed in the city’s coffers, community leaders who understood the money would be used for residents’ immediate benefit are still waiting for the city to come aknockin’.

They’re not waiting anymore. 

Diego Garcia stood up at the Oct. 7 City Council meeting and asked for money to support Richmond Sports Outreach Leadership. That’s a youth sports program Garcia founded in 2003 because the city wasn’t able to provide such programs. Richmond SOL has relied on city funding to expand its offerings to more youth over the last two decades.

“We are coming for what is rightfully ours, and we’ll keep coming until we get it,” Garcia said. 

Garcia was referring to what he hopes will be his organization’s slice of the historic settlement that Chevron agreed to when Richmond City Council dropped a proposed November ballot measure that would have asked voters to support a $1 per barrel tax on the 250,000 barrels Chevron refines in the city every day. 

“It’s embarrassing for us to ask them for money, they should be coming to us,” Garcia said. 

Change in plans

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Last fall, the City Council voted 4-3 to authorize staff to “move forward with the public process” to engage with Richmond residents on how they would like the city to spend the settlement money, which will be spread out over 10 years. The motion said “after the community input process,” city staff should put together a “comprehensive implementation plan of various projects.” It spoke to the city’s ultimate goal of transitioning its economy away from reliance on Chevron, whose taxes comprise anywhere between 15 to 30% of the city’s tax base. 

Community members are waiting not only for the city to begin that public process, but also for the city to deploy the funds.

“Residents are kind of grappling with the decision to delay the spending,” said Emma Ishii, a spokesperson for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, a nonprofit whose goal is to make Richmond a greener city.

APEN says the city should put forth a “robust plan for spending the funds” and to make sure that City Council is “bringing the community into the process.” 

Mayor Eduardo Martinez was among those who cast a “yes” vote to instruct city staff to begin a community-based process for soliciting community input. However, Martinez said the council has not yet instructed staff to do that.

“We don’t always have time to follow up, and sometimes we don’t have the capacity to get things done,” Martinez said.

The council veered from the community-oriented process after President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January, Martinez said. As a sanctuary city with a double-digit percentage of its population made up of undocumented immigrants, he said it was more prudent to keep the $50 million in the bank in case the federal government targeted Richmond’s funds.

In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year revoked a $19 million in grant to Contra Costa County for projects that were meant to address environmental justice in North Richmond but that the EPA has since said promote DEI initiatives.

“We are not spending that $50 million because of incidents like this. This government is unpredictable. We know that,” Martinez said. “Out of all of the cities in the Bay Area, we are the best poised” to withstand financial uncertainties. 

Vice Mayor Cesar Zepeda disagrees with the mayor’s thinking and said the City Council has an obligation to honor the 2024 motion. 

“The way I see it, this is the people’s money so the people should be the ones who tell us how to use it,” Zepeda said. 

Richmond residents like Antwon Cloird agree. Born and raised in Richmond, he is the founder of the newly established Coalition of Black Excellence. Since the Chevron settlement, he regularly stands up to speak at City Council meetings and asks that the Chevron money be used, at least in part, for reparations for the Black community. 

Cloird says Richmond’s Black neighborhoods have borne the brunt of Chevron’s decadeslong pollution in the city, contributing to elevated levels of asthma, bronchitis, and other chronic illnesses common in populations exposed to certain environmental toxins. He wants the settlement money invested in health systems, education and jobs to benefit Richmond’s Black community.

Cloird said Black residents have been redlined into neighborhoods downwind — and downstream — of the pollutants Chevron releases during its refining processes. 

Growing up, Cloird remembers the rotten egg stench of hydrogen sulfide coming out of the sewers at night. Hydrogen sulfide is a byproduct of the refining process that is flushed out of refineries. According to state and federal regulators, until 1987, Chevron released the toxin-filled water directly into Richmond’s public sewer system.

With respect to the settlement, Cloird mused out loud about City Council alone determining spending priorities on the hundreds of millions of dollars he feels came the city’s way in large part because of harm to the Black community. “That’s their money?” 

Given the decades of pollution that have come from Chevron’s emissions directly into historically Black neighborhoods, Cloird answered his own question. “That’s our money.”

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