Richmond’s Lincoln Elementary School playground and parking lot were turned into a Bike Fiesta Saturday, with scores of neighborhood bike riders and dozens of bicycling enthusiasts from throughout the city coming out to celebrate cycling. It was mild mayhem as bike-riding youngsters careened, sometimes on wobbly wheels, around the school grounds dodging bystanders and each other.
Richmond moved forward yesterday in the competition to be the site for a second campus of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The city’s Richmond Field Station, already owned by UC Berkeley, is one of six finalists. Other finalists are in Berkeley, Alameda, Albany, and Oakland. LBNL has outgrown its current location in the hills above UC Berkeley, and Richmond has long looked to the site as part of a plan to bolster the city’s growing green- and clean-technology sector….
Hundreds gathered at Richmond’s Civic Center auditorium Saturday for the Financial Freedom IV and L.I.F.E. Conference. Healthy Community Richmond and Citibank have put on the annual conference for the last four years featuring panels and workshops on various aspects of personal finance.
Richmond’s City Council decided yesterday to nix plans for a casino at Point Molate in a 5-to-2 vote, ending the six-year debate.
Richmond firefighters responded to a fire likely started by a barbecue.
Two days of civil disobedience to save the Bible Way Apostolic Church from foreclosure ended yesterday when Contra Costa sheriff’s deputies arrested Pastor Sydney Keys, his wife, mother and two other activists.
Veolia Water’s days running the Point Richmond Wastewater Treatment Plant may be numbered after Tuesday night’s city council meeting. The council passed a measure to direct city staff members to prepare a list of all feasible legal options to handle wastewater treatment in Richmond, including the dissolution of the city’s current contract with the multinational company.
In a long meeting Tuesday night during which Richmond’s City Council noticeably voted in lock step, the council took on a number of issues including the rights of corporations in a democracy, whether or not to allow chain restaurants in Point Richmond, Chevron’s once-rejected Renewal Project and the purchase of new air quality meters to be deployed near the Point Richmond wastewater treatment plant.
The company will begin shipping roughly 35,000 vehicles a year through the Port of Richmond.
Point Richmond is known as a tight-knit community with a unique, small town charm, and a vote today by the Richmond City Council will determine if people in the community can keep out businesses they think will mar that ambience. The Council will vote this evening on an ordinance to prevent so-called formula restaurants from setting up shop in the neighborhood until next January.
The wastewater treatment plant in Point Richmond will soon restart full operations, said Aaron Weiner, district manager at Veolia Water, the company that runs the facility. Solid waste processing at the plant was shut down in early October, 2010. Since then, the company has been hauling about a hundred trucks of solid human waste each week to an East Bay Municipal Utility District facility in Oakland.
The future of the local green economy faces a test over the next 4 years.
Hundreds gathered at the Greater Richmond Souper Center for a Thanksgiving meal.