Scientists, urban designers, elected officials and over 40 residents gathered on Tuesday night at the RYSE Youth Center in Richmond to discuss how the city should respond to sea level rise. The event, hosted by The Watershed Project, was created to support the development of Richmond’s Sea Level Rise Adaptation and Resiliency Plan, which was mandated by a 2023 state law. Attendees mingled around photographs and maps of Richmond’s 32 miles of shoreline. They watched naturalists from The Watershed Project…
At 6:33 p.m. on Aug. 6, 2012, two days after moving into her new house in Atchison Village, Marisa Goul looked out her window and saw a towering pillar of black smoke curling into the sky over the Chevron Refinery. Five minutes later, Richmond’s Community Warning System sirens split the air. Her new neighbors told her to shelter in place. Goul began sealing shut all her windows and doors with the roll of painters tape from her recent move. “I’m…
On the 37th day of the federal government shutdown, about two dozen Richmond residents and environmentalists met at Easter Hill United Methodist Church to discuss the cleanup of the United Heckathorn Superfund Site. The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for monitoring and decontaminating the site, which includes the Lauritzen Channel (pictured above) in Richmond’s Inner Harbor and an adjacent section of land. The federal government shutdown has delayed the development of an agency-approved cleanup plan. However, Richmond residents at last…
Dozens of volunteers worked with the community organization Urban Tilth to clean up Wildcat Creek in North Richmond Ballpark on Saturday morning, extracting chunks of tires, stretches of inner tube, mud-encrusted plastic bottles, solitary shoes, a tired-looking soccer ball, and a plethora of other man-made waste from around spindly trees that hide the waterway. “It feels really good to come out and be part of a group like this, get dirty, get bitten by mosquitoes,” said Wittiker Schlauoh-Saiyawong, who joined…