Environment
Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin first saw Henry Clark, as so many have, at the gates of Richmond’s Chevron oil refinery. It was a blustery day in June 2003 and Clark was calling for environmental accountability from the oil company – as he has for many years – in front of an impassioned crowd of community members holding signs attacking refinery flares and “dirty air.” “He spoke prior to me” at the event, recalls McLaughlin, who had arrived armed with statistics…
Environmental health advocates have often linked asthma rates in Richmond to nearby industrial polluters like the Chevron refinery. But while science has established some strong correlations between air pollution and asthma episodes — such as in studies conducted by the California EPA Air Resources Board or published in scientific journals such as Current Opinion on Pulmonary Medicine — the jury’s still out on causation. “The connection between asthma and air quality is complicated,” says Abigail Kroch, Director of Epidemiology, Planning & Evaluation at Contra…
For the third year in a row the Kaiser Permanente Richmond Medical Center has been listed as one of the best hospitals in the country by the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit group that surveys hospital performance. “I’m really proud of the accomplishment of the people that work really hard everyday,” said Dr. Timothy Batchelder, the hospital’s physician-in-chief. Batchelder said he sees this honor as an opportunity to reaffirm the labor and commitment shown by his staff – for, he said,…
Richmond Arts Center has been holding holiday arts festivals for more than 50 years. But this is the first time its festival has gone green, thanks to volunteers who spent a week in November making decorations for the Dec. 2 festival out of old newspapers. This shift from new to recycled materials is innovative, cost-efficient and environmentally friendly. And it represents a more dignified final use for newspapers than serving as birdcage liner for the family parrot. “People have donated…
Point Pinole is perfectly silent except for the squawks of birds flying overhead and the occasional cringe-inducing crunch under foot. The low tide exposes a muddy stretch of shoreline, the rocks red and Martian-like under the setting sun. Despite its fleeting resemblance to the Red Planet, the question here isn’t whether there’s life, but whether there could be more. There’s plenty of living things at Point Pinole – just look closely at the rocks at low tide or turn over…
This past June, Richmond’s City Council voted to join the Marin Energy Authority, a nonprofit energy provider that derives its electricity from a minimum of 50% renewable sources.
This means that in July 2013, all Richmond residents will be automatically enrolled in the Marin Clean Energy Community Choice Aggregation program’s Light Green package.
A shiny bean-shaped rolling contraption, barely three feet high, struggled up a steep gradient on a recent Saturday morning as it entered the streets of Richmond from El Cerrito, turning heads and slowing down traffic as two escort cars flashed their blinkers and carefully stewarded it through crowded traffic intersections. ”We are taking a right on San Pablo, Roger, right on San Pablo,” a navigational assistant in the lead car said through the team’s chatty mission control system, giving a…
Chevron will replace all piping in the damaged sections of the Richmond refinery with chrome alloy, the company said in a letter Wednesday to the city of Richmond and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The move comes six weeks after Chevron announced that it believed the Aug. 6 fire may have occurred because of thinning and corrosion in a piping component that may have had low silicon content. “Before the restart of the crude unit, Chevron will complete…
On the day after the election, as folks were picking themselves up after a night spent celebrating or grieving, Nutiva CEO John Roulac, a major financial supporter of the failed genetically-modified-food-labeling Prop. 37, was putting his best GMO-free foot forward. “Obviously, I would have loved to have won, but 47 percent is respectable and demonstrates that 47 percent of Californians want the right to know what’s in their food,” Roulac said, referring to the 4.3 million Californians who voted yes…