Environment
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…
W hat is the solution to Richmond’s environmental woes? Trees, some say. More than one hundred trees have been planted in Richmond soil in the last month and last weekend nearly 60 volunteers transplanted 30 trees to Roosevelt Avenue and surrounding streets. Richmond Trees and Groundwork Richmond hosted Saturday’s harvest festival, complete with art and crafts, live entertainment — and even a giant radish — to set the tone of community and environmental awareness. PG&E representatives shoveled with Watershed Project…
Richmond residents erupted into gleeful cheers as they watched CNN call three states in a row for President Barack Obama, before finally handing him the presidency. “Four more years! Four more years!” chanted people watching the results at Salute restaurant, throwing their fists into the air, hugging, and crying before toasting their champagne glasses. Anxiety turned into relief as Iowa a swing state, was called for the president. “I was biting my nails – I was too scared to watch…
“We come together in grief,” said Pastor Dan Damon as he opened a memorial service Friday for Barbara Moore Vincent — but the day brought few tears. Instead, Vincent’s family and friends laughed and joked at the Richmond Yacht Club as they celebrated her long, rich life as a sharp-witted muckraker and tireless advocate for Richmond. Vincent, who helped create public access to miles of Richmond shoreline and served nearly three decades as a board member for the environmental group…
A group of students, teachers, parents, and politicians gathered at Harding Elementary, Saturday as a first step to help communication efforts between the Contra Costa LGBTQ community support groups and the school systems. Participants said it’s important to open lines of communication with schools, while the children are young.
West County school leaders are anxiously awaiting the vote on the state’s Proposition 30, a tax increase proposal written by Governor Jerry Brown that if passed would mean millions of dollars for the West Contra Costa Unified School District — money the district says it desperately needs. “If the election is not successful for Prop 30 we estimate that the cuts will be $12 million for our school district,” said Sherri Gamba, the district’s associate superintendent of business services. That’s…