Environment
As Richmond Fire Department and Chevron firefighters complete joint search-and-rescue training operations at the Chevron refinery this week — a sign of cooperation between the two agencies at a time when residents and regulators are demanding answers about refinery safety — Contra Costa County is taking steps to tighten its industrial safety standards. The county’s Board of Supervisors last week appointed Supervisor John Gioia and District 5 Supervisor Federal D. Glover to consider amendments to its Industrial Safety Ordinance and…
On Wednesdays a vibrant civilization springs from trucks and vans to Nevin Plaza, bringing fresh goods to the locals. Fragrant peaches, colorful heirloom tomatoes and delicate cannoli are among the many treats to be found between the 10 or so tents that sit snugly in the courtyard. And as for quality, the produce is spray, pesticide and hormone-free. Yet what some of the more prominent Bay Area markets boast, this one lacks – USDA-certified organic products.
Before the frenzy of volunteers descended on Shimada Friendship Park for the 28th annual Coastal Cleanup Day, a dozen volunteers arose early Saturday morning for a special task. This “chosen few” — as one project organizer jokingly called them — made up this year’s Flotsam Flotilla, a small cluster of kayaks that set out to clean up a stretch of the Richmond Shoreline only accessible by boat. The Richmond-based Watershed Project, which organized the flotilla, borrowed boats from the REI…
Environmentally conscious car owners showed off their wheels at Saturday’s Green Drive Expo in Richmond.
The bushes rustle as Herb Warren emerges toting a trash picker and plastic bucket. The 65-year-old retiree ambles through the plants, snatching up the pieces of littered plastic, food wrappers and bottles along the stretch of Baxter Creek running through Booker T. Anderson Park.
More than 800 volunteers, many of them teenagers, broke coastal cleanup records in Shimada Park Saturday.
Near the corner of Cutting Boulevard and 23rd Street, between an asphalt parking lot and a concrete sidewalk, surrounded by weeds and yellowed grass, is a dead tree.
The East Bay Regional Park District is looking for $5.2 million to fund a first-of-its-kind interpretive center at Point Pinole, which would help tell the environmental and cultural history of the area through educational programs for school children and the public.
Hundreds of volunteers will collect thousands of pounds of trash Saturday at Shimada Friendship Park as part of an annual statewide effort to clean coastlines and educate the public about healthy watersheds. Unlike other ocean contaminants, “Trash is a pollutant you can see, so it’s less abstract,” said Juliana Gonzalez, the Healthy Watersheds Program manager for The Watershed Project, which co-sponsors the event with Supervisor John Gioia and the City of Richmond from 9 a.m.-noon on Saturday. At noon, volunteers…