Environment
Around two hundred people gathered Friday at the Richmond BART for a rally in celebration of Earth Day. During the event, organized by Occupy Richmond, protestors carried signs, sang songs and chanted slogans against Chevron.
An unusually large number of people attended Tuesday’s city council meeting in Richmond. Many carried banners or wore bright colored shirts with slogans like “Don’t kill our jobs,” which others changed in “Don’t kill our kids” later in the evening.
As the County Assessor’s Appeals Board prepares to meet to decide on Chevron’s tax assessment appeal value for 2010 and 2011, Richmond Confidential searched for other some US cities where other oil refineries are also appealing their local property tax assessments or have appealed them over the past five years.
In an effort to build better a more amicable relationship with the community, Veolia, the company that manages the wastewater treatment plant in Richmond, has instituted an internship program geared at employing local residents. The company is already through the first stages of selecting two interns, said Jamal Muhammad, the Community Outreach Coordinator for Veolia.
Representative George Miller is an unabashedly left-leaning Democrat and Richmond’s congressional representative, who is currently focused on the national healthcare and budget debates.
In January, when the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) announced it had chosen Richmond, Calif. as the site for its new research facility, the city was all trumpets and fanfare, with welcome banners flying and “I [heart] LBNL” pins fastened to lapels. In January, when the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) announced it had chosen Richmond, Calif. as the site for its new research facility, the city was all trumpets and fanfare, with welcome banners flying and “I [heart] LBNL” pins fastened to lapels. And why not? The lab’s second campus, scheduled to open in 2016, is expected to generate hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue for Richmond in the coming years. For a city plagued by unemployment, poverty and crime, this is thrilling news. But amidst all the excitement, some questions remain unanswered, most notably: exactly what kind of research will take place at the lab?
There is great news for fishermen and salmon lovers. This year’s projected salmon count in watersheds around the bay is higher than it has been in years. Last year only about 115,000 salmon were counted swimming from the bay up the Sacramento River. This year the projected count is over 800,000.
Last month, the Richmond City Council joined Berkeley and San Francisco in asking local businesses to stop selling certain rat and mouse pesticides that are in pellet form, that are not packaged with bait stations, and that contain the chemicals bodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, and difenacoum.
After multiple spills from the city sewer system last Thursday and Saturday, residents began noticing warning signs in the Point Isabel region that the water may be contaminated. East Bay Regional Parks workers put the signs up as a precautionary measure to advise people to avoid any contact with the water. “The amount of discharge is unknown,” said Matthew Graul, Water Resources Manager for the parks district, “and that is why we are being protective.” Recent rainstorms overwhelmed the sewer…