Environment
Students in the Environmental Science, Conservation And Photographic Excursions, or E.S.C.A.P.E. Club, at Dejean Middle School are rolling up their sleeves and trading urban living for a day on Slide Ranch. The Club started in 1999 at Adams Middle School when three teachers took their students on an end of the year trip to Monterey Bay. Some of the students had never seen the ocean before. This inspired the teachers to create an after-school club focused on helping students experience…
First, they heard the hissing. Then, they smelled the stench; gas escaping from a pipeline inside the hole carved out of the street on South 47th Street and Wall Avenue on Saturday morning. A laborer with Ghilotti Bros.—a San Rafael-based contracting company—called his supervisor, who was a few blocks away. They had backed into a two-inch PG&E pipeline while digging down to the sewer line. “As soon as I got out of the truck, I could hear it blowin’,” the…
Although Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory representatives didn’t reveal the lab’s preference for a new location at Thursday night’s Community Advisory Group meeting, community members once again strongly supported Richmond as the site for the second LBNL campus. The meeting was the final update for the community on the site’s selection before the decision, which is expected by the end of November. Sam Chapman, the manager of state and community relations at LBNL, said in a brief presentation that the lab…
At Richmond’s first food policy council meeting Tuesday night at City Hall, Urban Tilth Executive Director Doria Robinson instructed the carefully chosen participants to catalog the city’s most pressing food-related problems. The session started off quickly. As the participants introduced themselves, they cited their biggest concerns while Robinson took notes on a dry-erase board in front of the group. “We are trying to make a list, to really get a sense of the scope of all different issues that are…
In the food packaging business, polystyrene has become a four-letter word, but the food industry simply doesn’t have a cost-effective, eco-friendly answer to the plastic that Dow Chemical introduced to Americans in the early 1940s. In 2007, Richmond business owner Allen King thought he had the answer.
When Luz Gomez, the deputy chief of staff for County Supervisor John Gioia, tried to establish a small deli on a corner in North Richmond, even with help from the County, had to overcome more zoning code, development agency and operator obstacles then she anticipated. Though she says that she feels close to opening the neighborhood’s only restaurant, it has been a battle that has lasted years. “I can’t tell you the kinds of barriers we have encountered along this…
Richmond will host a major public meeting on environmental justice and job creation Thursday, with representatives from nearly a dozen federal agencies as well as local officials, social-service providers and environmental and business groups. Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the departments of Justice, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development will be among those present. The event is one in a series of meetings nationwide between local stakeholders and…
For Eugene Nishinaga, the chief technical officer at CyberTran International, ultralight rail is nothing short of a spiritual awakening. “I was actually driving on the highway, right outside the [Richmond] field station,” he said, “totally coincidence — and I felt the call of God.” The call was the impetus for a major shift in Nishinaga’s life. At the time, he was a respected research and development manager for BART with nearly 40 years experience in transit. But in 2008, Nishinaga,…
Two of Richmond’s foremost leaders took a moment Friday morning to send off thank-you letters to hundreds of residents who have helped encourage the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to open a new facility in Richmond.