Environment
Residents near Chevron’s Richmond Refinery can expect to see flames at the plant’s flare stacks over the next month and a half, as the refinery enters one of its occasional maintenance periods. On Monday, the refinery began work that will bring an additional 1,650 contractors into Richmond over the next four to six weeks. That work will include some visible flaring as excess gas is burned off during maintenance, according to an alert emailed to community members. Flaring at the…
The City Council acknowledged Mike Coyle, the former general manager of Chevron’s Richmond refinery who recently was promoted to the company’s San Ramon headquarters, with a proclamation Tuesday night. While many speakers from the community and council members spoke highly of Coyle’s character, some were extremely critical of Chevron as a company and its role in Richmond. “He is a human being that puts a face to the corporation that is Chevron,” Councilmember Jovanka Beckles said after congratulating Coyle on…
Since July, the city has been trying to use more than $400,000 in federal stimulus funds to provide discounted and free solar panels for Richmond homeowners. The initial goal of the R3 program was to install the panels on a hundred homes, but so far only eight people have signed up. The city is beefing up its outreach program, though, and officials say they believe at least 40 low-income homeowners will choose to have free panels installed by November 2012….
The City Council voted Tuesday to prohibit the sale of live chickens at the Richmond’s Certified Farmer’s Market, igniting an eruption of cheers from animal rights supporters who filled City Hall. The crowd, which consisted mostly of visitors to Richmond, was there on a larger animal-rights agenda, fueled by a recent victory in banning live chicken sales at the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market in San Francisco. Despite the determination of supporters, the ban will affect only one vendor…
Volunteers recorded all the trash they picked up at Shimada Friendship Park last Saturday into categories like Styrofoam, plastics, paper and for fun, oddest items. When the tally cards were gathered, the most interesting object found was clear — a message in a bottle.
Regional park officials and park users were upset when they unexpectedly found two acres of trees, in piles, on the ground on county land bordering Point Pinole Regional Park on September 14. The felled oaks and eucalyptuses, which make way for a solar energy project, raise new questions about environmental impact and communication with county officials.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District board of directors voted Wednesday to postpone the Blueprint for Healthy Communities Summit, citing cost and conflict-of-interest concerns.
If a natural disaster were to strike, there’s a good chance West Contra Costa County residents—like those in any place around the nation—could be left waiting. Waiting for food, waiting for water, waiting for basic needs as emergency personnel scramble to find survivors and assess the immediate damage. The threat of disaster is especially real in coastal Richmond and its surrounding towns, which are located on the Hayward Fault and are at risk of tsunami, industrial disasters and especially earthquakes….
In a 5,000-gallon fish tank in a 1980s greenhouse off a side street near Fred Jackson Boulevard, about a thousand koi fish, the fish so often found in Japanese garden ponds, are busy growing lettuce. The “tank” is actually an uncovered, blue-tiled, above-ground swimming pool that local organic farmer Pilar Reber purchased at Target about nine months ago. To see the fish clearly, though, you have to walk on tip-toe to the pool’s edge because the koi are, well, coy….