Environment
When Judy Quittman had to take her 2-year-old daughter to the emergency room due to an asthma attack, she knew it was time to do something about the mold growing in her home. Quittman was one of the first Richmond residents to take advantage of Energy Upgrade California, a program assisting homeowners in upgrading and “greening” their homes to save on energy bills and make for a healthier, eco-friendly home environment. The upgrade – proper insulation and double-paned windows…
Ryan Wartena has designed what he calls an energy computer, although he routinely refers to it by different names — home micro utility, demand response device, a suite of tools. It’s the size of a small refrigerator. The device is essentially a battery for solar power, storing energy collected from solar panels for use later. Solar, Wartena says, is a “use it or lose it” commodity — if the generated power is not used in real time, it’s gone. He…
Fred Casanares got to Point Pinole Park a little before 8 a.m. on Saturday. He fired up the grill at 10 a.m. with almond wood, because it burns cleaner than charcoal. For the next five hours, Casanares cooked hundreds of pounds of burgers, hot dogs, quesadillas, and skirt steak, while smoke wafted around the festival and the persistent long lines in front of the grill. “I can’t even calculate how many people I’ve fed,” he said, wiping the trails of…
Richmond residents, business owners and conservationists showed up in droves at the City Council chambers Thursday night to give the Planning Commission an earful regarding the fourth draft of the city’s major planning document and its accompanying final environmental analysis. In all, 59 speaker cards were submitted, and most residents expressed concerns about air quality, job growth, transportation, development and especially land use. “You can imagine that in such a city there is going to be quite a bit of…
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.