Environment
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….
At 19 years old, Lela Turner found herself homeless, jobless and struggling. Two years earlier, the San Leandro High School graduate had tried working part-time at McDonald’s and attending Chabot Community College in Hayward. But an unstable family life and unforeseen expenses soon put Turner out on the street with no place to go — until her caseworker told her about RichmondBUILD. The RichmondBUILD Pre-apprenticeship Construction Skills and Green Jobs Training Academy allows Richmond residents to obtain skills like solar…
Chevron’s Richmond operation will soon have a change in its top management as General Manager Mike Coyle will leave office in the last week of this month to take a job at corporate headquarters in San Ramon. Coyle, who has “proudly” been the refinery GM for three years, said he will leave with a single regret: that he couldn’t complete the Renewal Project, which was halted during his time as the refinery chief. The task of passing the project will…
Roughly 2,500 people collected 25,500 pounds of trash from the Contra Costa County shoreline and creeks during Saturday’s annual coastal cleanup day, said The Watershed Project, the event’s local host. Shimada Friendship Park was the main cleanup station for Richmond’s 26th annual event, which saw about 400 volunteers collect more than 1,774 pounds of trash and 400 pounds of recyclables. “When people come together to work on something that impacts us all, it empowers community, it helps people engage with…
Baxter Creek in Richmond received some negative attention this week after it was highlighted on Save the Bay’s list of most polluted creeks in the Bay Area. But while the creek has a history of pollution problems, a considerable amount of conservation work has made many portions of it cleaner than other creeks in the Bay Area, said Juliana Gonzalez, Healthy Watersheds Program Manager of The Watershed Project. The creeks on Save the Bay’s list were chosen to highlight creeks…
Amidst a series of increasingly public disagreements, City Councilmember Jeff Ritterman filed two formal complaints this week to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, alleging that Councilmember Corky Booze has unfairly punished some local businesses and made alliances with others based on campaign contributions. While the complaints reached the state watchdog agency in Sacramento, the councilmembers clashed repeatedly at Tuesday’s council meeting. Supporters of Booze turned out in droves to lambast Ritterman and the Richmond Progressive Alliance, the influential political…