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The soggy field behind LoVonya DeJean Middle School shook, rattled and rolled Wednesday evening, as five Major League Soccer players from the San Jose Earthquakes conducted a clinic for Richmond United Soccer Club players.
There are five separate investigations into the Aug. 6 Chevron refinery fire, but if Monday’s meeting was any indication, many Richmond residents doubt even that will be enough.
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Speakers from local environmental and community groups blasted the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which is charged with regulating air pollution, and called for accountability from Chevron.
After the Chevron refinery fire sent plumes of black smoke laden with chemicals into the air, Urban Tilth, one of Richmond’s urban agriculture organizations, wants the soil it uses to grow food tested for heavy metals. Though the Contra Costa Health Services say Richmond-grown fruits and vegetables are safe to eat and that they don’t expect any impact from the fire on soil or compost, Doria Robinson, the executive director of Urban Tilth, said she worries about heavy metals like…
Results from a Bay Area Air Quality Management District analysis of particulate matter in the air over Richmond following the Aug. 6 Chevron refinery fire show slightly elevated levels of elemental carbon, which is common after a fire. Those levels are still well below state and federal air quality standards, the BAAQMD announced Thursday. Although the official analysis showed low levels, the smoke plume went several thousand feet into the air and the wind blew it east, said Wendel Brunner,…
Jessie Phillips has lived in the same home from the time she was a little girl. If it wasn’t for her home, she says, she wouldn’t live in Richmond. “It’s just too hard,” she said. Just the sound of sirens sends her into a fit of tears. Each siren sound reminds her of the death of her son Anthony Robinson. Robinson was shot in his car following an altercation at a gas station in Richmond on July 18, 2004. His mother Jessie says her son and his friends were followed in his car to Albany, just off the Gilman exit. Shots were fired, and her son Anthony was hit in the head by one of the bullets. He spent four days on life support before he died. On his birthday each year, December 16, Phillips takes out a memorial in the West County Times in his memory. It’s something that gives her peace, she says. Jessie credits prayer, family and community support for keeping her going. She has two remaining children: Kenneth Robinson, 25, and Jessica Walker, 32. She regularly attends events hosted and organized by Charlene Harris of Healing Circles of Hope ( Mother’s Against Senseless Killing, MASK).
Over the last five weeks, seven Richmond teens—under the guidance of two adults, Loriana Valente and Pancho Peskador—have spent hours spray painting the walls of a building in Richmond. On the corner of 41st Street and Macdonald Avenue they worked, transforming the dull brown walls of the West Contra Costa County Children’s Services building into a vibrantly colorful depiction of their vision of life in Richmond.
On September 4, West Contra Costa County residents will have a state of the art, two-story, 53,000 square foot West County Health Center. Located in San Pablo, the new health center will be 30 percent larger than the current Richmond Health Center, with new examination rooms with greater capacity for patients and an additional three-level parking structure.