Health
A dozen Richmond residents, most donning shirts that read ‘Clean Air for All,’ rode a bus to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District office this morning to hear from the various agencies investigating the Aug. 6 Chevron refinery fire. Spectators filled the chairs and lined the wall of the quiet, wood-paneled room as each organization — including representatives from BAAQMD, the Environmental Protection Agency, Contra Costa Health Services, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, and California Air Resources Board —…
As hikers crunch down the gravel pathway of the Wildcat Marsh Trail, 89 solar panels tower over a grid of wastewater treatment ponds. But over the other shoulder, coastal birds soar above the wide-open tidal marsh and pickleweed. The Wildcat Marsh Trail takes it all in in a gauntlet of manmade-meets-nature-made. Across the marsh, a factory’s steam billows at the base of the mountains. The trail feeds into the Landfill Loop trail, where trucks buzz around on Garbage Mountain pulverizing…
A U.S. district judge told city attorneys this morning that Richmond didn’t “stand a chance of a prosecution” in enforcing its campaign disclosure laws against an anti-soda-tax group. The Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes filed a lawsuit against the city to prevent it from enforcing a law that would require the group to devote one-third of any mailer’s campaign disclosure section to the words “major funding from out-of-city-contributors.” Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that the ordinance did not apply to…
When Dr. William Jenkins Jr.’s home was threatened by the Oakland Hills fire of 1991, the last thing on his mind was saving his house. “All he cared about was saving one suit so he could go to work,” said Dr. Brian Blaisch, Jenkins’ former colleague and friend. “And that was literally the real meaning in his life – making sure that he could get to work the next day.” Superhuman, perfectionist, giver, father: These were the words friends and…
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Richmond Bay Campus will focus on biosciences that affect energy production, environment, and human health scientists from the lab and the University of California said Thursday. The scientists explained the highlights of research projects to come for an audience of more than 100 people at the Memorial Auditorium. Research proposals included a range of topics, from local rainwater catchment and filtration systems to biofuel development. Jay Keasling, a professor of chemical and biomolecular…
[Editor’s note: this story has been corrected from a previous version to note that the the ordinance requires the text reading “major funding from out-of-city contributors” to take up one-third of the disclosure section of the front page of a mailer. The disclosure section itself takes up one-quarter of the front page.] An anti-soda tax lobbying group will argue in federal court tomorrow that the city cannot force it to disclose its financial contributions on campaign mailings. The Community Coalition…
Over the next eight weeks, trucks will be dropping off load after load of dirt in Point Pinole Regional Park before returning to Berkeley for more. As part of the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline project, about 70,000 cubic yards of dirt will be relocated from a giant mound on University Avenue just off Interstate 80. Most of it will be used to build a bridge over the railroad tracks. The dirt will also be used to create more park space…
Health workers, politicians and residents celebrated on Tuesday the opening of a $45 million, LEED-silver certified medical center that will serve West County residents and replace the aging Richmond Health Center. Located within a block of Doctors Hospital and Brookside Health Center in San Pablo, the state-of-the-art facility completes a medical hub.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says investigations into Chevron’s August 7 fire in Richmond will take at least a year, and it’s premature to discuss prosecution or fines. At an August 27 public briefing on the investigations, Dan Meer, the assistant director of the EPA’s Region 9 Superfund Division, said the EPA would prosecute to the fullest extent possible if it finds that Chevron violated the law. In an interview this week Meer qualified his remarks. “It is very early in…