[Sosfbay-discuss] RECLAIMING RICHMOND: The city's Green Party Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and a cadre of residents fight to take back the shoreline for public use

[JamBoi]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/22/CMGB5QTIDG1.DTL

RECLAIMING RICHMOND
The city's Green Party Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and a
cadre of residents fight to take back the shoreline
for public use

Tim Holt

Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Port of Richmond. Chronicle photo by Kat Wade
Whitney Dotson (left) with his grandchildren Ade-Ajai
and... Sunset on the stacks at Chevron from Nicol Knob
Trail in ... Mike Elwell takes his dog, Whitey, on a
romp on the trail... More...

Whitney Dotson knows where the wild mustard greens
grow along Richmond's shoreline. Near this same spot
during the Christmas season, he marvels at the sight
of tens of thousands of waterfowl, pausing to rest on
their flight along the Great Pacific Flyway.

Dotson, 62, his face framed by graying dreadlocks, has
the sunny disposition of a born optimist. And he has a
vision for his hometown's future, one that would
embrace and preserve most of the green shoreline of
this industrial city.

Growing up in a place like Richmond can sharpen your
appreciation for such things as green spaces and
wildlife.

Dotson spent his earliest years in Richmond's
notorious Seaport Apartments, low-cost housing built
toward the end of World War II to house shipyard
workers. His family had moved from Louisiana so his
father could work in the Richmond shipyards. The
apartments were right next to a pesticide and chemical
plant. Dotson and the other kids from the apartments
skimmed rocks on nearby ponds and waded through
marshes laden with toxic waste. There was often a
putrid, rotten-egg smell coming from the plant, and a
mysterious brown dust would settle on the cars around
the apartments.

Two of Dotson's sisters, one now deceased, have been
diagnosed with cancer. Dotson himself seems to have
come through unscathed; his biggest health complaint
is that his feet swell up on long plane flights.

When he was 5, Dotson's family moved into what he
calls the first black subdivision in California,
Parchester Village, fronting Richmond Bay. He still
lives there, in his boyhood home. A son, Lukman, lives
with his family just down the street.

Parchester Village is a mixture of African American
and Latino residents these days. It is no longer the
quiet suburban oasis it once was. The village
experienced two murders last year in a city with a
total of 42, a city where dead bodies are occasionally
dumped in local parks, and where residents are careful
to get behind locked doors when the sun goes down.

That's the Richmond most of us know from news reports,
but something else is going on in this city. Thanks to
the efforts of people like Dotson, Richmond is
spawning its own brand of environmentalism: a push for
a greener shoreline, a greener city and green
businesses in a city that has long been a toxic
dumping ground. It is a hardscrabble kind of
environmentalism, this push for a greener city amid
Richmond's wrecking yards, its chemical ponds and its
huge refinery. This effort goes back at least to the
1970s, and the beginnings of the modern environmental
movement in the country at large, when Richmond's two
major shoreline parks were established. Where else but
in Richmond would you find a sprawling shoreline park,
Point Pinole, situated on the former site of a
manufacturer of gunpowder and blasting caps?
Richmond's other shoreline park, Miller-Knox, replaced
chemical plants and a quarry operation.

Richmond is a city where environmentalism is no
abstract concept, where the idea of a clean
environment takes on a certain urgency. Richmond's
children are hospitalized for asthma at twice the rate
of children in the rest of Contra Costa County,
according to county health records. In 1993, 21,000
sought medical attention for respiratory problems
after concentrated sulfuric acid leaked into the
atmosphere from a faulty tank car valve at the General
Chemical plant. The city is home to one of the Bay
Area's worst toxic sites, the former pesticide plant
in Dotson's old neighborhood, still laden with a
witches' brew that includes sulfuric acid, DDT,
mercury, zinc and arsenic.

"We haven't always been as big on the environment as
we are now," says longtime Richmond Councilman Tom
Butt notes in something of an understatement. "In the
past the environmental movement was seen as something
only people of means could indulge in, an attitude
here in Richmond that we're poor, we need jobs, the
environment can come later."

For a long time, activists like Dotson and the late
Lucretia Edwards, a famous fighter for shoreline parks
in Richmond, labored in a kind of vacuum, with little
support from local government.

"But that's changing," Butt notes. "New people are
moving here from Marin and San Francisco and Oakland.
They're part of an emerging constituency that's
pushing for green issues and growing increasingly
effective. We're starting to get it, to make the
connection between a healthy environment and long-term
economic development."

In November this green-leaning constituency helped
elect Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin as the city's
first Green Party mayor.

Some of the efforts to green Richmond have been in the
works for a while: Whitney Dotson's vision for his
hometown is in part a legacy from his father, the Rev.
Richard Daniel Dotson. A contingent from Parchester
Village, led by Dotson and determined to preserve the
marshes around the subdivision, fought off proposals
in the 1970s to replace them with a small airport,
bringing in the Sierra Club as an ally and ultimately
paving the way for the establishment of Point Pinole
Park.

The reverend's son is now the leading spokesman for a
coalition of community groups and Bay Area
environmental organizations, including the Sierra
Club, that hope to preserve nearly three-fourths of
the city's 32-mile-long shoreline. Point Pinole park
has already instituted eminent domain proceedings and
is set to absorb the 36-acre Breuner Marsh at the
park's southern boundary. Next, Dotson's group is
targeting an expanse of meadowland west and south of
Parchester Village known as the Crescent, the very
place where Dotson finds his wild greens.

The idea of opening up most of Richmond's shoreline
for public recreation may seem a little far-fetched
for a city whose shoreline has long been dominated by
commerce, principally the Chevron oil refinery and the
city's deepwater port. But consider this: A city that
had only 30 feet of open shoreline as recently as the
1960s now has 9 miles. Richmond can already boast 24.5
miles of completed Bay Trail, by far the longest
stretch in any Bay Area city. (The Bay Trail, when
completed, will ring San Francisco and San Pablo bays
with 500 miles of pathways for hikers and cyclists.)
Rich Walkling of the Natural Heritage Institute in San
Francisco, an ally of Dotson's, has been investigating
potential parkland acquisitions along Richmond's north
shoreline. He believes it's feasible to open up half
of Richmond's shoreline within the next two decades.
And, like Dotson, he wants to start with the marshes
around Parchester Village. Walkling is hoping that
funds from the recently approved state park bonds
measure, Proposition 84, can be used to acquire them
in the near future because, as he points out, there
are other proposals on the table for housing and light
industrial development on these same shoreline
parcels.

With little fanfare until recently, Richmond has been
attracting green businesses. The lure has been an
abundance of inexpensive industrial space --
inexpensive at least by Bay Area standards -- and the
proximity to the sophisticated shipping infrastructure
that is part of Richmond's industrial legacy: two
major rail lines, a deepwater port and nearby
interstate freeways. New, green businesses outgrowing
their startup sites have found a home in Richmond.

"Richmond's one of the few places left in the Bay Area
that's supportive of manufacturing," notes James
Sheppard, president of a company that makes
countertops from recycled glass. "Berkeley, where we
came from, seems to be trying to convert everything to
high-end condos."

Sheppard's company, Vetrazzo, moved into the historic
520,000-square-foot plant where the Ford Motor Co.
once built cars and where a legion of Rosie the
Riveters put the finishing touches on tanks bound for
the Pacific during World War II. Sheppard's company
will soon have a new neighbor, PowerLight, another
Berkeley startup, which installs solar power systems
all over the world.

Sheppard plans to start running his operation entirely
on solar power once his new neighbor arrives in
October. The company already ships its countertops via
a small fleet of biodiesel-powered trucks owned by
another Richmond operation, Blue Sky Trucking.

The greening of Richmond reached a kind of crescendo
in November, when Richmond voters elected their Green
Party mayor. The candidacy of McLaughlin, who moved to
Richmond seven years ago, no doubt benefited from the
fact that her two principal opponents were African
Americans who split the vote of that constituency.
Gary Bell, a former City Council member and mortgage
broker, had already failed to get re-elected to the
council in 2004. McLaughlin's other main opponent,
incumbent Mayor Irma Anderson, was perceived by many
voters as well intentioned but ineffective. And she
provided the perfect foil for McLaughlin's low-budget,
populist campaign: Anderson was supported by the
city's business establishment, while McLaughlin
refused to accept corporate donations and was the
target of numerous hit pieces financed (via PACs) by
Chevron and the Council of Industries, Richmond's
leading business organization.

McLaughlin was a vocal supporter of Measure T, a
municipal industrial tax, on the same November ballot.
The tax, opposed by Anderson, would have raised
millions from Chevron for the city's coffers.

McLaughlin defeated Anderson by fewer than 300 votes
but spent only $28,000 to Anderson's $110,000.

An even bigger surprise was McLaughlin's election to
the City Council back in 2004. Running a similar
low-budget campaign, she came in third in a field of
15 candidates for four at-large seats on the council.
It was the first dramatic sign that Richmond's
politics were shifting in a new direction.

A Green Party member and former anti-war activist from
Chicago might seem like an odd fit for Richmond, but
the Green Party label is a little misleading.
McLaughlin comes from working-class roots; her father
was a carpenter, and the family lived in a blue-collar
neighborhood. Her announced intention as mayor of
making Richmond "the green industrial capital of the
Bay Area" is probably more than just a slogan: She
understands the importance of manufacturing and
industrial jobs for working-class families -- and, in
a city with Richmond's environmental history, the
health benefits that go with them.

And, despite her party label, she's not exactly an
environmental firebrand. In general she comes across
as something rare in politics: a gentle, nurturing
sort -- except when she gets on the subject of
corporate influence in politics. Her principal role at
present seems to be that of a spirited cheerleader for
Richmond's burgeoning environmental and progressive
movement. "The tent I'm building is a big one," she
says.

By her election to the city's highest office, she has
become the symbol, the figurehead, for Richmond's new
green direction. And her personality -- friendly, warm
and open -- may be just what's needed to nurture
grassroots efforts, like Dotson's, that are already
well advanced. The mayor has already pledged to make
his and Walkling's vision of an expanded shoreline
park part of the city's new general plan.

She's also doing some cheerleading for green
businesses, getting the council to pass a resolution
declaring Richmond a "green business development
zone." It's not clear precisely what that means; her
aides are working on a follow-up initiative that is
supposed to provide additional incentives for green
businesses to move to the city.

And McLaughlin is using her new bully pulpit to keep
nudging Richmond away from its historic attitude,
reinforced during the lean post-World War II years,
that it can't do anything to rattle its industrial
base, notably Chevron. In taking on the city's largest
employer, McLaughlin harks back to her rabble-rousing
anti-war days in Chicago, and she seems to sincerely
believe that a revival of the grassroots activism that
blossomed in the '60s and '70s is possible today in
Richmond.

"There's an old saying here, that Richmond's a
plantation, and Chevron's the plantation owner,"
Councilman Butt says with a chuckle. McLaughlin seems
to think the plantation is ripe for rebellion. Butt, a
political ally, agrees: "For the first time in a
century," he observes, "the City Council is starting
to stand up to Chevron."

Last year, before the mayoral election, McLaughlin
helped persuade the council to rescind the longtime
practice of allowing Chevron to self-inspect and
self-permit its own projects. She describes Richmond
as a city "which has suffered from decades of oil
industry pollution" and promises that the city will
carefully scrutinize Chevron's latest proposed
refinery modifications, designed to allow the company
to process the dirtier crude oil that's being dredged
from the world's depleting oil reserves.

Not everyone is convinced that the current City
Council is ready to confront Chevron on this new
project, despite the mayor's determination to do so.
"If it's a matter of serious economic concern to
Chevron, they're going to get their way," claims
longtime political activist Juan Reardon, who managed
both of McLaughlin's campaigns. "Everyone knows that
taking on Chevron jeopardizes your chances of getting
re-elected to the council or of running successfully
for higher office."

"That kind of statement really impugns the integrity
of the council," responds Chevron spokesman Dean
O'Hair. "If we ran the council the way some people say
we do, it wouldn't be taking us three years to get a
permit for this latest project."

Last year, with Mayor Anderson dissenting, the council
voted to put a proposal on the ballot for a special
tax on all Richmond industries that process raw
materials. The tax would have brought in $8.5 million
to city coffers, $8 million of that from Chevron.

"They make that much in an hour," says McLaughlin with
a chortle. The proposed Measure T went down to defeat
on the same ballot that put McLaughlin in the top
spot, but she vows to try again, hoping that the money
raised from the tax can be used to fund employment and
job training programs for kids from low-income
families, part of her "social justice" platform.

McLaughlin is still scrambling for funds, but she
hopes to establish a Richmond Youth Corps program that
would employ 1,000 at-risk kids year 'round to restore
creeks, repair roads and help in libraries. She has
already managed to boost the city's summer jobs
program for youth from 290 positions last year to 350
this year.

And the new mayor is also seeking funds for a
crime-prevention program that would send "peacekeeping
teams" with mediation skills into crime-ridden
neighborhoods. The teams would provide links on a
case-by-case basis to substance abuse, mental health,
vocational training and other government assistance
programs.

Despite Reardon's doubts, the current City Council at
times seems downright eager to play hardball with
Chevron. It recently authorized the new mayor to ask
the State Lands Commission to refuse to renew
Chevron's lease on state-owned lands underneath the
oil company's Richmond wharf operation -- where it
receives its crude oil -- unless Chevron stops
blocking completion of the last remaining gap in the
Bay Trail, which is on Chevron property.

"I'm surprised and disappointed Chevron isn't
cooperating to finish the trail," says Bruce Beyaert,
a Richmond resident and volunteer who's been
coordinating development of Richmond's portion of the
trail. "After all, they've got plenty of competent
people who should be able to figure out a way to close
the gap." Beyaert should know. He was an executive in
Chevron's San Francisco office for 33 years, retiring
in 1992.

The company has cited security and safety concerns as
reasons for blocking the trail through its refinery
operation, currently sending cyclists on an
alternative route that skirts a busy stretch of
freeway. However, in a recent interview, O'Hair said
the company is willing to re-evaluate both routes.

An almost-completed Bay Trail, the push for a greener
shoreline and an influx of green businesses provide
high-profile evidence of Richmond's new green
direction, but evidence of Richmond's greening is
popping up all over the city: near the center of town,
a new bicycle and pedestrian "greenway" on an old
railroad right-of-way; just south of the Iron
Triangle, a planned "greening" of Nystrom Elementary
School, complete with native plants sprouting from its
roof; four new pocket parks along the shoreline.

Councilman Butt, another die-hard optimist, believes
that Richmond "is coming into its own as a waterfront
city." He points out that until the post-World War II
years, Richmond thrived in that role, first as a
waterfront industrial center, home to Ford's first
auto assembly plant on the West Coast, then with the
booming shipyards and war industries of World War II.

"Look, Richmond's never going to be a great city," he
admits, "but we can certainly develop our own identity
as something other than another suburb of San
Francisco."

Butt is convinced that the key to this lies in
Richmond's 32-mile-long waterfront and the current
drive to open more of that for public use, as well as
a gradual transition from heavy industry to cleaner
and greener manufacturing, as represented by the new
occupants of the city's historic Ford plant.

And that's just fine with Whitney Dotson, if it means
that future generations will have a protected green
shoreline to explore near Parchester Village and that
weary travelers are assured a permanent rest stop
along the Great Pacific Flyway.

Tim Holt is an environmental writer and the author of
"Songs of the Simple Life," a collection of essays.

This article appeared on page CM - 10 of the San
Francisco Chronicle

___________________

JamBoi: Jammy, The Sacred Cow Slayer
The Green Parties' #1 Blogger
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com

"To the brave belong all things"
Celt's invading Etrusca reply to nervous Romans around 400BC

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)


       
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