[NYTr] On the Green Mayor of Richmond

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

[An optimistic story from the Left Coast -NY Transfer]

sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l)

San Francisco Chronicle - Jul 22, 2007
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

by Tim Holt

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.]