Richmond residents now have a new recurring venue in which Chevron officials will answer their questions about flaring and emissions violations.
Chevron held a town hall Wednesday night in downtown Richmond, the first in a series of mandated community meetings aimed at informing residents about flaring and air quality-related violations at the local refinery.
About 50 people — a mix of residents and Chevron employees — attended the meeting at CoBiz on Macdonald Avenue, which included a conversation about how the company can better engage with residents around the refinery’s activities and what it’s doing to achieve its emission goals.
Wednesday’s meeting was the first in a series mandated by a settlement agreement finalized in February between the company and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Chevron must hold such meetings every six months for the next five years.
Chevron also agreed to resolve a five-year backlog of air district penalties totaling $20 million and must contribute $20 million to a Community Air Quality Fund to be managed by the air district and used for projects and programs to reduce emissions in and around Richmond.
Chevron hired Ceres Policy Research, a nonprofit organization, at the beginning of the summer to help create a 15-person committee of residents in impacted communities to work with the company developing a plan to improve its community engagement and communications around efforts to reduce air emissions and flaring.
“This initiative overall prioritizes transparency, collaboration to address community concerns about air quality and public health,” said Kerby Lynch, the director of research and facilitation at Ceres and a Richmond resdent.
Lynch said the committee must send its plan to the air district by the end of this month.
Willie Robinson, president of the NAACP Richmond chapter and a member of the resident committee, said the group’s relationship with Chevron during the planning phase represented a step in the right direction.
“It was very positive, in spite of what has happened in the past, to have a good, strong working relationship and let them take the lead in terms of resolving the issues that are existing,” Robinson said.
Until Wednesday’s town hall, only the committee members and Chevron were involved in constructing the community plan. Chevron is required to continue taking public comments at future meetings and will be expected to provide information about any recent flaring events or air-quality violations that have occurred.
Lynch said the current plan isn’t final and will change based on ongoing community input.
“This plan was not made in a vacuum. We are not here to propagandize, but we’re here to reflect back to some serious conversations we were having as a group about what we feel is the next best course of action in our community,” she said. “This is again about creating an open line of communication so that we can prepare and have a better emergency response if something happens.”
Chevron says duration of flaring incidents has decreased
On Wednesday, Chevron introduced its team of air-quality experts to residents and presented recent data on flaring and emissions at the refinery.
According to Chevron’s figure shared Wednesday, there were 18 flaring events from Oct. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30 of this year, which is one less than the previous year during the same time period. The total duration of these flaring incidents also decreased from 270 hours to 159 hours during the same periods.
Not included in the numbers presented by Chevron on Wednesday are smaller flaring events that occur at the refinery daily, but don’t get reported in the same way since they don’t exceed air district emissions thresholds.
Company officials on Wednesday repeatedly said that Chevron has reduced its output of fine particulate matter, a harmful type of air pollution, by 40% during the last two years, something the company also states on its website.
Brian Hubinger, Chevron’s director of research and facilitation, said he hopes the meetings can grow a mutual understanding between the company and Richmond residents.
“We’ve learned so much as an organization and we’re really trying to come at this with the learning intent, the growth mindset to understand what’s important to the community,” Hubinger said. “This is hopefully the first of many positive meetings we have that facilitate that discussion.”
After the presentation, people in attendance were asked to scan a QR code to take an online poll and rank what forms of communication Chevron should prioritize for residents — whether social media or town halls. Attendees were also given a chance to weigh in on what environmental initiatives the company should focus on and to voice concerns about the implementation of the community action plan.
Some in attendance questioned whether the community engagement process would be inclusive and thorough enough, being that the deadline for the initial plan is due in two weeks.
Joe Puleo, a Point Richmond resident, questioned why local environmental justice groups Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) — organizations that were instrumental in presenting a proposed refinery-tax ballot measure that was the catalyst for the oil company’s recent $550 million settlement with the city — were not involved in the process.
“Have they been invited to the table?” Puleo asked.
Lynch said she approached both APEN and CBE to take part in the committee, adding that some organizations and residents are skeptical of working with Chevron. There were, however, a handful of APEN and CBE activists at Wednesday’s meeting.
“This conversation is for some, and it’s not for all. There are some who want to get down and some who don’t,” said Lynch.
Richmondside reached out to APEN for comment on Chevron’s community engagement process, but they declined to make a statement at this time.
Kathleen Sullivan, regional director of Black Women Organized for Political Action who is on the 15-person committee, said that she herself was skeptical of how the process would work alongside Chevron but felt that it was important to be involved as a long-time Richmond resident.
“My position is, you can’t complain about something and not be involved with what’s going on,” she said, adding that she’s heard rumblings of skepticism in the community in regards to working with Chevron. “What we need is solutions. What we need is answers. What we need is accountability.”
Sullivan said she and others in the community are putting their reputations on the line in order to see the implementation of the community engagement plan.
“So things have to go in a way that is positive because I’m not going to be sitting on a table, working on a plan for it to go south,” she said.
Ceres will not be leading the community engagement process moving forward, said Lynch. Rather, future community meetings will be handled by Chevron and the 15-person resident committee.
