Citizens and city and county officials on the frontline of the fight for clean air in Richmond joined two panels hosted by Richmondside last week, sharing personal experiences about how pollution hurts the community and what local government is doing about it.
At Richmondside’s Working Towards a Cleaner Richmond event, held Sept. 11 at RYSE, freelance reporter Brian Krans, author of Richmondside’s air quality series, moderated a panel featuring Dr. Emily Hunter-Adamson, a family medicine physician at Lifelong Medical, Rafael Castro-Chavez, just transition organizer at the nonprofit Urban Tilth, and Destiny Ndeke, community and outreach coordinator and co–youth program lead at Groundwork Richmond, which runs urban environmental health programs, including a tree planting program.
A second panel, moderated by Cityside Community Journalism Director Jacob Simas, focused on the work of government officials, featuring Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, Richmond District 1 City Council member Jamelia Brown and B.K. White, policy director for Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez.
Hunter-Adamson, who works in Richmond and San Pablo, said she has the difficult job of having no cure for her many asthma patients in west Contra Costa County. She can only try to alleviate their symptoms.
“We have about twice the average rate (of asthma cases),” she said. “The national average is about 6.5% and we are about 12%.”
She said the negative health impacts on families stretches beyond the diagnosis. She sees how whole families struggle to cope with all that accompanies it. She recalled recently treating a 1-year-old who she said was unusually sick for someone his age.
“I had to transfer him to the emergency room. That doesn’t just mean that he goes to the emergency room but that his mom has to figure out what to do with his two siblings. That means that his dad may have to miss work,” she told the more than 40 attendees. It’s a huge ripple effect throughout whole families and communities. It’s not just a simple thing to treat. It can be extremely disruptive to lives.”
Castro-Chavez, a North Richmond resident, described being a pupil at Ford Elementary School and being taught how to protect himself from poor air quality caused by flaring at the Chevron refinery. Students were shown how to wet towels and place them under doors and windows around a room. He said this helped his family in the immediate aftermath of the 2012 Richmond Chevron Refinery fire.
Experiences like that motivated Castro-Chavez to work for Urban Tilth, where he is a just transition organizer. The concept of “just transition” refers to creating “a just, equitable, and sustainable future” that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.
“It (just transition) is a framework where we’re moving from an extracted economy to a more regenerative economy,” he said. “That framework also has pillars and an intricate foundation where there’s deep democracy and the community is at the forefront. Obviously, we’re the ones experiencing the most of the injustices in our community.”
Castro-Chavez said he would like to see more local and self-governance in the community where “voices are being heard and change is happening.”
In her work with Groundwork Richmond, Ndeke focuses on planting native trees to expand the city’s urban tree canopy. The goal is to help pull pollution from the air.
Groundwork Richmond, she said, is working on various projects, including the Richmond Rising Initiative, funded by a $35 million grant from the California Strategic Growth Council’s Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) Program, which aims to plant “1,000 trees within five years.”
“We are building a barrier fence, full of 500 trees and 500 shrubs to mitigate the traffic and pollution sounds we get from the cars, the railroads we live by and the pollution that we do get from Chevron, our neighboring refinery,” Ndeke said.
How to improve air quality? “Stop the refineries,” some panelists said
Krans asked the three community panelists what they would do to make the air better in Richmond. All agreed that the obvious answer is to close refineries.
“Stop the refineries,” Hunter-Adamson said, while mentioning that she’s conflicted about the fact that Chevron funds city programs to help mitigate the impacts of asthma. “I would prefer that we just stop it at the source rather than taking somebody’s money to try and help mitigate something that’s continuing to go on.”
Castro-Chavez, who disclosed that he himself has received Chevron money (he was a Richmond Promise college grant recipient), said he believes that the “refinery needs to go.”
“I do feel like that (the refinery) is the main producer of PM 2.5 (particulate matter 2.5) (something that) is very harmful for a community,” he said. “It’s smaller than a hair follicle and gets into our lungs very easily, into our skin and it causes not just health and respiratory health issues but also causes cancers.”
Aside from the fossil fuel industry being a problem, Ndeke said they struggle with funding issues and supporting their programs is one way that policymakers can help alleviate the issue of air pollution in the city.
“We need more spots for our projects that we’re trying to promote, especially in the areas that are really, really affected by the refinery and the pollutants, the railroads that we are neighbors with that live over us and by us.”
Path to Clean Air: Richmonders need to hold officials accountable
Gioia, who has represented Richmond and west Contra Costa County since the late-1990s, was one of the three government panelists.
“The reality is that pollution in Richmond is complicated,” he said. “Yes, there is Chevron, a major polluter, but there is General Chemical (now called ChemTrade), and there’s all these mobile sources of diesel — trucks, rail and ships.”
Gioia said that local residents and others involved in steering committees established after the 2017 passing of California’s AB 617, have identified what they want to see changed, and it’s up to decision-makers to not just let their wishes become just a report on a shelf.
The steering committee, which included Richmond and San Pablo residents, Bay Area air district staff, the Richmond mayor’s office, Contra Costa Health Services, the city of San Pablo and Chevron, released its Path to Clean Air report in April 2024.
The plan includes strategies to reduce refinery flaring, manage truck traffic, transition to clean energy and reinvest pollution penalty funds into affected neighborhoods that have faced decades of environmental racism through what was described as discriminatory zoning policies.
Gioia, who grew up in west Contra Costa County, said there is less pollution in the area today thanks, primarily, to residents clamoring for changes. He pointed to, for example, the new FedEx building, which was required to have a third of its trucks be electric when it opened and be all-electric by year five, a permitting win being touted as the “fastest transition anywhere in the country.”
“That’s an example because the community, including advocates at Urban Tilth, spoke up and said ‘We want jobs, we just don’t want pollution,’ ” he said. “So we can’t underestimate the power of community.”
Brown, who represents District 1’s Iron Triangle and Belding Woods neighborhoods that border the city’s refinery and industrial areas, said mistrust among her constituents remains an obstacle in having conversations about air pollution solutions and that community engagement needs to continue.
“To be very honest, the conversation around air pollution is not theorized with many of my constituents,” she said. “When I talk to them, air pollution is not even brought up.”
Because many residents are in “survival mode,” she added, thinking about air pollution is the “least of their worries.”
“They are trying to get to work, get their kids together and things of that nature,” Brown said. “So the conversation is lost and, again, it needs to be more around bringing the conversation to the community instead of waiting for the community to find us at City Hall.”
