Projects designed to help offset pollution from the Chevron oil refinery and other polluters in Richmond will soon receive a significant influx of funding, as the Bay Area Air District on Friday announced the distribution of $65 million for pollution abatement and clean energy projects in Contra Costa County and the surrounding region. The money will come directly from district-imposed fines paid by the fossil fuel giant and other local polluters.
The payments — $38.7 million of which will go to support projects in Richmond and San Pablo, according to the air district — are being released through a district program created in 2024 that calls for a portion of the penalties paid by polluters to be invested back into local communities that are directly harmed.
“We collect penalties, and we’re putting those back into the communities where the penalties occurred to benefit the communities that were affected,” Philip Fine, head of the air district, said at a press conference at the RYSE Center in Richmond. “It’s about investing in solutions that improve air quality, protect public health, expand access to clean energy, create local economic opportunities, and strengthen community resilience.”
The grants being disbursed — under the program name Bay REPAIR (Reinvesting Penalties for Air Improvement and Resilience) — are separate from the $550 million Chevron agreed last year to pay over a decade to the city of Richmond. The company agreed to the 10-year payment plan, rather than be subjected to a proposed Make Polluters Pay tax on oil refining in Richmond.
Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, who is also on the air district’s board of directors, said this is the first time that this large of an amount of fines and penalties have been returned to the community.
“Our community, which has been on the front lines of being harmed by industrial pollution for decades, is now on the front lines of receiving benefit from the fines and penalties levied on pollution violators, and that’s a good thing,” Gioia said. “We don’t want the violations, but we want the benefit of those penalties.”
Eleven organizations in Richmond are set to receive a combined $10.6 million in catalyst grants — or short-term funds to get projects off the ground — distributed through the City of Richmond. Those include STEAM the Streets, GRID Alternatives, Groundwork Richmond, LifeLong Medical Care, Rich City Rides, Richmond Trees, Rising Juntos, RYSE, The Black Neighborhood, The Watershed Project and UC Berkeley’s Center for Global Healthy Cities.
The 10 projects to be administered by those organizations will support electric public transit, the planting of 600 trees, transit passes for 1,500 residents, energy upgrades for 100 income-qualified homes, asthma prevention resources, and youth workforce and leadership opportunities, according to the air district.
The projects were chosen during an open, competitive process “that was informed by the community, by their priorities, other public input, and intense stakeholder engagement,” Fine said. That included factors like implementation feasibility, community need, budget, and readiness.
Nearly $13 million will go to other nearby projects in Contra Costa County, including a community resilience center in North Richmond, and air quality upgrades for homes and other projects led by Urban Tilth, the Community Housing Development Corporation, and Bay Area Regional Energy Network.
Another $14 million in grants will support projects elsewhere, including park improvements in the City of San Pablo, support from The Labor Institute for workers transitioning out of refinery jobs, and clean energy upgrades for 189 homes in the city of Pinole, among other projects.
There’s also just over $1 million in grants for health education, air quality science and additional tree-planting.
All of the funded projects will be subject to oversight, according to the district. “These are public funds, and we have to be good stewards of public funds,” Fine said.
Emi Wang, the air district’s community investments officer, said the air district is starting the process of contract negotiations with the air district, city, county and all of the grantees, which they hope to complete by spring so the projects can begin. The grants will last between two and five years, she said.
“We are hoping to start seeing the benefits from these investments in a relatively short amount of time,” Wang said.
Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez said that while the projects will benefit the community, the money Chevron and other polluters pay through fines and settlements don’t erase the harms they continue to cause.
“Reinvesting penalties is important, but it does not replace strong regulation and oversight,” he said. “It does not erase the human harms people have experienced. Our goal should be to prevent pollution in the first place, and to make sure residents have timely information about what affects their health.”
The air district has identified the Chevron refinery as the largest single-source polluter in Richmond. Industries surrounding it — as well as the vehicles that burn its products on local highways — have contributed to some of the worst air pollution identified by state regulators, resulting in high rates of asthma and other diseases. Point Richmond, which is immediately south of the refinery, was recently identified by the district as posing a higher cancer risk than other parts of the city.
Chevron is Richmond’s largest employer and taxpayer, with its taxes and settlement payments accounting for nearly 24% of the city’s budgeted general fund revenue in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Oil refineries pay the most in fines to the air district, according to district records. Earlier this year, Richmondside published a database listing nearly $122 million in air district fines stemming from more than 10,000 notices of violations issued between 2015 and 2025. Of those fines, Chevron Products Company (in Richmond and San Jose) paid more than $15 million.
Valero, which announced last year it was closing its Benicia refinery, was assessed nearly $82 million during that time period. The air district announced in September that the city of Benicia and the Benicia school district would receive $30 million and $10 million in catalyst funds, respectively.
“This is the result of years of advocacy by this community and other communities asking for these fines and penalties to be reinvested in the neighborhoods that have experienced the impacts of air pollution,” Gioia said.
