Mayor aside, Richmond no match for Chevron

Mayor aside, Richmond no match for Chevron

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

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The Richmond Planning Commission will likely approve Chevron Oil Co.'s expansion plan this week but without one lone vote - Mayor Gayle McLaughlin.

On Saturday, McLaughlin, the city's Green Party mayor, spoke to a group of about 300 demonstrators gathered at a Point Richmond park before they marched to the front gates of the oil refinery on the city's waterfront. Once there, they railed against what they call the company's war-profiteering policy, capitalizing on the suffering caused by the United States' invasion of Iraq.

"It's time to clear the smoke of lies, the smoke of pollution and the smoke of war," McLaughlin told the crowd.

Perhaps that speech should have been delivered to members of her own city staff, who have recommended approving the oil company's environmental impact report with only minor conditions. The vote on the company's conditional use permit is scheduled for Thursday night's meeting of the planning commission.

If the permit is approved, McLaughlin said she expects it to be appealed by at least one of its opponents to the Richmond City Council.

It hardly seemed to matter to the Planning Commission that city staff's recommendation contradicted the analysis proffered in a letter from state Attorney General Jerry Brown dated March 6 and sent to Chevron Oil officials. Brown warned that the project's environmental impact plan provided no mitigation for nearly 900,000 metric tons of additional greenhouse gases that would be emitted into the atmosphere as a result of the planned upgrade.

During his term, Brown sued the Conoco-Philips oil refinery in nearby Rodeo, which resulted in a settlement in which the company agreed to meet state emissions guidelines.

Nothing short of a similar action will halt Chevron's project, which would allow the refinery to process a wider array of crude oils - including dirtier crude oils that emit greater amounts of pollution into the atmosphere, another potential hazard Brown pointed out.

Brown's comments add to thousands of pages of concerns about the health dangers posed by the expansion filed during the 45-day public comment period by numerous environmental groups, doctors and citizens.

It's become evident that it's going to take at least a state agency to make sure the company adheres to environmental laws, because local government has been run over by Chevron more often than a chunk of asphalt at the Indianapolis 500.

A local demonstration, regardless of how much it may rally public sentiment, does very little when pitted against an organized, well-funded corporate opponent. While it may be McLaughlin's forte to rally public sentiment, Richmond is going to need more than that to mount any kind of legitimate challenge.

Over the years, Chevron has battled local government time and time again - and never lost. Most recently, the company squashed an attempt by Richmond city officials to raise the company's business license taxes. Separately, Chevron has also challenged a proposed property tax hike connected with the company's expansion project to the county tax appeals board, a four-member citizen body.

City Council member Tom Butt expressed disappointment Monday with city staff, which rejected a number of mitigations desired by city officials, including one provision that the company complete work on a section of the Bay Trail, a pedestrian-bike trail that runs along the waterfront from Richmond to Oakland.

"The staff has waffled and prevaricated on this for so long, and I believe the Planning Department dropped the ball," Butt said. "We're going to have a hearing three days from now, and I don't know what's going to happen."

He called city staff's recommendation to approve the environmental report the same week Brown criticized the plan inexplicable. "I don't think some officials in the city of Richmond are listening."

It's not as if Chevron officials have been sitting on their hands, Butt said.

Since the issue was raised more than a year ago, several of the trade unions that contributed time and money studying Chevron's expansion plan have dropped their opposition. A few have even endorsed the project, an about-face engineered between company lobbyists and national union representatives, Butt alleges. The oil company has also launched an e-mail campaign to Richmond businesses and residents, sending pre-written endorsements of the company's Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project and asking for signatures.

Richmond city officials have never had the resources or the resolve to stand up to a multi-billion dollar oil company, and the fight has never been more one-sided. Chevron is literally making more profits than ever - $17.5 billion in 2007 - and ramping up its Richmond facility makes good business sense.

But every big business decision made at the company's headquarters in San Ramon has a profound impact on Richmond residents and those in nearby cities.

It's for that very reason that such decisions are not the sole purview of corporate captains, board chairpersons and private enterprises.

Decisions that have a profound effect on the public require input from the public, and if the city of Richmond is incapable of providing an objective forum where such debate can be heard, it would be appropriate - and responsible - for Brown, or some state agency, to represent the public interest in this case.

Chip Johnson's column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays. E-mail him at chjohnson@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

By George Raine

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Commissioners of the Port of Oakland will consider a set of goals today that are intended to reduce diesel emissions in West Oakland by 85 percent over the next 12 years.

The plan includes a road map for raising $520 million over several years. Approximately $350 million would come from per-container fees that would be assessed on ocean carriers along with matching government funds. The remaining $170 million would come from bonds approved by California voters in November 2006.

Along with other pollution mitigation, the money would be used to replace or retrofit approximately 1,900 older polluting diesel trucks and to rebuild the Seventh Street rail crossings at the heart of the port.

The neighborhood has long had disproportionately high rates of asthma and other health problems among residents or workers associated with diesel particulate matter from port activities as well as from nonport harbor craft and nonport-related trucks and buses.

The possibility of container fees and a proposal to restructure the harbor trucking industry sets up a struggle with port customers and probably will mean litigation.

Late Monday, 54 companies, including Gap Inc., Levi Strauss. J.C. Penney and Target Corp., as well as trade associations, wrote Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums saying the proposals violate state and federal law and impose an unfair burden on those moving goods by container.

Litigation almost certainly would put the brakes on a timetable for pollution mitigation the port staff members say they would like to start as soon as possible because of health risks.

Even more attention is expected to be raised about pollution in the neighborhood on Wednesday evening, when the California Air Resources Board releases a preliminary health risk assessment of West Oakland stemming from diesel particulate matter.

The report will be presented at a meeting from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the West Oakland Senior Center, 1724 Adeline St., Oakland.

"We have identified the issue and we feel that time is of the essence," said Richard Sinkoff, acting director of the Port of Oakland's Environmental Planning Department. "It is of the essence, practically, because there is a round of funding that we have to go after, and we don't feel that is good public policy on the part of the port to delay any measures that would limit exposure" to diesel particulate matter, he said.

The Port of Oakland has for years been under pressure to control emissions and shares a burden with the ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach for being associated with the 1,200 premature deaths statewide per year that the California Air Resources Board attributed to movement of goods.

"We realize there are many sides to the issue," Sinkoff said. "The port staff is proposing this because we feel it is really solid public policy and that the port is ready to make this kind of commitment to improve public health."

Diane Bailey, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco who is often at odds with the port, said she applauded the effort to contain truck pollution. "That is squarely a priority," she said. "It is a priority in terms of getting the system under control."

Bailey and other advocates support a proposal to make truck drivers working the port, who are independent contractors, employees of trucking companies. As such, they could be organized by the Brotherhood of Teamsters, long a labor goal.

Commissioners will not be taking up that matter today because port staff hasn't made a recommendation on the idea, which is going forward at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

They will, however, be hearing from opponents of container fees and other elements of the plan, including the proposed change in driver status, which critics say would raise costs, limit competition and hamper operating capacity, which have a limited impact on environmental quality.

The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, which represents the ocean carriers and terminal operators that are tenants of the West Coast ports, urged commissioners in a letter Monday to be cautious about imposing container fees due to competition with other ports.

John McLaurin, the president of the trade association, said no matter what happens at the three major West Coast ports, litigation is likely over container fees being imposed by the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles, and over a bill proposed by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, that would raise container fees that would go into the state treasury. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill by Lowenthal two years ago.

In a statement, Oakland Port Commission President Anthony Batarse said, "Reducing pollution is vital to the health of our neighbors and our region. Air pollution comes from many sources in the Bay Area and we want to express our commitment to doing our part to help reduce diesel pollution from port-related activities."

E-mail George Raine at graine@sfchronile.com.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

By David Perlman,

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A batch of tiny frogs from Madagascar, their race threatened with extinction, is quietly keeping house and reproducing inside the soon-to-be-abandoned California Academy of Sciences building on Howard Street in San Francisco.

They're amphibians, which all face extinction as a mysterious fungal disease spreads around the world, as habitats are lost to cities and suburban subdivisions widen, as wooded land is cleared for farms in food-short nations, and as global warming dries up swamps and wetlands all over the planet.

But scientists are trying now to rescue as many threatened amphibian species as they can by gathering them in from the wild and breeding them in captivity to increase their numbers. The plan is to return entire populations to the wild one day wherever governments can ensure their territories are safe.

All amphibians - frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and the obscure worm-like ones you've never heard of called caecilians - are at risk these days, scientists say, and are part of the worldwide rescue plan.

Nicole Chaney, a 28-year-old academy biologist, who says "geckos are really my thing" - although they're reptiles, not amphibians - is focusing on one frog species right now, but has her eyes on more.

She is breeding 30 minuscule members of the frog tribe called golden mantellas, whose meager population on the island nation of Madagascar is so seriously endangered that the Malagasy government has banned their export entirely.

Academy scientists brought the frogs' ancestors back from expeditions to Madagascar many years ago. Generations of them have been on exhibit in San Francisco ever since. Others have been donated by collectors or bought from pet stores more recently.

In homelike tanks amid the chaos as movers truck birds, beasts, rocks, fossils and fishes out of the Howard Street structure to the academy's new building in Golden Gate Park, Chaney carefully tends one superbly colored mantella who right now is gravid with a clutch of eggs inside her. The eggs will soon become tadpoles, swimming freely before they metamorphose into mini-mantellas.

The frogs, whose scientific name is Mantella aurantiaca, will grow to be less than an inch long and weigh 1.7 grams apiece (two of them would barely weigh as much as a penny). Although they love ants and termites, they'll eat almost any insect that will fit inside their mouths.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has placed the mantellas on its "red list" of endangered species, and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums has created what it calls its "Amphibian Ark" in a bid to gather public support for more zoos and aquariums to breed as many threatened and endangered species as possible.

Chaney will soon be housing 50 more golden mantellas as new ones hatch and grow from tadpoles to adults - "to give us a good ride toward developing a breeding population," she says. She also has more amphibians that she hopes to breed and place in tropical habitats, where humans can see them in the great new rain forest exhibit when the academy's new building opens in September. Ultimately, their descendants will be sent home to Madagascar when their preservation there is more certain.

After the golden mantellas are happily at home in their Golden Gate Park digs, Chaney has a "wish list" of other amphibians to breed.

First, she says, she hopes to breed a colony of Vietnamese mossy frogs, Theloderma corticale, whose spiny skin colors of green, purple and black shades camouflage them effectively but whose natural habitat in the mountainous forests north of Hanoi is seriously threatened by clear-cutting. Hundreds are also being captured now for pet dealers.

Another amphibian that Chaney is nurturing is the brilliant red-orange tomato frog, Dyscophus antongili, as big as a fist and one of three species in that tribe that is known only in Madagascar, where, although protected by the government, it is losing ground as its habitat in swampy forests gives way to population pressures.

And then there's the Chinese giant salamander, largest of all the world's amphibians, which can grow nearly 6 feet long. It is listed as "critically endangered" on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's red list because the clear mountain streams where it thrives in tributaries of the Pearl, Yellow and Yangtze rivers are rapidly becoming heavily polluted. And although the Chinese government has created preserves to protect them, they have been hunted as a luxury food delicacy there for more than 50 years.

To Chaney, restoring breeding populations of these creatures means more than keeping them for exhibition in aquariums and zoos.

"When we're able to conserve them in the wild," she says, "we can restore their ecosystems so they're healthier and more resilient - where predators and prey do what comes naturally because each has its own significant role to play.

"For me, amphibians are kind of like the miners' canaries - they can give us an early warning of the kinds of severe disturbances that threatened their world - and ours, too."

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

(03-17) 14:40 PDT SAN FRANCISCO --

The veteran pilot who was navigating the container ship Cosco Busan when it crashed into the Bay Bridge in November, spilling more than 50,000 gallons of fuel oil into the bay and killing thousands of birds, was charged in federal court in San Francisco Monday with violating two environmental laws.

Prosecutors accused Capt. John J. Cota of Petaluma of violating the Clean Water Act through criminal negligence and of killing or wounding migratory birds, a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. If convicted of the charges, both of which are misdemeanors, Cota could be sentenced to a maximum of 18 months in federal prison and $115,000 in fines.

Cota, 60, has been a pilot on San Francisco Bay for 27 years. His state license was suspended after the accident, and he turned in his federal merchant marine officer's license after the Coast Guard said there was reason to believe he was physically unable to perform his duties.

Cota was in charge of the navigation of the 901-foot-long container ship the morning of Nov. 7 when it crashed into the second tower west of Yerba Buena Island in a thick fog. Heavy fuel oil poured from a gash on the Cosco Busan's port side, killing more than 2,000 birds over the next few days, among them brown pelicans, marbled murrelets and western grebes. The brown pelican is a federally endangered species and the marbled murrelet is a federally threatened species.

The charges allege that Cota acted in a negligent manner by a whole series of actions, including sailing in the fog, failing to proceed at a safe speed, not reviewing the proposed course with the Cosco Busan's captain and officers, failing to check the navigation equipment with the ship's officers, and not using the ship's radar while making an approach to the Bay Bridge.

The federal accusations are similar to the conclusions reached by investigators from the State Board of Pilot Commissioners in December, but maritime attorneys said it was rare for criminal charges to result from such errors.

Jeff Bornstein, Cota's attorney, said Monday that the charges were both "premature" and "unusual." He said the Coast Guard recognizes that "maritime mishaps require a ... chain of errors and causes," and that other government agencies, notably the National Transportation Safety Board, had not yet identified the "errors and causes" that led to the accident. The safety board will hold hearings on the incident next month.

"What is unusual is that a pilot is being charged at all," Bornstein said. "He was just trying to do his job."

Bornstein said Cota, who was born and raised in San Francisco, "cares deeply about San Francisco Bay and its ecosystem and is deeply distressed about what happened."

"We strongly believe that once all the evidence is heard, a jury will find in Capt. Cota's favor," he said.

Even if he is cleared of the federal criminal charges, however, Cota faces hearings that could result in the loss of his livelihood.

The state pilot commission investigation last year concluded the Cota had made a number of errors and that "pilot error" was the cause of the crash. It is awaiting a reply from Cota before deciding whether to pull his license permanently.

In addition, other investigators concluded that Cota suffered from a sleep disorder and was taking medication that might have affected his judgment.

In maritime law, the pilot, who is an officer licensed by both the state and federal government and is responsible for giving advice on the navigation of a ship, is merely "a servant of the ship" and not liable for damage resulting from his actions.

The cost of the oil spill, which affected the bay shoreline and ocean beaches as far as Bolinas in Marin County and the San Mateo County coast, is the responsibility of the ship's owner, Regal Stone Ltd. of Hong Kong.

Earlier this month, San Francisco officials said an insurance agent for the owners of the Cosco Busan would pay the city $2 million in an initial installment for its cleanup costs. The total cost of the accident and cleanup to government agencies has been estimated at more than $60 million.

On March 4, the California State Lands Commission voted to join federal and other state agencies in a process to determine the full extent of damage to the environment and to try to recover any costs, in court if necessary.

"With a federal criminal case under way, it is all the more imperative that California moves swiftly to recover damages to our coastline and wildlife, and to signal that protecting California's environment and people is a top priority," said Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a member of the state commission.

E-mail the writers at hlee@sfchronicle.com and cnolte@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle