Great News!

    -->

    Highlights

    Most recent first

      The Albany Journal

      Albany council adopts recommendations for waterfront

      November 9, 2007 - By Shelly Meron STAFF WRITER

      Albany city officials this week accepted a consultant's recommendation to focus their waterfront-planning process on civic engagement and education, saying they want to be prepared if the landowner comes forward with its own proposal.
      "It's always been my contention that whatever we do with the waterfront should be Albany-driven, not developer-driven," Mayor Robert Lieber said. "We need to be ready with our own plan."
      Following a recommendation from the city's waterfront committee, the City Council voted 4-1, with Councilwoman Jewel Okawachi dissenting, to accept the first phase of option No. 3 in consultant Don Neuwirth's preliminary report.
      The "grounded visioning program for the waterfront," as it is called in the report, is estimated to cost $500,000 and take about 18 months. It will include hiring a consultant to help with the public education and engagement process, and it may involve tours at the Albany waterfront and other nearby waterfronts as well as educating local schoolchildren.
      Neuwirth's preliminary report was released in September and followed by a final report last month.
      Okawachi said this week that taking action on the waterfront now is "premature," and that she was concerned about the time being spent on the process by the City Council, city staff and community.
      Magna Entertainment Corp., which operates Golden Gate Fields racetrack, has not disclosed any plans for its land since developer Rick Caruso withdrew his proposal last year for a retail and housing project on underused parking lots.
      "I really think we should wait and see what happens," Okawachi said. "(Magna) may make a decision (about Golden Gate Fields) soon."
      The other three council members agreed with Lieber that accepting Neuwirth's report was a good way to prepare for the future.
      "One thing that seems clear is that the education and information part of this is necessary no matter what we do," Councilman Farid Javandel said. "If Magna comes up with a plan, it would be nice for us to have a vision in place with which to compare it to. We can let the landowner know what's likely to succeed."
      Twenty-two members of the community turned out Tuesday night to comment on Neuwirth's report, and the group was split between supporters and opponents.
      "I think it's a long time in coming," said Robert Cheasty, president of Citizens for East Shore Parks. "This is a good day for Albany."
      Resident Preston Jordan said he was "initially skeptical of going this route, but having read the report, I'm quite optimistic." He added that he also was supportive of Neuwirth's idea to have a design competition for the waterfront, which was included in the final report.
      The council decided to hold off on acting on the design competition idea.
      Meanwhile, several members of the public expressed concerns about going forward with a planning process without Magna's participation, and they wondered whether the city's money could be better spent.
      Clay Larson, the only member of the city's waterfront committee to vote against adopting the report, said he preferred to do nothing because Neuwirth himself wrote in his report that the suggestions "won't work."
      Larson said those involved are "all good people, but they're enamored with their view of the waterfront, and it keeps them from being objective. I don't think it's worth the money."
      In his preliminary report, Neuwirth wrote that "if the landowner does not participate in the process, any positive outcome is questionable. ... We suggest that any new planning process be based on real commitments, not mere involvement, otherwise it will simply become another expensive and futile exercise."
      Resident Trevor Grayling agreed, saying that going forward without Magna's participation would be a waste of time and money. Grayling said Albany officials have "pushed Magna away, into a corner. Now we have no influence on them and no idea what they are planning."
      Golden Gate Fields officials have said they would participate only in a waterfront-planning process that assumes the racetrack will remain in operation. Some in the community have speculated that Magna's financial problems may force the racetrack to close, creating an opportunity for much of the land to be developed as a public park.
      "It just depends on how much focus they're going to put on us going away," Golden Gate Fields General Manager Robert Hartman told the Times earlier this month. "We're the owners, and we're not going away."
      Lieber said Magna officials were welcome to participate in the process at any time, and that they did not return phone calls from city officials.
      "I have reached out to the owners and continue to reach out to the owners on a regular basis," he said at Tuesday's meeting. "We don't get return calls. We are willing to work with them at any time on a plan that's good for Albany and respects the owner within zoning regulations."
      On Wednesday, Lieber added that Magna representatives always have said they will continue operating the racetrack, but previous owners of Golden Gate Fields said the same thing and then sold the business anyway.
      "Just because somebody says that doesn't mean it's true," he said.

      Reach Shelly Meron at 510-243-3578 or smeron@bayareanewsgroup.com.

      Contra Costa Times

      Rediscovering the shoreline
      October 30, 2007 - Chris Treadway

      A LOT OF GROUPS and individuals that put year-round effort into studying, cleaning and restoring waterways and Bay shoreline in West County are inviting the community to spend an entertaining and informative afternoon and see what it's all about.

      The third Richmond Shoreline Festival, which takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, will offer activities for all ages, interpretive hikes and a barbecue at picturesque Point Pinole Regional Shoreline in Richmond.

      The day will include informational displays, conversations with public officials and an open mic poetry slam.

      The free celebration is being staged by more than a dozen environmental and community organizations that do environmental work in the city. Sponsoring groups include the North Richmond Shoreline Open Space Alliance in partnership with Citizens for East Shore Parks, Community Health Initiative, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Natural Heritage Institute, North Richmond Municipal Advisory Council, Parchester Village Neighborhood Council, the Sierra Club, Urban Creeks Council, the Watershed Project and West County Toxics Coalition.

      "They do a lot of events. This is probably the most fun one," said Rich Walkling, operations manager and senior restoration planner for the Natural Heritage Institute in San Francisco. "It's a good-time event. Everything else is work, for the most part."

      As evidenced by the number of sponsoring groups, there is a growing interest in Richmond's shoreline as a natural and recreational resource. Saturday's event is intended to increase awareness.

      "It's one of those things we try to do to get people out and witness the shoreline firsthand," Walkling said. "A lot of people don't know about Point Pinole or what it has to offer."

      Point Pinole is an example of a shoreline area once used for industry and now returned to a more natural state. The festival will include a ranger-led tour of the park as well as an Audubon Society bird walk and a marsh walk led by the Watershed Project.

      To reach Point Pinole Regional Shoreline, turn onto Giant Highway from Richmond Parkway and proceed to the park entrance.

      For details on the festival, contact Walkling at rpw@n-h-i.org or
      415-693-3000, Ext. 109, or visit http://www.shorelineacademy.org.

      Berkeley Daily Planet

      Albany’s Golden Gate Fields Developer Runs Low on Cash

      October 19, 2007 - By Richard Brenneman

      What’s the future of Golden Gate Fields now that its corporate owner is shedding real estate to cover losses on its ailing horse racing business?

      The track’s principal owner has told investors that something major is afoot, despite last year’s withdrawal of a proposal for an upscale shopping center and housing complex on part of the site.

      “Well, Golden Gate is a sizable piece of land, and ... for what it returns, the value of the real estate—it’s just not in line,” said Frank Stronach, the Canadian auto parks magnate who holds a controlling interest in the track’s corporate parent, Magna Entertainment Corporation.
      “But we are working on that, and hopefully within half a year we will have a very good answer on that one,” he told investors during a conference call last month.

      “Good,” said Albany Mayor Robert Lieber Wednesday. “Hopefully, they will close it, sell off the land and bring in a developer who will create a project the community can support.”
      But just what’s in store for the Albany track remains an open question. “[I]t would be way too early that we could publicly comment on it until we have the solution firmly firmed up,” Stronach told investors.

      During that same Sept. 13 call to investors, Magna officials announced that the Albany track was among company holdings pledged as collateral for a bridge loan of up to $80 million needed to avert a financial crisis.

      According to the latest corporate earnings statement, covering the three months ending June 30, Magna continues to hemorrhage cash.

      At the time that report was released in August, Stronach said, “We recognize that immediate and drastic action is required and we have commissioned a strategic review of the company.”

      A month later came the announcement of the bridge loan and confirmation of plans for the sale of a significant part of the company’s assets.

      Lieber, an outspoken critic of Stronach’s earlier plans to develop a shopping mall complex on the track’s parking lot, said he is angry because Magna “has blown off their promise to the community to develop the Bay Trail through their property” and renounced a promised 10-year lease on the shoreline trail area to the East Bay Regional Park—offering instead only a one-year term.

      “That sounds to me like plain bad faith,” he said.

      Collateral pledge

      According to an 8-K Form filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission Sept. 18, the Albany track, Santa Anita Park in Los Angeles County and the site of a proposed track in Dixon in Yolo County are three of the five Magna properties pledged as collateral for the loan.

      In addition to the bridge loan, Stronach pumped another $20 million of his own money into the company through an investment trust he created to provide an estate for his heirs, former Magna CEO Tom Hodgson told investors and two East Coast journalists during the

      September conference call.

      “We were running out of cash,” Stronach said. Magna Chief Financial Officer Blake Tohana said the company had $54 million in obligations coming due by June 30, 2008.

      Defeat of the plans for an upscale outdoor mall and housing complex at Golden Gate Fields were abandoned after two project foes defeated a pair of supporters in a race for open seats on the Albany City Council last November, assuring a majority vote against the controversial super mall.

      More bad news came six months later, when voters in the western Sacramento valley town of Dixon voted down Magna’s plans for a track, retail and housing development there in a four-measure referendum in April.

      Magna’s first “For Sale” sign went up on the Dixon property, during Stronach’s announcement of the financial losses Aug. 9—when Hodgson announced that the company had given up their plans for the site.

      The company posted losses of $22.4 million for the three months ending June 30.
      “We are extremely disappointed with the second quarter results,” Stronach said in a statement to investors. “We recognize that immediate and drastic review is required and we have commissioned a strategic review of the company.”

      Then, during the September conference call, the company announced the loan along with plans for sale of real estate near Magna’s Gulfstream Park in Florida, Laurel Park in Maryland, and a site near Vienna, Austria where the company operates a track/casino—or
      Racino in Magna’s trademarked coinage.

      Magna’s efforts to install casinos and slot machine-like racing gaming machines at its tracks have met with limited success, with the efforts rejected in many jurisdictions.

      The company is also looking at plans to sell its joint shopping center and housing project adjacent to Santa Anita, now under development by Rick Caruso, the same L.A. shopping center magnate who was defeated in his plans for the Albany mall.

      A similar project with another developer at Gulfstream is also a candidate for sale.

      “I am 100 percent behind the debt elimination plan,” Stronach told his audience during the September conference call, later adding that “we will eliminate racetracks which were marginal or lost a little money.”

      Troubled past

      While Stronach became one of Canada’s richest men by shrewdly building up his auto parts company into a North American market leader, his passion for thoroughbreds has spawned controversy from the start.

      Once boasting of plans to build the world’s largest racing empire, he amassed the largest collection of tracks ever assembled in North America. But investors in the parts company weren’t happy with the tracks’ impact on the balance sheet and forced him to spin off the racing ventures as a separate company.

      Magna Entertainment has tried a variety of gambits to boost the bottom line in an era in which off-track betting has sapped track attendance, and other sports have commandeered the limelight from what was once hailed as the “Sport of Kings.”

      Magna has pushed to combine track operations with casinos and, most recently, Stronach has partnered with developers to build upscale projects on track-adjacent land.

      The Albany project planned with Caruso would have occupied parking lot space no longer needed because of the dropping attendance.

      Magna last week announced plans to sell off parts of its portfolio to stanch the cash hemorrhage, with the Santa Anita track in Southern California going on the block along with a proposed track site closer at hand in Dixon.

      When the Golden Gate Fields racing season opens Nov. 7, the track will be in better shape than ever for thoroughbreds thundering along the home stretch, thanks to a new track surface mandated by state racing commissioners.

      All California tracks with major racing seasons have been ordered to install new surfaces to prevent horses from breaking their legs—an accident that usually ends with a lethal injection for the injured animal.

      Magna chose the patented Tapeta system, which uses a wax-coated mixture of sand, rubber and fiber to cushion hoof-blows on the track. Horses were able to try out the surface for the first time when the track opened for training Oct. 7.

      Lieber said the resurfacing cost Magna about $10 million.

      Bay Trail flap

      Local environmental activists had challenged the resurfacing because they believed the project hadn’t received the requisite review mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act.

      Norman La Force, the attorney who chairs the Sierra Club’s East Bay Public Lands Committee, said the track had known about the project for eleven months before applying for a permit in April, yet had not conducted a thorough review of its potential impacts on the community and the sensitive bayside environment.

      Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor and chair of Citizens for Eastshore State Park, negotiated with track officials.

      In the end, he said, in exchange for the environmentalists withdrawing their objections, track officials agreed to give the Eastshore State Park a 10-year period of access so they could complete installation of the Bay Trail through the track’s property and open it to public access.

      “But once they got what they wanted, they blew off their promise to give the community the Bay Trail,” Lieber said. “Now they only want to give a one-year lease.”

      The change in mood at the track came about the same time Stronach began discussing possible new developments there.

      “We are very disappointed by the lack of progress on the Bay Trail,” said Cheasty. “To paraphrase the chain gang boss in Cool Hand Luke, we’re hoping it’s only a ‘failure to communicate.’ But if Golden Gate Fields doesn’t go through with the completion of the Bay Trail, then it will have broken words, its bond of trust with the community.”

      La Force of the Sierra Club said that henceforth community groups wouldn’t trust what track officials said “without a signed contract, and with enforcement penalities.”

      Berkeley Daily Planet

      Toxic Questions Surround Two Richmond Sites
      July 6-9, 2007 - By Richard Brenneman

      More questions are swirling around the cleanup efforts at two adjacent contaminated sites in Richmond this week.
      Issues range from the adequacy of testing of contaminants at UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station (RFS) and the possibility of radioactive contamination both at the field station and at the adjacent site at Campus Bay, owned by AstraZeneca, a Swiss agro-chemical giant.
      State officials last week issued emergency cleanup orders to the university and AstraZeneca, demanding the cleanup of thousands of truckloads of contaminated soil illegally transported from the RFS and buried at the chemical company’s adjacent site.
      The orders from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) concern more than 3,000 truckloads of contaminated earth moved during cleanup operations between 2002 and 2004.
      But other questions remain, and scientists and two environmental and geological consultants working for a DTSC Community Advisory (CAG) Group overseeing the cleanups this week urged a halt to cleanup activities at the chemical company’s site in light of possible radioactive contamination there.
      Questions about radioactive contaminants have also arisen about RFS, and a possible site there has been identified.
      Just as worrisome to CAG member Sherry Padgett is the latest report on conditions at the RFS, which show the presence of significant levels of toxics where cleanup work has already been completed.
      “This is dramatic because they had excavated all of the area and brought in clean fill,” she said.
      Presence of the toxic incursions was disclosed in a hefty draft Current Conditions Report (CCR) prepared by the university’s environmental consultants in response to a Sept. 15, 2006 order from the DTSC.
      A similar report was ordered from AstraZeneca.
      Padgett said the university’s report is flawed, in part because the document only covers 90 of the site’s 152 acres.
      “We were expecting something more significant,” Padgett said. “The bottom line is that it isn’t adequate.”
      But Karl Hans, senior environmental scientist with the university’s office of Environment, Health & Safety, said the site area was specified in the DTSC order that led to the report.
      In response, member of the CAG’s Toxic Committee sent a 27-page response to the DTSC on June 8, raising detailed questions about the report’s specifics, along with recommendations.
      The committee has yet to receive a response. The university representatives canceled two consecutive meetings with the committee—the first two days before a scheduled session last month and a second time this month.
      “We wanted to meet with them before we prepared our report,” said Padgett. “They called two days before and said they had a open house they had to attend.”
      Padgett said the date for the second session was chosen as a date when university officials said they could attend. After the committee issued its report, Greg Haet, a university’s environmental health and safety officer, sent an email announcement that the school wouldn’t attend the second session.
      In his email to the committee, Haet offered to explain, but Padgett didn’t call. “The message was so terse it seemed pointless, particularly when we’d scheduled the meeting for a time they said they could attend.”
      Hans said the staff members had other commitments at the times of both meetings. “University staff familiar with the project have provided information at past CAG meetings, including the Toxics Committee,” he wrote in an email response to questions. He added that “In general, however, the University believes it is appropriate to deal directly with DTSC on these issues.”
      Key issues
      One of the key points raised in the committee’s report was the lack of any information about the university’s property south of the Bay Trail, some 40 percent of the RFS total acreage.
      Of the remaining acreage, the university’s consultants confined their testing largely to areas previously known to have harbored concentrations of toxics.
      “They didn’t do tests on most of the site,” said Padgett.
      “The Current Conditions Report is meant to consolidate information from previous investigations and summarize the current status of soil and groundwater conditions at the RFS. It is not intended to be an investigation work plan,” Hans responded.
      “The University will complete a Field Sampling Work Plan sometime in later 2007 based on DTSC’s review of the CCR. In addition, based on the extensive investigations performed to date, the RFS site is well-characterized and additional wide-spread sampling, such as grid sampling, is most likely not necessary, ” he said.
      The committee also questioned the claim by consultants that a plant that had reprocessed oils, including the unauthorized treatment of PCBs from electrical transformers, had contributed to the toxic load at the field station.
      The CAG committee asked the mention to be removed, given that the Liquid Gold plant was located on the other side of the AstraZeneca property, which had been the site of a century of chemical manufacturing.
      The committee also asked that the university consultants explain why the previously cleaned areas of Western Stege Marsh were showing elevated concentrations of PCBs near the surface, along with surface findings of mercury, arsenic and copper.
      “Low concentrations of metals and PCBs have been found in the sediment being deposited onto clean soils placed in areas excavated during 2002-2004,” Hans said. “The marsh sediment deposition processes are under investigation as part of the ongoing marsh monitoring program. These investigations are intended to help determine the source, or sources, of potential contaminants in the sediments.”
      The committee also asked for more testing for toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the soil and water through the RFS site and for greater study of the plume of toxics coming onto the field station from the AstraZeneca site
      Padgett said she was particularly concerned that the study didn’t include subsurface testing of soil and water near the border of the Campus Bay site near the intersection of 46th and Meade streets, where high levels of VOCs had been found on the Campus Bay side.
      “Soil and groundwater samples have been collected for chemical analyses in the northeastern portion of the RFS,” Hans responded. “Zeneca, as part of the investigation of their property required by DTSC, is performing additional characterization of chemicals in shallow and intermediate groundwater zones along the property boundary between the RFS and the former Zeneca site.”
      Padgett said she would also like to see an evaluation of the entire site for the presence of the highly toxic compound methyl mercury. Mercury was used at the RFS site by its previous occupant, California Cap Co., which manufactured blasting caps, ammunition and other explosive using fulminate of mercury, a compound made from the metal.
      Methyl mercury is a compound produced by the action of bacteria on mercury beneath the ground and in water. It is highly toxic, and has been linked to lowered intelligence in children, immune system disorders, heart attacks and death.
      Presence of the compound in San Francisco Bay has led to the posting of shoreline notices warning against regular consumption of fish caught in its waters.
      “The University expects DTSC’s official comments on the Current Conditions Report in the next month,” Hans wrote, “and will reply at that time to their specific comments and concerns.”
      Radioactive questions
      The committee is also concerned with issues of possible radioactive wastes at both the RFS and at the adjoining AstraZeneca site.
      Ethel Dotson, who spent her childhood in a segregated housing development near the sites, had long raised the issue of possible radioactive contamination. While her suspicions were initially disavowed by both the university and the chemical company, more information has surfaced that lends substances to her fears.
      Initial reports that a small test of melting uranium with an electron beam occurred at the chemical plant site have led to the discovery of more documentation indicating that more extensive testing may have taken place, including an account reporting that larger amounts of radioactive nuclear reactor fuel capsules may have been treated at the site.
      Another concern arises from the processing of so-called superphosphate fertilizers at the site, which are manufactured from ores that typically contain significant amounts of radioactive compounds.
      The concerns were raised in a letter sent Tuesday to the DTSC, AstraZeneca, Cherokee Simeon Ventures and others by Dorinda Shipman, a consultant with an Francisco-based Treadwell & Rollo, Inc., and Adrienne LaPierre, a scientist with Iris Environmental.
      The consultants were hired with funds provided by Cherokee Simeon, a company formed to develop the Campus Bay site, which it purchased from AstraZeneca.
      The consultants urged a halt to any further efforts to clean up the site pending a thorough examination of the site to determine the possible “human health and environmental risks.”
      “Proceeding with (cleanup efforts) before the completion of the site characterization process (in this case a thorough understanding of the radiological issues) could jeopardize the selection of a health protective remedy,” they wrote.
      Surface tests at the Campus Bay site conducted two years ago didn’t find measurable traces of radioactivity of the surface, though elevated radioactivity measurements have been detected in groundwater.
      Radiation concerns at the RFS arise chiefly from the reports of retired RFS worker and current CAG member Rick Alcaraz that he and other university staff members dumped barrels of rocks at the site hauled from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which they believed to be radioactive.
      An exploratory dig at one site failed to find any trace of the barrels, but Alcaraz said they were dumped at another site, where magnetometer tests have shown the presence of metal beneath the surface.

      The Berkeley Daily Planet, July 6-9, 2007
      http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/text/article.cfm?issue=07-06-07&storyID=27449

      Berkeley Daily Planet

      UC Illegally Buried ‘Thousands Of Truckloads’ of Toxic Soil In Richmond, State Says

      July 3, 2007 - By Richard Brenneman

      UC Berkeley and a Swiss multinational must clean up thousands of truckloads of toxic-laden soil illegally buried at the Richmond site of a planned 1,330-unit housing complex, state officials ordered Friday.

      “What we had feared has been verified,” said Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley, Richmond). “It confirms my fears and the fears of the neighbors, which have been shown to be terribly correct.”

      Much of the contaminated earth and cinders buried at Campus Bay came from the adjacent, university-owned Richmond Field Station, according to a pair of certified letters sent to the university and AstraZeneca.

      The letter to UC Berkeley and the Swiss agro-pharmaceutical conglomerate from Charlene Williams, chief of the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s (DTSC) Enforcement and Energy Response Program for Northern California, outlined the violations.

      She also ordered the university and AstraZeneca to begin to establish “within 15 days of receipt of the Summary of Violations” a schedule for removing and treating thousands of truckloads of contaminated soil from a site where 1,330 homes had been planned atop a small mesa of contaminated earth.

      Much of that soil had been transferred there from the university’s adjacent Richmond Field Station.

      The order confirms the suspicions of local activists like Ethel Dotson and Sherry Padgett, who had charged that another state agency had bungled its oversight of a massive cleanup at the sites between 2002 and 2004.

      That effort was overseen by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which has since ceded control to the DTSC.

      University officials had argued against the transfer of regulatory oversight, demanded by local activists in part because the water board has no staff toxicologists—scientists trained in evaluating hazardous substances and their treatment—while the DTSC is well-equipped with the experts.

      “The university and AstraZeneca both said things were fine. Now we know that was incorrect. They were not doing just fine,” said Hancock, who said that at least 3,000 truckloads had been illegally buried at the site.

      Padgett said the total could be even larger.

      Alleged violations cited by the DTSC for both the university and AstraZeneca include:

      • Treatment of hazardous waste without a permit;
      • Disposal of hazardous waste at an unauthorized point;
      • Shipment of hazardous waste to an unpermitted facility;
      • Storage of hazardous waste without a permit or authorization, and
      • Transfer of custody of hazardous waste to an unauthorized trucking firm.
      • Two other allegations were lodged solely against AstraZeneca:
      • Failure to submit hazardous waste shipment manifests within 30 days and
      • Failure to properly characterize hazardous wastes

      Among the contaminants cited were organic compounds—PCBs and perchlorethylene (PCE)—as well as the hazardous metals mercury, cadmium, arsenic, zinc, copper and selenium.

      Penalty issue

      While no penalties are specified, the violation notices state that nothing in the letters would “preclude the DTSC from taking administrative, civil or criminal action as a result of the violations.”

      Padgett, an activist with Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development (BARRD), worked next to the sites during the massive cleanup locals dubbed “the big dig.”

      While praising DTSC for ordering the removal of the contaminated earth, Padgett asked, “Do they pay a penalty, or are they going to be allowed to negotiate their way out of it?”

      Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin agreed. “What was upsetting was that there was no penalty issued for putting our people at risk,” she said.

      One of the early advocates of a handover of regulatory oversight from the water board to DTSC, McLaughlin did hail the letters as a positive step.

      “At least the DTSC is rising to the task of identifying what went wrong,” she said. “They need to be very clear in their instructions to both keep the community safe and make sure there are no more negative impacts” on the environment.

      “It’s an opening that allows the right kind of dialog to take place.”

      McLaughlin made the long history of contamination of both sites and a call for regulatory oversight a central issue in her election to the City Council in 2004. She was elected mayor last year.

      Padgett and McLaughlin are two members of the Community Advisory Group (CAG) established by DTSC to monitor the cleanup at the site, which is being supported in part by funding from Cherokee-SImeon negotiated by BARRD attorney Peter Weiner.

      The group continues to question the adequacy of information provided by the university, which recently declined a request to attend a meeting of the group’s toxics committee.

      CAG Chair Whitney Dotson, who grew up in Parchester Village, a segregated housing development near the site, said he hoped the DTSC would maintain a rigorous follow-through.

      “I am concerned because the university has been able to make things disappear if they’re done quickly enough,” he said.

      Contaminated past

      Both sites along the Richmond shoreline southeast of Marina Bay had been targeted for massive development, despite century-long legacies of chemical manufacturing using highly toxic substances.

      The easternmost Campus Bay site housed a chemical manufacturing complex from 1897 to 1997, which included among its products a variety of agricultural poisons and fertilizers as well as other compounds. Some uranium processing also occurred, though just how much remains unclear.

      Just to the northwest, the university’s Richmond Field Station (RFS) had been the site of a plant that manufactured explosives and ammunition using a compound of mercury, a toxic metal.

      Further complicating the picture was the disposal of wastes from the chemical plants at Campus Bay site on the property now occupied by the RFS.

      Much of the wastes came in the form of cinders from iron pyrites, fool’s gold processed at the chemical plants for the manufacture of sulfuric acid. The cinders contain a range of hazardous metals.

      A 1,331-unit condo and apartment complex had been planned for Campus Bay by Cherokee-Simeon, a joint venture of Bay Area developer Simeon Properties and Cherokee Investment Partners, a company which bankrolls projects on reclaimed hazardous waste sites.

      Those plans are currently on hold.

      University plans

      UC Berkeley had partnered with Simeon Properties to transform much of the Richmond Field Station—located between Campus and Marina bays—into a corporate and academic research park dubbed Bayside Research Campus.

      Plans called for between 1 million and 1.5 million square feet of new buildings on 70 of the field station’s 152 acres to provide a focus for joint ventures between university scientists and the corporate world.

      Research parks are an increasingly common feature of universities which are turning to corporate alliances to capture revenues from patents to replace the dwindling share of college pasts paid for by taxpayers.

      During a February, 2005, Richmond City Council meeting which ended in a vote calling for DTSC oversight, Mark B. Freiberg, director of the university’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety, told councilmembers the school was quite happy running its own RFS cleanup under Water Board supervision and urged a vote against the resolution calling for the regulatory handover.

      Freiberg repeated almost word-for-word the statement in an earlier email to the council from university public relations Director Irene Hegarty, which claimed the RFS had been included in the council resolution only because of its “confusion” with Campus Bay—a point McLaughlin refuted.

      The council then voted unanimously to ask the state Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees both agency, to hand jurisdiction over both sites to the DTSC—which became official on May 13, 2005, thanks in part to the efforts of Hancock, who had convened a legislative hearing at RFS to examine both sites.

      According to the university’s April, 2004, call for developers, “the development of the site will be targeted to those University-related or private sector entities involved in industrial, scientific, or technological research.”

      Though construction had been planned to start in July 2006, the change in regulatory oversight and subsequent reevaluation by DTSC forced the university to table its development plans.

      Critical period

      All of the actions cited by the DTSC occurred between 2002 and 2004, when most of the buildings at the AstraZeneca were demolished, ground into powder and buried at the site.

      Work was also underway simultaneously at RFS, with the university conducting its own cleanup under the water board’s supervision.

      According to the DTSC, the university used at least nine trucking companies which didn’t possess the required state hazardous waste handling registrations: American Pacific, Baires Trucking, Chapman Trucking, G.A. Grau, Hernandez Trucking, L&M Express, Mark Dross Trucking, Marzette Transportation and Remedial Transportation.

      According to the letter sent to Greg Haet, the companies weren’t registered for all or part of the time they were hauling wastes from the site.

      Only one such violation was charged to AstraZeneca, the use of Marchbanks trucking, which was unregistered when it hauled two loads of hazardous waste in August, 2002.

      Some of the violations charged to AstraZeneca included burial of more than 2,000 of truckloads of improperly treated waste from the university site beneath the capped site where the housing development was planned.

      Just what will happen to the waste remains an issue.

      Padgett says she is concerned because the material has been intermixed at the site with the product of other excavations, including digs conducted in the shoreline marsh at the Campus Bay site.

      “How could they ever identify it again? It’s all mixed together,” she said.

      Most of the RFS soils were contaminated with metals above the levels allowed for storage beneath the mesa at Campus Bay, 350,000 cubic yards of earth and cinder capped with a thin layer of mixed cement and paper.

      Most of the waste had originated at the plants formerly located at Campus Bay rather than the university site’s mercury-based explosives plant.

      AstraZeneca bears responsibility at Campus Bay because it was the last operator of the plants there. The site is currently owned by Cherokee-Simeon, which had planned the housing project—which consisted of high-, mid- and low-rises.

      Because of volatile hazardous chemicals on the site, the proposal had called for fans beneath some of the buildings to blow away any accumulating toxins, as well as garages on the ground floors of many of the structures. No plants could be grown for human consumption of the site’s soil.

      The Campus Bay cleanup was conducted by LFR Levine-Fricke, an Emeryville multinational firm specializing in toxic waste cleanups.

      James Levine, formerly a principal in LFR Levine-Fricke, is now a developer, planning to build a casino/resort complex at Richmond’s Point Molate, another site with a history of contamination dating to its past as a U.S. Navy refueling station.

      Levine had left the firm prior to the cleanup.

      The cleanup plan, formulated while he was still with the firm, cost AstraZeneca only about $20 million by calling for burial of treated wastes at the site, rather than hauling them off to a licensed hazardous waste disposal facility.

      That plan initially saved the chemical conglomerate an estimated $80 million of the $100 million it had budgeted for the cleanup.

      Noting that the letters DTSC sent were primarily concerned with events at the field station, Padgett said she hoped more action would be coming from the agency addressed to events at Campus Bay.

      Berkeley Daily Planet, July 3, 2007

      http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=07-03-07&storyID=27431

      Contra Costa Times

      Berkeley Meadows opens at long last

      October 6, 2006 - By Denis Cuff and Martin Snapp

      The skies were overcast but the mood was sunny as VIPs and ordinary folks rubbed shoulders Wednesday morning at the opening of a 17-acre slice of the Berkeley Meadow as the first developed part of the Eastshore State Park, which stretches from Oakland to Richmond.

      Originally part of the Bay, the meadow was filled in a century ago to make a garbage dump. In the 1960s, developers proposed constructing a huge shopping center and office complex on the site, but a citizens' revolt stopped that plan cold.

      The loudest cheers of the day were for the leader of that revolt, 89-year-old Sylvia McLaughlin of Berkeley, founder of Save the Bay.

      "This has been about 40 years coming," she said. "But it's only the first step. Now we have to transform this land so it looks like a real park, rather than a linear vacant lot."

      Assemblyman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley/El Cerrito, who was mayor of Berkeley during the 1980s when the struggle to create the 2,200-acre, 8.5-mile long park was being waged, sounded relieved.

      "I have watched this park grow, parcel by parcel, improvement by improvement, lawsuit by lawsuit," she said.

      Her husband, Berkeley's current mayor, Tom Bates, called the day "the proudest moment of my career."

      Bates wrote the original enabling legislation in the 1970s, when he was a state assemblyman. Then, as a member of the Budget Committee, he set aside money for the park year after year whenever the voters passed a new bond measure.

      "Tom really took the lead," said East Bay Regional Park General Manager Pat O'Brien.

      For Bates, it was a bittersweet occasion.

      "I wish Dwight Steele could have been here," he said.

      Steele, who teamed with Bates, McLaughlin, former Albany Mayor Robert Cheasty and Sierra Club leader Norman La Force of El Cerrito to found Citizens for East Shore Parks, died in 2003.

      "We always used to talk about making this happen in our lifetime," said Bates. "Unfortunately, it didn't happen in his."

      One of Steele's assets was that he was an active Republican, giving park supporters access to both parties.

      "We were getting stonewalled by the Deukmejian administration," Bates said. "But Dwight got Pete Wilson to make a campaign stop here when he was running for governor and pledge to support the park. And when Wilson got elected, he kept that promise."

      The meadow embodies the character of the overall park: an abused natural area fixed up for new uses.

      "Much of the shoreline park used to be used for dumps where trash fires often burned for days," said Larry Tong, interagency planning manager for the East Bay Regional Park District.

      Under a partnership agreement, the state provided most of the money to buy the park land, while the regional park district is responsible for developing and operating it.

      To restore the first 17 acres of the 70-acre Berkeley Meadow, state and regional park officials spent approximately $3 million to haul away or seal off toxic waste, haul away concrete construction debris, improve habitat and build trails.

      Park builders graded low spots to capture rain in winter and attract waves of migratory ducks and geese.

      Crews also graded high spots for trails and overlooks with prime views of San Francisco's skyline and the East Bay hills.

      Workers painstakingly used hand tools to weed out nonnative plants and put in native ones to create a rich shoreline ecosystem.

      Although controlled burns are used in some areas to kill nonnative plants, a fire was impractical in the Berkeley Meadow because thick smoke could easily drift onto and close the Interstate 80 freeway nearby, Tong said.

      "The good thing about the Eastshore Park is it's near a densely populated urban area," Tong said, "and the difficult thing about creating the park is it's so near a densely populated urban area."

      The meadow is classified as a conservation area appropriate for low-intensity recreation, under an Eastshore Park general plan adopted in 2002.

      More intense activities will be allowed in park recreation zones, including Berkeley's north basin strip where planners propose a visitors center, hostel, boathouse, picnic tables, and a waterfront promenade with steps to the water.

      Those projects are many years off, though, park planners say.

      In the meantime, many parts of the new park already are in use.

      Many people already visit undeveloped portions of the shoreline park to jog, walk dogs, fish, picnic and launch sailboards.

      Many dog walkers continue to flock to Point Isabel Regional Park in Richmond, an area opened nearly 30 years ago that has been declared part of the Eastshore Park.

      Park officials say getting money to operate and develop other areas in Eastshore will be a challenge.

      State and Regional Park operators spent more than $30 million to acquire and clean up the 2,200 acres in the Eastshore Park, about 365 acres of which is on land above the high tide mark.

      But more money is needed to develop and restore other areas, including the other 53 acres of the Berkeley Meadow.

      "It may take decades to finish the entire park," Tong said.



      The Daily Californian

      State Park's New Section Opens After Long Delay

      October 5, 2006 - By Corinna Matlis

      After 20 years of lawsuits and compromising, community volunteers and politicians are finally celebrating the dedication of a landfill-turned-meadow at a Berkeley state park.

      Officials from several area cities and environmental groups joined state park staff in a ribbon-cutting that officially opens a section of Berkeley Meadow, just north of the marina, to the public.

      The meadow, which is part of the Eastshore State Park system, sits on reclaimed land that was used as a landfill throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

      Several trails now crisscross the meadow, where park planners have restored many native plant species. Now that the natural environment has been re-created, environmentalists also hope native wildlife will return to the site.

      For two decades, city politicians and volunteers have worked through a laborious series of obstacles-including two major lawsuits, funding

      shortages and land-use disputes-in developing the land.

      "What this really means to me is that hundreds of people working thousands of hours have spun garbage into gold," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates.

      The Eastshore State Parks, which span Berkeley, Emeryville, Richmond and Albany, have been a project of local environmentalists since the early 1980s.

      Sylvia McLaughlin, who co-founded the local environmental group Save the Bay, was one of the park's first advocates. After helping to successfully oppose the city of Berkeley's plan to fill in 200,000 acres of the San Francisco Bay for development, the group turned its attention to creating a park.

      Since then, years of litigation and negotiations among different interest groups have stalled park plans.

      The development company Catellus, which originally owned the land where the meadow now sits, sued the city of Berkeley twice over the city's plans to re-zone the area as environmental land before buying it.

      Both suits reached the U.S. Supreme Court and were decided in Berkeley's favor, Bates said.

      Despite the myriad complications in creating the park, McLaughlin said she was never discouraged.

      "We never thought much about (obstacles)," she said. "We just thought about persevering."

      The ceremony yesterday featured eight speakers, including the mayors of all four cities where the Eastshore State Parks are located.

      The event marks the completion of the first of three phases of meadow development. Rough plans to develop the other phases exist, but funding has not yet been secured, said Steve Granholm, a board member of Citizens for Eastshore Parks.

      Despite the work that still needs to be done in developing the park, many were already pleased with the park for its current offerings of trails and recreational space.

      "A lot of people will use it because it is easy to get to," said Kitty McLean, a Berkeley resident and Citizens for Eastshore Parks board member.

      Bates said he hoped yesterday's dedication would raise community awareness of the park and increase its use by community members.

      Many in attendance said parks like Eastshore are necessary to balance the increasing urbanization in the Bay Area.

      "Parks and open spaces are what makes cities livable," McLaughlin said.



      The Sacramento Bee

      Activists, officials christen Eastshore State Park

      October 5, 2006 - By M.S. Enkoji

      Just after World War II, on the hills rising from the San Francisco Bay, Sylvia McLaughlin would look down from her Berkeley home and watch as heaps of garbage slowly filled in the watery expanse.

      "That was a time when people considered their waterfronts dumping grounds," she said. But as the bay's eastern shore seemed destined to close in on San Francisco, McLaughlin envisioned something different on the scrappy shoreline. She helped found one of several movements that galvanized the fight to rescue the waterfront, restore and preserve it. On Wednesday, she got to take her bow.

      Now 89, McLaughlin journeyed down to the grounds of those long-ago garbage dumps to join other activists and park managers as they christened one of the state's most distinctive parks: a nearly nine-mile ribbon of bayfront, mostly marshy wetlands, salvaged from industrial duties and blessed with world-class views.

      Called Eastshore State Park, vast stretches -- 2,002 acres -- are tidelands, with only 260 acres of the park on terra firma, some of it made from packed garbage 12 feet deep.

      The park runs from Richmond to the Bay Bridge, sandwiched in the narrow swath between Interstate 80 and the bay. Freeway drivers can catch a whizzing glance at the reedy growth and swooping sea gulls if they look west toward the city spires. Dozens of endangered species, like the brown pelican, touch down or burrow here, and biologists hope many more will return after decades of environmental topsy-turvy.

      The Bay Trail, which looks like the American River bike trail, skims through and will someday encircle the bay. Kayak and small-boat launches will open in a future phase. Nature trails wind deeper into the grasslands, back where the freeway traffic dies to a whisper.

      Restoring nature won't happen everywhere: A finger of land jutting into the bay, dubbed the Brickyard Area, is lined with discarded bricks, supposedly swept from the streets of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. That will stay.

      McLaughlin, who garnered a standing ovation during the dedication ceremony, talked some history.

      After an engineering report in the 1960s proclaimed that most of the bay could be filled in economically, big plans emerged that would have thrust the western boundaries of cities like Berkeley and Albany deep into the bay, which would have been narrowed down to a river.

      "They were going to take the top off San Bruno Mountain and put it in the bay," McLaughlin said. "That was considered progress."

      Huge shopping centers, housing developments and even a junior college topped the list, she said.

      The plans would have doubled the size of the cities.

      McLaughlin was one of three women who banded together and formed Save the Bay in 1961. They and other environmental groups eventually doused the infill plans, then pushed for government help to buy the land that was mostly privately owned by a railroad company.

      The long haul stretched with lawsuits and arm-twisting of some politicians.

      One of the politicians who helped with legislation, former state Assemblyman Tom Bates, who is now Berkeley mayor, acknowledged the throngs of volunteers.

      "Hundreds of thousands of people have actually spun garbage into gold," he said.

      The East Bay Regional Park District, which will manage the park and owns about 11 percent, and State Parks, which owns the rest, bought the land for $25 million with state bond money and regional tax revenues. By 1992, most of the land was purchased.

      Speakers on Wednesday recalled the most eclectic attraction to rise from the soggy banks: The sculptures fashioned from wood or scrap metal during the 1970s and 1980s that used to decorate the Emeryville Crescent. The swampy patch where I-80 bends to cross the Bay Bridge is also crucial for shorebirds, and the sculptures had to go.

      "There has to be a balance between art and habitat," said Robert Cheasty, a founder of Citizens for East Shore Parks, and mayor of Albany during the 1980s.

      Cheasty, who is now an Albany lawyer, used to erect driftwood sculptures there until he realized he was doing more harm than good.

      Without the park, Albany would have been completely shut off from the waterfront, said Cheasty, whose group was also instrumental in transforming the dump into a park.

      "Never mind that it used to be a dump," said Ruth Coleman, state parks director. "It is now a treasure for every child in the region to discover."

      One photo caption: Zeo Coddington, left, and husband Terry of Berkeley take in the view during a dedication ceremony Wednesday at Eastshore State Park. Activists saved the 8.5-mile shoreline rimming the East Bay from infill plans and pushed its restoration. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton



      The San Francisco Chronicle

      'Garbage into gold': 8 1/2-mile-long, 2,002-acre Eastshore State Park is dedicated after more than 30 years of hard work

      October 5, 2006 - Carolyn Jones

      It took more than three decades, hundreds of people, a dozen public agencies and plenty of creative financing, but in the end they did it: They turned eight miles of garbage dumps into one of America's largest urban parks.

      "We spun garbage into gold," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates on Wednesday at the official dedication of the Eastshore State Park, much of which has been completed.

      About 200 people helped unveil the 8.5-mile strip of tidelands, meadows, beaches and trails that stretches from the Bay Bridge to Richmond and boasts sweeping views of Mount Tamalpais, the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline, as well as the East Bay hills.

      "I remember 30 years ago looking at this space and thinking that development was inevitable," said Patty Donald, a naturalist for the city of Berkeley. "But people said we have a right to say no to developers. This is proof that mere mortals can make a difference."

      The 2,002-acre park includes large chunks of park space linked by the Bay Trail. Among the landmarks are the Berkeley Meadow, the Emeryville Crescent, Albany Beach and South Richmond shoreline. A handful of projects remains to be finished.

      Perhaps no one was more gratified to see the park dedicated than Sylvia McLaughlin, 89, who co-founded Save the Bay, an environmental group named for its cause, in 1961.

      "We thought public access to the bay was a good thing, and back then there wasn't any. It was measured in feet," she said. "Today it's measured in miles."

      McLaughlin, a UC Berkeley faculty wife, and two friends spent decades lobbying against bay fill and development. At the time, garbage dumps, vacant lots and free-form art projects lined the East Bay shoreline, and property owner Santa Fe Pacific Railroad (later Catellus Development Corp.) intended to develop it. Among the proposals were plans to build a hotel, homes, shopping centers and an airport.

      But a turning point came in 1971 when the Berkeley City Council voted against a shopping center on the waterfront.

      "The dream was born at that time," said Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, a former Berkeley city councilwoman who is married to Bates. "It's now one of the most beautiful spots on the face of the Earth, something we can leave for the generations that come after us."

      Starting in the mid-1970s, organizers started working on legislation, lawsuits, zoning changes, lobbying campaigns, propositions and bonds to acquire and restore the pollution-laden property. It was a complicated and daunting task to get the myriad, and often feuding, public agencies to cooperate, organizers said.

      "You've got agencies that can't even stand to be in the same room with each other, and here they were trying to do something together for the sake of the community at large. It was just phenomenal," Donald, the Berkeley naturalist, said.

      The park is owned by the State Parks but administered by the East Bay Regional Park District. Eventually it will include nature centers, more trails, sports fields and fewer non-native plants.

      Already the park is home to a thriving wildlife scene. Birds include great blue herons, egrets, pelicans, owls, hawks, kingfishers, cormorants, osprey, geese and kites.

      Skunks, possums, raccoons, gopher snakes, fence lizards, squirrels, voles, gophers, moles and possibly coyotes have moved in as well.

      Park supporters said it's remarkable -- but imperative -- to have such a wild stretch of open space amidst a densely populated urban area. More than 600,000 people live in the five cities adjacent to the park, and thousands more whiz by on Interstate 80 every day.

      "Because of the cities and the size of the population, this is a place for people to go and be healed," said Don Monahan, district superintendent of the State Parks. "It's a chance to look out at the bay and see Mother Nature at her best."



      Inside Bay Area

      New Berkeley waterfront park should be hit with nature lovers

      October 5, 2006 - Kristin Bender

      BERKELEY Ñ State and regional park leaders opened a 17-acre slice of the Berkeley Meadow on Wednesday afternoon, lauding it as a great spot for walking, relaxing, bird watching and people watching.

      Restoration of the former garbage dump marked the first completed phase of the Eastshore State Park General Plan, adopted in 2002 after 25 years of work by park leaders, elected officials and community watchdogs.

      The 8.5-mile-long Eastshore State Park is 2,000 acres of uplands and tidelands along the waterfront of Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville, Albany and Richmond.

      "There is some fantastic bird watching here. Both ways ... we watch the birds and the birds watch us," said Pat O'Brien, general manager of the East Bay Regional Park District.

      As part of the $1.3 million Eastshore State Park project, the park district restored and enhanced seasonal wetlands and improved coastal scrub and upland habitats at the Berkeley Meadow. Under a partnership, the state Department of Parks and Recreation spent $1.7 million building trails, fencing and interpretive exhibits.

      The 72-acre meadow is a gateway to the park Ñ a mix of nature preserves for birds and wildlife, and recreation areas for walkers, waders, bicyclists, anglers and picnickers.

      Meadow recreation facilities are low-key. There are no flush toilets. Chemical toilets for visitors are available across the street behind the nearby Seabreeze Market and Deli. Dogs and bicycles aren't allowed on trails inside fences around wetlands, but can use trails around the perimeter.

      More sensitive property known as preservation areas, such as the Emeryville Crescent mudflats where driftwood sculptures once stood, still are mostly off-limits to people.

      More intense activities will be allowed in park recreation zones, including Berkeley's north basin strip where planners propose a visitors center, hostel, boathouse, picnic tablesand a waterfront promenade with steps to the water. Those projects are years away.

      Although the meadow sits at the nexus of an urban area and stretches along five cities, officials said the park is a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

      "This is a place we are offering folks to go and be healed," said Don Monahan, Diablo Vista District superintendent.

      Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates called the park a "labor of love" for many who worked on it for three decades.

      "Hundreds of people working thousands of hours have literally spun garbage into gold," said Bates, who before he was mayor served in the state Assembly 20 years and wrote the legislation that created the park.

      His wife, Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), said she remembers the night in 1971 when, as a young Berkeley City Council member, she voted against developing a shopping center there.

      "I think the dream (for a park) was born at that time," Hancock said. "This is an effort that has been going on for many, many decades."

      Denis Cuff of MediaNews contributed to this report.


      Gambling venues bet big on Prop. 68

      Oakland Tribune, Aug 7, 2004 by Erin Sherbert

      In San Mateo County, gambling interests are betting big bucks on Proposition 68, having dumped nearly $3.5 million into the campaign.

      Leading the pack in monetary donations is Magna Entertainment Corp., which operates both the Bay Meadows Racecourse in San Mateo and Golden Gate Fields in Albany. Magna has given about $1.7 million to Proposition 68.

      Bay Meadows Main Track Investors LLC has contributed $992,000 while the two cardrooms, Lucky Chances and Artichoke Joe's, have contributed more than $400,000 each.

      To date, Proposition 68 proponents have received about $12 million, all from race tracks and cardrooms that would benefit if it passes. Their opponents have collected $7.2 million.

      Both sides plan to blanket the state with newspaper and television ads and send crews out to get people signed up to join their coalitions.

      Experts say they could be spending $50 million-plus between them, in a state where serious propositions tend to cost about $10 to $15 million.