User:Jemerigbe2/sandbox

4 Controversies

Tax rates

In 2006 a local referendum (Measure T) proposed to raise the business tax. Chevron vehemently opposed the initiative and funded a massive flyer campaign, suggesting it would lead to evictions of seniors and closing of small businesses. The measure failed by 54%. However, in 2008 the measure was revived, modified to tax only large manufacturers; it passed by 51.5%.

Unpaid taxes

In 2009 the Chevron refinery agreed to pay the city of Richmond $28 million in back utility taxes.

In 2011 Chevron unsuccessfully sued Contra Costa County for 73 million dollars claiming its property taxes were too high. The company's lawyers stated that the refinery was not worth $3 billion in 2007 and 2009 as assessed, but instead only worth $1.8 and $1.15 billion respectively. During the hearings, Gayle McGlaughlin, Mayor of Richmond, stated "If Chevron wins this appeal, it will mean layoffs, major cutbacks in services and would push us virtually to the edge of bankruptcy. Cities are suffering and Chevron is making billions of dollars." Kevin Lally, attorney acting for Richmond during the appeal, stated that Chevron had manipulated data, refused to give the assessor's staff necessary information, and falsely characterized the nature of the county's assessment process, stating that Chevron's analysis was "fraught with materials that don’t satisfy evidentiary standards.” Around fifty protestors organized by the Richmond Progressive Alliance including Richmond mayor Gayle McGlaughlin and city councilmember Jovanka Beckels protested at the hearings, silently holding signs.

The Assessment Appeals Board eventually found against Chevron's appeal, found that the county assessor had actually undervalued Chevron's refinery, and ordered Chevron to pay an additional $26.7 million in taxes, rather than receiving the $73 million refund Chevron sought.

Bay Trail

A portion of the San Francisco Bay Trail from Point Molate through to Point San Pablo crosses oil pipelines that connect the Chevron refinery with the Richmond Long Wharf. Chevron opposed the construction of this segment of the Bay Trail, citing security concerns, and stating that post-September 11th security requirements posed an issue. Supporters of the Bay Trail along with then California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi pushed Chevron in to accepting the construction of the Bay Trail in exchange for allowing the company to renew its 30-year lease on state tidelands that lie at the site of its port. In addition, the Richmond city council passed a resolution 8-1 directing mayor Gayle McLaughlin to ask the California State Land Use Commission to persuade Chevron to permit the trail.

Chevron claimed that its total commitment in the Bay Trail amounted to $12.5 million, with $3 million being taken from Chevron's backtaxes, and $7.5 million worth of land being committed to the project. A Chevron spokesperson stated that these numbers had been arrived at using Chevron assessors. Bruce Beyaert, head of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee (and former Chevron environmental executive) disagreed with Chevron's stated figures, saying that they were heavily inflated and amounted to "smoke and mirrors." Beyaert pointed to a 2001 joint trail study finding the trail easement south of I-580 worth $280,000, not the three million dollars Chevron assessed it at. Beyaert also states that there had previously been discussions to give land north of I-580 for free under an East Bay rails to trails project, land which Chevron's internal assessors valued at $4.5 million upon agreeing to the Bay Trail's construction. The portion of the trail in question has since been completed.

Cap and trade

A protest for climate justice at Chevron's refinery in Richmond.

As a means of addressing climate change and a way to decrease air pollution by oil refineries, power plants, and large factories, the California Legislature, passed the Assembly Bill 32(AB 32), also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The bill was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sept. 27, 2006. AB 32 is a cap-and-trade/emissions trading approach, and represents the most aggressive greenhouse gas control regime implemented by any of the states and imposes a vast array of controls on the use of energy. The cap-and-trade uses market mechanisms by distributing allowances, tradable permits, to large companies for figuring out ways to reduce its California statewide greenhouse gas emissions(GHG) to 1990 levels by 2020. Chevron refinery is one that would be effected by the AB 32 passing because it is seen, by various environmental communities as a heavy polluter.

On the topic of cap and trade, Dr. Henry Clark, president of the Richmond-based West County Toxics Coalition discusses his concerns of the possible loopholes within the cap and trade system. As a method for decreasing the amount of pollution emitted into the air, large companies are essentially growing trees that consume the pollutants. Dr. Clark claims “Cap and Trade allows major polluters like Richmond’s Chevron to avoid reducing its pollution by buying pollution ‘offsets.’ In other words, under Cap and Trade, Chevron could continue emitting the same amount of greenhouse gases and toxic air pollution while it buys credits from a tree planting operation in Chiapas, Mexico, or a clear-cut logger who replants the forest to cut again later, or an industrial-style dairy that captures methane from massive lagoons of cow waste.” California environmental justice leaders and organizations, continue to expose the existing flaw within the emissions trading system, with the hope for an alternative climate change method feasible for everyone.

Controversies with AB 32

The passing of the AB 32 has created controversy for both the Chevron Refinery and the communities of people around it. For the Chevron Refinery Company, it affects their profit speed due to the fact that they use petroleum. This new law forces Chevron to minimize the use of petroleum, which is their main oil supply. Chevron uses petroleum as their main source, which is very detrimental to earth’s ecosystem. Like the Chevron Refinery Company, communities oppose it as well. It has been discovered that by applying these principles of using low-carbon fuel it will put people out of jobs. According to American Enterprise Institute the Boston Consulting group study, “They found that under full implementation of low-carbon fuel standards, California could lose 28,000 to 51,000 jobs – that's a net 2,500 to 5,000 jobs created due to investments in energy efficiency. They also found California will lose up to $4.4 billion in tax revenue per year by 2020, a majority of which will come from lost excise taxes on fuels.”

Environment

Environmental justice

The concept behind the term "environmental justice" is that all people – regardless of their race, color, nation or origin or income – are able to enjoy equally high levels of environmental protection. Equal high levels of environmental protection is the major issue when discussing air pollution in Richmond. There have been many arguments raised by not only Richmond City but the citizens as well; stating that chevron is the mere example of a rich industrial company deciding to place their refineries on the cheapest land, with only thoughts of production/profit on their minds, simply overlooking the families living in that neighborhood. The term Environmental Racism is defined as "racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the ecology movements.”

Continued presence of the refinery

Chevron's refinery was present before Richmond was incorporated, but its continued presence has severely polluted the city that grew up around it.

(make point clearer) Although the Chevron Refinery was placed in this neighborhood before it even became a neighborhood there is still an issue of why it is allowed to continue to pollute Richmond and its population. The land cost falling below the national average would suggest that both corporate construction, such as the Chevron Refinery, and poor communities, like the ones in Richmond, would be drawn to this area. Similar to untangling race and class, the issues of race and economic status, which ultimately effects who is making decisions, are too complicated to separate. Author Irwin Weintraub, of article “Fighting Environmental Racism: a Selected Annotated Bibliography “, states that one of the first steps toward addressing the problem of environmental racism was the establishment of the Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards held at the University of Michigan in January 1990. This conference gave national visibility to the public debate on environmental racism and served as a catalyst for residents of polluted communities, such as the Chevron Refinery, to organize.

Chevron’s defense

In the case of the Chevron refinery in Richmond, as well as all the other Chevron refineries, their principal argument is that the industries are not intentionally discriminating against racial groups but instead they try and "maximize profits" and "reduce the cost of doing business" . This Economic explanation is a market approach. The company’s decision to build in areas similar Richmond is to ultimately save money on land costs.

Major industrial companies, like the Chevron refinery in Richmond, use economic explanation as a means of reasoning, and with a sense of reasoning comes proof; according to the Environment Protection agency, there is proof of the major difficulties when assessing the impact of environmental hazards on low income and minority communities. The EPA acknowledges that the neighboring families do suffer a disproportionate share of the air toxins, however, “there appears to be a general lack of data on the health effects of pollutants in those communities.” A report done by the EPA states that environmental and health data are not routinely collected and analyzed by categories of income and race. Critics on the other hand oppose that claim stating the information is available but the EPA considers it a public relations issue, not a civil rights issue, and, therefore, does not take the claims seriously enough to gather the necessary data by income and race. In regards to the controversial debate on the issue of data relevancy, the Chevron oil Refinery has not been held accountable for intentional discrimination, due to lack of sufficient evidence.