The University of California, Berkeley, has entered into a settlement agreement that resolves a legal issue regarding an environmental cleanup project, and provides more than $140,000 in funding to a nationally-recognized “green collar” job training program in Richmond, campus officials announced today June 9, 2009.
Under an agreement with the state Environmental Protection Agency’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), UC Berkeley will provide $142,500 to the Richmond BUILD program and will pay a $142,500 civil penalty to the agency.
The Richmond BUILD Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Skills & Solar Technology Training Program was established by the City of Richmond in 2007 to create career opportunities for Richmond residents from low-income neighborhoods, and to enhance the environment by supporting renewable energy projects.
The program provides participants with solid skills in the emerging green industry that includes training in energy efficiency, weatherization, and solar technology and installation. It prepares these students to take full advantage of the estimated $144 billion of federal stimulus dollars that are slated for the construction and energy efficiency fields.
The settlement with DTSC resolves the legal dispute over whether UC Berkeley failed to obtain certain administrative permits regarding a 2002-2004 environmental cleanup effort at the Richmond Field Station (RFS), university property about five miles from the central campus, in the city of Richmond.
Mark Freiberg, director of the campus’s Office of Environment, Health & Safety, said he is especially heartened that the matter has been resolved in a way that allows “a good portion of the settlement funds to support local environmental programs and much needed job opportunities in the community by going to Richmond BUILD.”
The program was recently honored in Washington D.C. as the only northern California program to receive the 2008 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award for career mobility in the green economy, and as an innovative approach to addressing violence prevention.
UC Berkeley purchased the area now known as the RFS in 1950. That 170-acre property and nearby areas were previously owned by industrial manufacturing companies dating back as far as 1870. Those companies left behind numerous contaminants from production of such items as blasting caps, sulfuric acid and pesticides.
UC Berkeley’s primary use of the RFS is for College of Engineering teaching and research activities. In recent years, the university has been involved in an extensive effort to clean up the industrial contamination left behind by previous property owners, expand RFS’s use by university researchers, restore wildlife habitat, and provide recreation areas for the community.
The DTSC settlement stems from cleanup activities in which the university treated and removed soil from the RFS and transferred it to adjacent property owned at the time by Zeneca, Inc., where it was graded into open space owned by Zeneca. The cleanup activities were conducted under the oversight and approval of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, and in consultation with numerous other state and federal agencies. The university obtained administrative permits from various agencies before beginning its cleanup work, but learned in 2007 that it was DTSC’s position that the university also needed certain permits from that agency before beginning the work. Zeneca has also reached a settlement with DTSC regarding related site remediation work.
For more information on the settlement agreement see these Frequently Asked Questions.