Features

Controversy over the high density Campus Bay waterfront residential development on a toxic waste site in Richmond continues to mount as eager-to-build developers are pitted against anxious residents. 

The next round in the controversy begins at 9 this morning (Tuesday, Sept. 28) when the Regional Water Quality Control Board and developer Cherokee-Simeon Ventures present a briefing on the proposed restoration of Stege Marsh along the shoreline. 

The meeting will be held on the Campus Bay site in the two-story building with greenhouses near the Bayview exit off I-580. 

Employees who work near the site have expressed concerns that digging up the marsh and pouring the excavated soil on top of already capped toxic wastes on the site would pose a threat to their health. 

Berkeley attorney Peter Weiner, a partner in the San Francisco office of powerhouse firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, has been representing concerned residents on a pro bono basis. 

“He really should get a citizen of the year for all the work he’s done for us,” said Sherry Padgett, who works near the site and has been one of the key opposition leaders. 

Weiner fired off an e-mail last week to Curtis T. Scott, chief of the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Groundwater Protection & Waste Containment Division, challenging both the meeting and the water board’s handling of the project. 

“We are deeply and grievously concerned that you are preparing a workplan approval letter without further consultation with the community, given all the concerns that have been raised,” Weiner wrote. 

The attorney also challenged the basis of the meeting, noting that it had “not been noticed to the public at large,” nor was it being held in a neutral location or at a time when working residents could attend. 

While the state Department of Toxic Substances Control had raised serious questions about the site’s fitness for a high-density residential complex, the water board has taken the role of lead agency in the project—a matter that concerns Padgett and other critics of the project. 

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