Novato's $6 million water recycling plant nears completion

Janis Mara, Marin Independent Journal

At the Novato Sanitary District, a yellow backhoe scoops up coffee-colored gravel as workers swarm nearby, putting the final touches in place for the August opening of a $6 million recycling plant that will save Novato 150 million gallons of water a year. The new plant is on the grounds of the sanitary district's headquarters near the De Long Avenue exit off Highway 101 and will augment its existing operations. The North Marin Water District is a partner in the project, funded by state and federal grants as well as ratepayer money.

Like alchemists turning lead into gold, operators at the new plant will transform toilet water into grass. The treated wastewater produced by the 1.7-million-gallon recycling center will irrigate landscapes including those of Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. and Valley Memorial Park Cemetery, both in Novato.

The sanitary district will treat the water and the water district will distribute it. The new plant will save enough water to supply about 1,400 single-family homes for a year.

When someone flushes a toilet in Novato, the wastewater travels to the Novato Sanitary District's sewage treatment plant, where it receives primary and secondary treatment. The new plant, which is being built by Sacramento-based Gateway Pacific Contractors, will supply what is known as tertiary treatment.

"Right now we have facilities that take raw sewage and treat it to the point that it is safe to put in the bay or use for pastures," said Beverly James, manager-engineer of the sanitary district. "The new plant takes that water and filters and disinfects it so it is safe to use in places like golf courses and country clubs for irrigation."

Water in those locations must be cleaner because, for example, a sprinkler might go off and douse a visitor, James said.

In the world of water recycling, what's good for people is not necessarily good for plants.

"If you purify water for drinking you take out phosphorus and nitrogen, but if it's just for irrigation we leave it in because it's healthy for plants," James said.

The pear, apple, plum and persimmon trees at the sanitary district headquarters, watered with recycled water, attest to the veracity of her statement. "We had to fence them off because deer were eating the fruit," James added, citing what sounded like the ultimate endorsement.

Using recycled water for irrigation means there is more potable water that can be used for drinking. Currently, only 1.4 percent of Novato's water is recycled, "but that's expected to grow to 7 percent in the next decade," said Chris DeGabriele, who has been the general manager of North Marin Water District since 1995.

The new recycling plant at Novato Sanitary and a similar plant in the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District are expected to make the difference.

The Novato Sanitary District's new water recycling center is part of a bigger project, the North Bay Water Reuse Authority. Bill Long, chairman of the Novato Sanitary District board, was a key figure in the movement.

"Seven or eight years ago, we started working with some of the other water districts and sewage agencies in the North Bay to put together a coalition that could be more effective in getting state and federal funding," Long said. "At the outset, we weren't sure we would succeed." Now, as the Novato facility and other projects near completion, Long said, "I'm very satisfied."

"We're excited about the new plant. It's a major step toward resource conservation," James said. "It's also an insurance policy for Novato in the event of a drought because these significant irrigators would still have water."

Contact Janis Mara via email at jmara@marinij.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/jmara.

Nuclear war of words in California

SAFETY, COST RAISE CONCERNS ACROSS STATE

CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Janis Mara, Staff Writer

As concerns about greenhouse gases and global warming mount, nuclear energy is getting a second look in California, with supporters ranging from the governor to at least one environmental activist.

"I have changed my mind from being mildly anti-nuclear to mildly pro-nuclear because carbon dioxide is now the most dangerous pollution and it is endangering the natural environment," said Stewart Brand, who in 1968 created the Whole Earth Catalog, which covered subjects including alternative energy.

"Global warming is affecting the fisheries in northern California and creating drought to the south. Like a number of other environmentalists, I have had to change my tune," said Brand, who lives on a houseboat in Sausalito.

Indeed, nuclear is an energy alternative that produces fewer greenhouse gases than coal, generates cheap round-the-clock electricity and creates roughly 1 million times the energy released by the burning of oil. But it faces a number of obstacles.

Even as government officials, utilities and universities search for new ways to generate electricity, nuclear energy is about as welcome in California as a former spouse at a wedding.

Utilities are prohibited from building new plants by law in California; Pacific Gas & Electric has no plans for new facilities; four of the state's six commercial plants have long since closed, and experts say it'll take some doing just to keep the two remaining reactors going.

Despite these obstacles, a small group of determined business representatives, passionate advocates and elected officials are fighting to launch a nuclear power plant in Fresno.

The state's relationship with nuclear energy resembles a once-blissful romance gone wrong.

Initially, California was dazzled with the prospect of harnessing the atom to light homes and businesses. The first civilian nuclear plant in the country came online in the small Southern California town of Santa Susana in 1957, a harbinger of the so-called Atomic Age.

That same year, the nearby city of Moorpark enjoyed a shining hour as the first U.S. city to be powered by nuclear energy, albeit briefly, in an event covered by national news media.

But the glow began to wear off as early as 1958. Ironically, it was not nuclear weapons, but power plants, that led to the birth of the anti-nuclear movement in California. A bitter battle began in Bodega Bay in 1958 opposing PG&E's attempt to build a plant there, a struggle that ended with the utility abandoning its plans in 1964.

Things really heated up in the mid-1960s and 1970s, with Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo helping to fuel the fire.

"It was rebuilt several times because of serious mistakes," said Roger Herried, a 28-year member of anti-nuke group Abalone Alliance, which led one of the largest anti-nuclear-power demonstrations in the U.S. at Diablo Canyon in 1981.

In 1976, the California legislature enacted a moratorium on new nuclear reactors until there is a place to put the waste. At the time, there wasn't any such place, and despite efforts by the Department of Energy to create one in Nevada, more than 30 years later there still is nowhere to store it. The result: a ban on new nuclear plants in California.

To all appearances, the marriage was over and the divorce was final.

Marriage meltdown

A nuclear accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island in 1979 and the subsequent Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986 seemed to reinforce the decision.
But now, more than 30 years have passed, and attitudes are changing.

One of the most important indications of this shift is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comments this month that nuclear power has "a great future" and that it is time to "relook at that issue again rather than just looking the other way and living in denial," made at the Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics Conference in Santa Barbara.

Moreover, in a 2007 poll, while 54 percent of Californians opposed building more nuclear power plants, 37 percent favored the idea and 9 percent were undecided, according to the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California.

Another possible good sign: even anti-nuke activists seem to have little trouble accepting California's two remaining operating nuclear plants, Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, which is midway between Los Angeles and San Diego. The two plants supply about 13 percent of California's electricity.

In worldwide terms, France gets a higher percentage of its energy from nuclear power than any other country, at 78 percent; Lithuania is second highest at 72 percent; and Slovakia comes in third, getting 57 percent of its energy from nuclear power, according to a 2006 study by the World Nuclear Association.

On the national front, currently the U.S. has more than 100 reactors generating 19 percent of the nation's electricity. Supporters of nuclear power include President Bush and the Republican presidential front-runners; the top Democratic contenders see it as worth consideration.

This fiscal year, more than $1 billion in federal research and development spending was devoted to nuclear power research. Though no new nuclear plants are yet under construction, three applications landed at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission this year. Much of the action is happening in Southern states seeking relief from the cost and pollution of coal plants.

No welcome mat here

 
But that's not the case in California.

"We aren't even looking at the possibility of building any more nuclear power plants. We have no plans to do so," said Emily Christensen of PG&E.

PG&E may not be interested, but a group of Fresno businessmen has a different take.

"The people of Fresno pay PG&E 16 to 22 cents a kilowatt hour for energy. We can make it for two," said John Hutson, chief executive of Fresno Energy Group. The group's plan: To build a $4 billion, 1,600-megawatt nuclear energy plant in Fresno.

Hutson's group has signed a letter of intent with UniStar Nuclear Development LLC, a subsidiary of Baltimore's Constellation Energy, to design, build and operate a plant.

Fresno has about 500,000 residents, according to U.S. Census projections for 2007. Since one megawatt of energy can power some 750 California homes under normal conditions, the consortium would be able to sell its power to the city at cost and then make a profit selling to other cities or utilities, Hutson said.

"We can give them energy until the cows come home and we'll probably have 700 to 900 megawatts left," said Hutson, who got the idea after his appointment to the city's utilities commission by Fresno Mayor Alan Autry, who supports the proposed nuclear plant.

However, nuclear energy costs 8 to 11 cents a kilowatt hour according to a June 2007 study by the independent Colorado-based Keystone Center, which was performed by a diverse group including nuclear plant owners, environmentalists and consumer advocates.

Energy cost estimates and the way to calculate them vary widely, but in a different study, solar energy costs were roughly pegged at 20 cents a kilowatt hour (though this is anticipated to eventually drop to 10 or 15 cents), 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour for wind, and coal 7 cents a kilowatt hour, according to Arjun Makhijani, president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nuclear watchdog group founded in 1987.

The price of natural gas fluctuates between nine to 11-1/2 cents per kilowatt hour, according to industry sources. The cost of hydroelectric power varies depending on the age of the plant, with hydro from older plants costing just over 3 cents a kilowatt hour and hydro from newer plants costing as high as five cents.

"What kind of future will our children have if we don't stop this gluttonous cycle of global warming?" Hutson asked. "Nuclear can't do it alone. Wind can't do it alone. Solar can't do it alone." Hutson's group has raised $2 million so far and has obtained a site permit and property for the plant, he said.

According to Hutson, the plant could be a source of jobs and a force for social good in the area.

"I'm on the board of directors for (Fresno's) Marjaree Mason Center for Domestic Violence. Domestic violence went up 60 percent in our community over the last ten years," Hutson said. "We have the highest pockets of poverty in the nation. We have domestic violence because when men don't have jobs, they lose their self-worth and harm the people they love. We need to attract businesses and jobs.'"

Legislator plugs in

California Assemblymember Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, agrees. In April 2007, he introduced a bill, AB719, seeking to lift the ban on new nuclear plants in the legislature. His bill was shot down in committee - within five minutes, he ruefully recalls "" but his efforts are continuing. The assemblyman seems to be on a genuine crusade: he frequently posts about nuclear energy on his blog, www.chuckdevore.com/blog/index/php.

DeVore introduced two more nuclear-related bills this year, AB1776 and AB2788. He said AB 1776 was written with the Fresno group in mind.

Speaking of the proposed plant, "You're probably looking at 1,000 jobs after the plant is built," DeVore said.

"He has just told you after spending $4 billion, you'll have 1,000 jobs?" responded Ralph Cavanagh, energy program co-director for environmental group National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC.

"A nuclear plant is not a job-intensive use of money. Most of your money is going to equipment and a small number of operators," Cavanagh said. "If you really want to create jobs, the best thing for Fresno would be to run a massive energy-efficiency campaign and cycle the dollars through Fresno's economy."

Brand and DeVore point out that while the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, nuclear power is generated constantly.

"Nuclear is not 24„7 either. It has a habit of going off all at once," replied Cavanagh, referring to a Florida blackout that stretched from Miami to Daytona Beach in February, the country's largest power outage since August 2003.

"It's true that you need a mix of resources, but you can back up sun and wind with geothermal, biomass and high-efficiency natural gas generation," Cavanagh said.

"Nuclear is too big, too expensive, too risky. I don't think any utility would order a nuclear plant today. I'm not anti-nuclear; we have nuclear plants, they're part of the fleet. But it is just too risky from a financial perspective," Cavanagh said.

Dollars and sense

A group of academics at a UC Berkeley energy symposium March 7 reinforced Cavanagh's assertion.

"The big issue is construction costs for new plants," said Per Peterson, a UC Berkeley nuclear energy professor and nuclear energy advocate.

"The probability you are going to make money without subsidies is zero," said Geoffrey Rothwell, a senior lecturer at Stanford University, referring to government subsidies offered for building nuclear power plants. "There is not going to be a renaissance (of nuclear power) before 2021, I can guarantee that."

DeVore isn't concerned with issues of cost. "Nuclear power plants do cost a lot of money up front, but you can recover that pretty quickly when you compare it with natural gas turbines," the assemblymember said.

Hutson isn't concerned either. He said if his group can get the state's moratorium on new plants lifted, they will be able to attract venture capitalists to fund the project.

In addition to high capital costs, uncertain construction timelines, regulatory issues and most of all, waste disposal are obstacles to new plants, said Susanne Garfield of the California Energy Commission.

"It can take 20 years or much more to construct a nuclear power plant," Garfield said. "The Wats Bar project in Tennessee began in the mid-1990s, took 23 years to complete and cost $6.9 billion.

Where's the Dumpster?

"The biggest issue is waste disposal. The law says we must find that a high-level waste disposal technology has been found and approved and we have not found that in our analysis. We found this in 1978 and again in 2005," Garfield said.

"The (California Energy Commission) asked me what I would do with the spent fuel. We have a railroad line to the Delta which we would use to ship our fuel to France for recycling just like the Japanese have done. France said they would recycle it for free," Hutson said.

Indeed, despite the obstacles, it's clear even to their opponents that DeVore and Hutson are hanging tough.

"We're assuming next February there will be another round of battles. They'll start trying again," said Herried of Abalone Alliance.

"The rest of the world is waking up to nuclear power and is building nuclear plants as fast as it can," said DeVore. "We want to get a modern nuclear plant built in California before it's too late. We're not giving up."

Janis Mara can be reached at 925-952-2671 or jmara@bayareanewsgroup.com. Check out her Energy Blog at www.ibabuzz.com/energy.


FACILITY APPROVED: 1968
COST ESTIMATE OF $350 MILLION: 1968
CONSTRUCTION BEGINS: 1968
EARTHQUAKE FAULT FOUND TWO
MILES FROM PLANT: 1972
SOME 1,500 people protest facility onsite:
August 7, 1977
SOME 20,000 PEOPLE PROTEST
ONSITE: Sept. 10, 1981
MIRROR IMAGE REVERSAL
IN BLUEPRINTS FOUND: 1981
CONSTRUCTION BEGINS TO CORRECT
ERROR: 1981
COSTS TOTAL $5.5 BILLION: 1985
UNIT ONE COMES ONLINE:
May 7, 1985
UNIT TWO COMES ONLINE: March 13,
1986
LICENSE TO OPERATE UNIT ONE
EXPIRES: Sept. 22, 2021
LICENSE TO OPERATE UNIT TWO
EXPIRES: April 26, 2025
Sources: Pacifi c Gas & Electric Co.;
California Energy Commission



FACTS
FIRST NUCLEAR
POWER PLANT: Generally,
the fi rst plant to generate
electricity for a power grid is
believed to have gone live
on in June 1954 in Obninsk,
USSR, with a 5-megawatt
capacity.
FIRST NUCLEAR
POWER STATION: Calder
Hall in Sellafi eld, England,
a gas-cooled reactor with
a 45-megawatt capacity,
reportedly opened in 1956.
FIRST COMMERCIAL
U.S. NUCLEAR GENERATOR:
The Shippingport
Reactor in Pennsylvania
became operational in 1957.
Source: Wikipedia 

Publication: CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Reporter: Janis Mara Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, 3/30/2008
Section: Business Sunday
Page: 1G
Dateline: BERKELEY 

Sustainable Kentfield home captures LEED gold

Marin Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA)
July 22, 2012
Section: News

Janis Mara | Marin Independent Journal

IF KIKI GOSHAY has a weekend task list, it might go something like this: Shop for a new dress. Take the kids to the park. Water the roof.

Water the roof?

The Kentfield resident and passionate environmentalist is a woman who walks her talk, which in this case would mean watering her roof. Among other things, Goshay's home is topped with a luxuriant living roof complete with California poppies, bushes and grasses; heated by fluid from tubes sunk 300 feet deep in the earth; and lighted by electricity from solar panels.

"When I built this house, I knew I had one chance to create something that would be around for my children and my grandchildren," said Goshay, a film producer. "I wanted a zero-energy house that also reduced our impact on the soil, water and air."

Not only is the 6,500-square-foot house replete with sustainable features, it's visually stunning, thrown open to the outdoors on the first floor, where the dining room offers a view of Mount Tam unobstructed by windows or walls.

It took three years to build the house; Goshay and her teenaged son moved into the home in September. She is divorced and has four other grown children who live on their own. As for watering the roof, it's actually irrigated with rainwater and greywater recycled from the sink, tub and shower, as is the vegetable garden conveniently located next to the kitchen.

The home is one of approximately 700 LEED-certified single-family dwellings in California, the state with the country's highest number of such homes. There are at least a couple of other LEED-certified single-family residences in Marin.

While there are LEED-certified airport terminals — San Francisco International Airport's T2 is one example — as well as apartments and other commercial and industrial buildings, it's rare for single-family residences to get certified. This is because the rigorous standards of the U.S. Green Building Council, the awarding body, make it a time-consuming and expensive process.

"The LEED program is the council's measurement system for green homes," said Randy Potter, chair of the council's residential marketplace committee. "You accumulate points by choosing sustainable materials, systems and building methods. The more you use, the higher you get, and gold is the second-highest level," between silver and platinum.

"LEED is one of two programs we use here in the Bay Area," said Potter, whose contracting firm, Earth Bound Homes, is based in Santa Clara. "There's another system, Green Point Rated, for entry-level projects. The bar is way higher for LEED."

The home's basement — Goshay calls it "the brain" — reveals some of the details that helped win the certification. A series of seven white tubes connect to the geothermal pump that moves fluid from 300 feet deep to the house.

The pump uses the stable, even heat of the earth to provide heating and air conditioning. Underground, the earth is a constant temperature, warmer than the outside air in the winter, cooler in the summer. In the summer, the pump pulls the heat from the home and discharges it into the ground; in the winter, it moves the heat from the earth into the house.

The 110-gallon solar water heater and the three tanks for rainwater and greywater are also on the lower level. Inverters monitor energy use.

"We're not at zero energy yet. It's an ongoing process; we're working at reducing our energy use," she said. Zero energy means the solar panels are returning enough energy to the grid to zero out the energy supplied by PG&E.

Upstairs is the living roof, designed by Rana Creek, the firm that helped design the living roof on the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The house was designed by San Franciso-based Hunt Hale Jones and Oakland-based zumaooh.

"The building materials are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council," said Jeff Jungsten of Mill Valley's Caletti Jungsten Construction, builder of the home.

"Kiki had a vision for every spot. Everything has a reason; it was all thought out," Jungsten said.

Goshay, a board member of Cool the Earth, a Marin County-based program that teaches children to reduce their carbon footprints, studied for seven years at the College of Marin and elsewhere to plan her dream house.

"I wanted to create a sanctuary for my family with the healthiest living environment possible utilizing all the gifts this site offers," said Goshay.

"This woman has done things that go well beyond the norm in what the ordinary green home has set as a standard," said Potter. "Anyone who is doing that is doing it for more reasons than being able to pencil out a payback or conserve some resources. They're doing it because they want to go the extra mile and do something extraordinary." 

Contact Janis Mara via email at jmara@marinij.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/jmara.

Novato's Pennies for Police Dogs seeks donations for narcotics training

Marin Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA)
July 18, 2012 
Section: News 

Janis Mara Marin Independent Journal

METZ THE police dog races onto the Novato High School baseball field at top speed, a brown streak with a bobbing tail galloping from side to side, nose to the ground. Suddenly he comes to a full stop and lowers himself to the ground, eyes fixed on his handler. The Belgian Malinois had located his handler's cell phone, hidden in the vast expanse of the field, in less than a minute. The feat, an everyday one to Metz, took place during training exercises Wednesday. 

Finding objects by scent is just one of Metz's many skills as a member of the Novato Police K-9 unit. The Pennies for Police Dogs fundraising campaign is seeking to raise $10,000 to expand the skills of Metz's two fellow canine officers to narcotics identification. 

"Training the dogs to sniff out narcotics will act as a force multiplier — the dogs can take the place of multiple officers in finding illegal drugs, as well as searching for suspects," said Police Chief Jim Berg. "We will focus on the most prevalent drugs we encounter, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin." 

There are specific advantages in using police dogs for narcotics detection, according to the head of Novato's K-9 unit. 

"A dog can search a vehicle stuffed with clothes, bags and all the other garbage people carry around and find drugs in less than half the time it would take an officer," said Kevin Naugle, coordinator of the K-9 unit and handler of Ingo, one of Metz's canine colleagues. "Their sense of smell is so acute, they can smell drugs in a car with the windows rolled up by sniffing the seams." 

Already, Metz and his handler, Officer Jeff Ames, are certified in the detection of narcotics, Berg said. The department, the only one in Marin with a K-9 unit, was able to add a new dog, Lex, last year thanks to the efforts of Pennies for Police Dogs and now has three dogs, Berg said. 

Founded by Novato resident Toni Shroyer in March 2011, the organization raises money by any means necessary: Bake sales, including one planned for the Lucky supermarket on Grant Avenue in August; containers at local pet stores, including Novato Horse & Pet Supply; coins children pick up in the street; donations from local organizations such as Rotary; and just about anything else that's legal. 

"Last year in March my 9-year-old son and I were out for a bike ride and I saw a blatant drug deal right in the middle of the day at Diablo Avenue and Center Road," Shroyer said. "I told my son, 'We need another police dog for narcotics. 

"He said, 'I have two pennies.' And that's how Pennies for Police Dogs was born." 

"Prior to the formation of this organization last year, we had gotten donations from the public, but not to the same magnitude," Berg said. "It's (Pennies for Police Dogs) a grassroots effort that raised $11,500 for us to buy Lex and identify a trainer and get them sent to basic training." 

Now, Pennies for Police Dogs seeks to raise the money to train Lex and Ingo in narcotics detection. 

Like any seasoned professionals, the three dogs, Ingo, a German Shepherd Dog, Lex and Metz, both Belgian Malinois, keep their skills polished through on-the-job training. At the baseball field, instructor Zoltan Nagy of Fresno-based Heritage Canine, a school for police dogs, put Ingo and Metz through their paces Wednesday. Lex and his handler Kendrick Pilegaard were out working the streets together. 

When not on duty, the dogs chill out at their handler's homes. 

"My former dog, Kyto, once subdued a crowd of 100 people that would have taken six officers to get under control," Naugle said. "It was a party of young people three or four years ago that got out of control, with multiple fights. 

"I brought my partner (Kyto) in. He sat and barked and moved from side to side, backing people up — they didn't want any part of him. Soon he had cleared the room," he said. 

At the baseball field, Naugle issues commands: "Coucher," meaning, "Lie down." Since Metz is Belgian, it seems only logical to speak to him in French. 

"They are trained in French," Naugle said. When it's time to search for an item, the handler says, "Cherchez," as in "Cherchez la femme." 

When Ames and Naugle rap out a command, the two dogs fly off as one, halting about 10 feet away, then waiting at attention. 

"We've had such tremendous support from the community, and we really appreciate it," Naugle said. As if on cue, Metz, just told to stand down by Ames, lets out a bark and sits, wagging his tail. 

Contact Janis Mara via email at jmara@marinij.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/jmara. 

HOW TO DONATE to pennies for police dogs 

• Mail a check made out to "Novato Police Dogs" to the Novato Police K-9 unit, attn: Chief Berg, 909 Machin Ave., Novato 94945. 

• Drop the money into the container at Novato Horse & Pet Supply, 7546 Redwood Ave., in Novato. 

• In August, drop by Lucky's Supermarket on Grant Avenue in Novato and buy some baked goods from the Pennies for Police Dogs table. 

• For more information, call 892-3662. 

Novato interim police chief takes helm

Marin Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA)
August 13, 2012
Section: News 

Janis Mara Marin Independent Journal
Jim Berg, a 27-year veteran of Novato's police force and its new interim chief, took the helm in July amid a six-month crime decline, new law enforcement technology and a new crime-fighting team for the police department in a city where concerns about crime have persisted for years. There were 1,982 reported crimes in Novato in the first six months of this year, compared with 2,215 in the first six months of 2011, and the force recently debuted automatic license plate readers mounted on its police cars and a new four-person team focusing on street crime. 

The street crime team will use tactics including intervention and prevention, something that means a good deal to Berg personally. The 49-year-old interim chief wasn't always a model of law-abiding behavior.

"When I was 18, I liked to drive fast," he confessed during an interview at the 59-officer department's headquarters on Machin Avenue. "I was stopped by a Petaluma officer, Pat Parks. He made a deal with me that he would be less severe with the ticket if I went on a few calls with him."

After doing the ride-along, Berg decided to become a police officer.

"It just goes to show the effect you can have on someone's life. Sometimes you can turn a negative into a positive," Berg said.

And that's what he's hoping to do with the Novato Response Team. It's made up of two officers, a corporal and a management analyst, and will work with the schools as well as property managers at apartment complexes. The team, which launched in July, is funded for three years by a $1.1 million federal grant and for the fourth year by the city.

"If they work with individuals in gangs, they might be able to direct them to parks and recreation, for example, to break that cycle, similarly to how I was redirected," Berg said.

Kate Ruehle, a Hamilton resident who served as the neighborhood watch liaison for her neighborhood for years, said she feels reassured that the program is in place. Over the past year, she said, "I feel that things have really settled down."

At the same time, she said, "When you hear about a shooting in the parking lot of your local Safeway, you don't feel as safe as you used to feel," referring to a January 2011 incident in which two men were shot. While she believes the police on average have done a good job, she misses the force's crime prevention officer, a position that was cut because of budget constraints.

"When Liz Greiner was in that position, if there was a rumor going around, I could call her and get the real story. The more you know about what is really happening, the more empowering it is," Ruehle said.

"Any time we lose staff, our capacity to communicate with the public is decreased and it's incumbent upon us to fill the gap," Berg said in response. The chief plans to use social media such as Facebook to help inform the public.

Novato City Manager Michael Frank extolled Berg's accomplishments. "He has shown his work ethic, integrity and dedication to Novato time and time again. I have full confidence in his ability to lead the department during this transition."

Berg replaces former chief Joe Kreins, who retired and is currently an interim chief himself in Vallejo while that city looks for a full-time chief. Berg's interim position will be in effect up to six months; it is up to Frank to make the final decision on who will be the new chief. As to whether he's interested: "Yes, I'm interested in the position," Berg said.

Contact Janis Mara via email at jmara@marinij.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/jmara.

The hard part is getting resources to those who need them the most

Irene Feaster is funny, friendly, and full of insights about her life and times.

But it doesn't take much talking to get the tears to flow. Only months before Feaster underwent a modified radical mastectomy, her son Bill died, the result of a brain tumor. He was 56.

Her cancer has remained in remission, but she has been bedeviled by heart disease, anemia and diabetes. Her son's suffering pains her more than her own.

Feaster says the Lord's Prayer to herself when grief overwhelms her.

"It is so meaningful to me," she said pensively. "It's comforting, too. Once you lose a child, you never get over it. Some days you wake up and it just stabs you."

Those who study financial elder abuse might say heartache, isolation and chronic health problems all conspired to make Feaster, 75, particularly vulnerable.

The National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, a research group, says seniors most likely to fall prey to fraud suffer isolation, loneliness, recent personal losses, physical or mental infirmity and a lack of familiarity with financial matters.

Feaster's callers let her phone ring once, then call back five minutes later. That's how long it takes her to get from the living room to the bedroom, where the telephone is. She lives alone. She may sacrifice food when money runs thin to keep the gas and lights on.

Of the seniors who seek protection through Adult Protective Services, 4 percent experience isolation, 11 percent mental suffering, 31 percent abandonment, and 2 percent neglect.

All of that works together to make a senior increasingly vulnerable, said Linda Anderson, division manager of APS. Twenty-nine percent of the agency's clients have been abused financially.

"Often, it's a case of self-neglect," she said. "They may not be eating right. They may not be getting their medication."

And they may be very, very glad to see a friendly visitor at the door, including salesmen who may not have that senior's best interests at heart.

Adult Protective Services has videos that can help a vulnerable senior understand financial abuse. With 24-hour response and case management available, APS also can help make other services available.

The seniors who most need the help, however, may not have access to a daily newspaper or the Internet, and may not know about programs and services.

"That's the major, major problem," said Mona Breed, executive director of Sentinel Fair Housing, a nonprofit organization. "How do you get out in the community and get the information to the people who are most at risk?"

Sentinel educates those who come in contact with seniors, including social workers and home caregivers. Its staff also visits senior centers.

"Mainly, we use one little book called 'Don't Lose Your Home,'" she said. "It's easy to read. It tells you everything. And people can call us. We're happy to talk with anyone who feels they have been the victim of predatory lending. And we have a list of lenders who have been shown to have a high rate for foreclosure."

APS has seven licensed social workers at the phone who can talk to anyone "and answer questions about anything," Anderson said.

Berkeley police Officer Rudi Raab, who lives in Richmond, said neighbors can do much to prevent financial abuse by taking the time to notice the vulnerable.

"Just remember this: In most cities, there is at least one person per city block who could be a target for elder abuse," he said.

Leap called godsend for nonreaders

Rebecca Rosen Lum
TIMES STAFF WRITER


RICHMOND -- A slim man with wire-framed glasses and a neatly clipped goatee, John Tate could easily pass for a writer. His cell phone even rings with a Bach fugue.

But Tate, 54, never learned to read. Born in New Orleans, he grew up picking cotton, then migrated to Richmond in 1983 to work construction. He had "mother wit," Southern parlance for the moral sensibility learned from one's mother, but no education.
That's a gift Richmond's Literacy for Every Adult Program, or LEAP, gave him.

"All my life I've been pretending I could read," Tate said. "LEAP is like a family for people like me who come in scared to let the public know I can't."

After an on-the-job injury ended his work life, he sat down with a tutor and learned to sound out long vowels and short vowels. How to break down words. How to sound out the letters of the alphabet. How to form sentences.

"Oh, lord!" he said. "I'm 54. It's hard to absorb all the fundamentals at my age."

LEAP program staff have patiently prodded, inspired and cajoled hundreds of people like Tate to learn to read long after most others have given up or mistakenly assumed they could read.

But those days could end soon. The program is slated to shrink drastically in January.

Although LEAP pays its own way by landing state and private grants, another city department has tapped those funds, leaving little to run a program that serves more than 100 clients a year.

"If they close this program, they close down hope," Tate said. "Of all the things in the world. Man! Something so small, yet something so large."

According to a national survey, nearly one in four Richmond residents struggles with literacy.

Literacy specialist Mark Trotter said program clients create ways to navigate a literate society. "It's, 'I lost my glasses,' or 'I have arthritis in my hands, could you write this for me?'" Trotter said.

"I'd always watch people reading the newspaper," said Fred White, 43. "Now, I can do that. It felt so good to read a newspaper in front of other people. When I came in here three years ago, I couldn't read a children's book."

Education has been a disappointment for many adult literacy students, said Trotter, 30, now in his sixth year at LEAP and his fourth as a staff member. "In order not to dash their hopes, you've got to have a lot of patience. A lot of it is frightening. (But) one's life can change, even though it might seem like it's unchangeable."

A smile playing over his face, he added, "Since I've been working with Fred, he's penned two plays."

Clients include an executive chef at a four-star hotel whose wife read menus aloud to him so he could memorize them.

One woman successfully kept her functional illiteracy a secret from her husband.

"Some, at one point, could read to some degree when they were younger, but over time their skills diminished," Trotter said. "For some, where they lived, education wasn't valued. A woman from Fiji told me in her culture, women really weren't expected to learn to read. They were just expected to cook, clean, care for the children. It didn't matter if they didn't learn."

It mattered in Tunami Eaton's family; many had attended college, and she hoped to follow.

But Eaton, 26, and the mother of four young children, had reading disabilities. Like other adult learners, she bluffed well.

When her 9-year-old daughter showed signs of reading problems, she got help.

"She would say, 'My stomach hurts,' or 'I'm tired,'" Eaton said. "Then at a certain point, she didn't want to go to school anymore. I realized I was no help to her unless I could assess my own disabilities."

At LEAP, "The hardest thing was letting my guard down," she said. "I was in a private room so I didn't have other eyes looking at me or judging me. It made it easier for me to say, 'I can't read.' This was the only place I could go to find some assistance.

"It really opened my eyes that I didn't have to stop with a GED; I could go to college and reach my dreams."

Layoffs resulted from plunder of literacy program

Contra Costa Times

Rebecca Rosen Lum
TIMES STAFF WRITER

RICHMOND -- The city's Employment and Training Department managers drained $221,447 in restricted cash from the city literacy program to pay their own salaries, then laid off nearly all the literacy teachers for lack of money.

Department records obtained by the Contra Costa Times show that city literacy funding, plus state and private matching grants, were tapped to help pay 11 employees with salaries up to $133,285 a year who do not work in the Literacy for Every Adult, or LEAP, program.

An incoming grant of $98,922 could delay pink slips sent to seven of nine literacy staffers, although there is no immediate plan to do so.

Irregularities do not end there. Records show that at least one LEAP worker was directed by a supervisor to falsify a timecard.

The wife of the department's deputy director makes $80,000 yearly as a top-level information technology specialist assigned to the department. SEIU Local 790, which represents LEAP employees, says that flouts the city anti-nepotism policy, which is in its contract with the union.

City officials recently decided to lay off more than 100 city workers to close a yawning budget gap.

The literacy misappropriations could spell big trouble for Richmond. The state library, which issues the grants, has tight rules for spending and overseeing the money.

"At the very least, I know the state would pull its funding if they knew about this," SEIU Local 790 shop steward Linda McPhee said. "Literacy programs all over the state compete for these grants, partly dependent on their history. This does not look good for Richmond."

Cities may eye literacy programs during hard times "because they are a magnet for funding," said California State Library consultant Valerie Stadelbacher Reinke. "But there are certain minimum standards for using these grants, and if they are not following those standards, we would hold Richmond responsible."

One is that the program must be run by the city library. Here, it is not.

"That alone is equal to fraud," McPhee wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to assistant city manager Leveron Bryant.

Not true, said Employment and Training assistant director Sal Vaca.

"This is a total misunderstanding," he said Monday. "LEAP is paying its fair share of the Employment and Training Department overhead. It's a cost allocation plan, and it has been negotiated with and approved by the finance department."

Studies show that in Richmond and across the state, one in four residents can barely read, as dismal a showing as three of the lowest-ranking states: Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. Only Louisiana, with 28 percent adult illiteracy, and Mississippi, with 30 percent, are worse.

More than one-fifth of Richmond's population has reading problems, according to a recent survey by the National Center for Education Statistics.

After Upesi Mtambuzi, the Employment and Training Department director, issued the pink slips, closed satellite offices and bumped the main office from its longtime home, she left for a monthlong trip.

"The level of their conduct is surreal," teacher Mark Trotter said. "Funds were taken unconscionably. Two staffers isn't hardly enough to give this city literacy."

Tonight, the City Council expects an explanation of the concerns raised by LEAP staff members earlier this month.

None of the Employment and Training workers whose salaries were subsidized with LEAP funds take home less than $65,000 a year. The list includes office helpers, bookkeeping assistants and secretaries.

Mtambuzi earns more than $133,000 year; $25,725 of that is LEAP money.

According to the city's agreement with SEIU Local 790, employees can only be laid off for lack of work or lack of money.

Demand for literacy help continues to soar, and minus the misappropriations, there would have been plenty of money, McPhee said.

Of LEAP's $845,000 budget, the city contributes $385,000 from its general fund. The state library fund and other private sources ante up matching funds.

After long meetings with City Manager Isiah Turner, Vaca proposed changes to Mtambuzi's plan, with only one tutor-coordinator losing his job.

"Upesi (Mtambuzi) tried to fulfill (both departments') objectives and also reduce dollars, but her restructuring has disproportionately affected the LEAP staff," Turner said.

"The city doesn't have much experience laying off people," Vaca said. "It's awkward and uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it needs to be done to preserve the financial health of the city."

SEIU members slated for layoffs have muddied the waters: "If they go down, they want to drag everyone down with them," he said.

Meanwhile, many LEAP clients will watch the outcome of today's council meeting to see what will come of the proposed cuts.

"I could see if it was a place where no one succeeds, but everyone comes out of here benefiting," said Kareem, 19, an aspiring electrician who came to LEAP to improve his math skills.

"There are jobs where you can get out there and work your body to death, but I want to use my mind. It's already a struggle to get hired. It's crucial to get the skills."


LEAP called a godsend for nonreaders

Contra Costa Times

Rebecca Rosen Lum
TIMES STAFF WRITER


RICHMOND -- John Tate's cell phone rings with a Bach fugue. A slim, well-spoken man with wire-framed glasses and a neatly clipped goatee, Tate could easily pass for a writer.

But Tate, 54, never learned to read. Born in New Orleans, he grew up picking cotton, then migrated to Richmond in 1983 to work construction. He had "mother wit," black Southern parlance for the moral sensibility learned from one's mother, but no education.

That's a gift Richmond's Literacy for Every Adult Program, or LEAP, gave him.

"All my life I've been pretending I could read," Tate said. "LEAP is like a family for people like me who come in scared to let the public know I can't."

After an on-the-job injury ended his work life, he sat down with a tutor and learned to sound out long vowels and short vowels. How to break down words. How to sound out the letters of the alphabet. How to form sentences.

"Oh, lord!" he said. "I'm 54. It's hard to absorb all the fundamentals at my age."

LEAP program staff have patiently prodded, inspired and cajoled hundreds of people like Tate to learn to read long after most others have given up or mistakenly assumed they could read.

But those days could end soon. The program is slated to shrink drastically in January.

Although LEAP pays its own way by landing state and private grants, another city department has tapped those funds, leaving little to run a program that serves more than 100 clients a year.

"If they close this program, they close down hope," Tate said. "Of all the things in the world. Man! Something so small, yet something so large."

According to a national survey, nearly one in four Richmond residents struggles with literacy.

Literacy specialist Mark Trotter said program clients create ways to navigate a literate society. "It's, 'I lost my glasses,' or 'I have arthritis in my hands, could you write this for me?'" Trotter said.

"I'd always watch people reading the newspaper," said Fred White, 43. "Now, I can do that. It felt so good to read a newspaper in front of other people. When I came in here three years ago, I couldn't read a children's book."

Education has been a disappointment for many adult literacy students, said Trotter, 30, now in his sixth year at LEAP and his fourth as a staff member. "In order not to dash their hopes, you've got to have a lot of patience. A lot of it is frightening. (But) one's life can change, even though it might seem like it's unchangeable."

A smile playing over his face, he added, "Since I've been working with Fred, he's penned two plays."

Clients include an executive chef at a four-star hotel whose wife read menus aloud to him so he could memorize them.

One woman successfully kept her functional illiteracy a secret from her husband.

"Some, at one point, could read to some degree when they were younger, but over time their skills diminished," Trotter said. "For some, where they lived, education wasn't valued. A woman from Fiji told me in her culture, women really weren't expected to learn to read. They were just expected to cook, clean, care for the children. It didn't matter if they didn't learn."

It mattered in Tunami Eaton's family; many had attended college, and she hoped to follow.

But Eaton, 26, and the mother of four young children, had reading disabilities. Like other adult learners, she bluffed well.

When her 9-year-old daughter showed signs of reading problems, she got help.

"She would say, 'My stomach hurts,' or 'I'm tired,'" Eaton said. "Then at a certain point, she didn't want to go to school anymore. I realized I was no help to her unless I could assess my own disabilities."

At LEAP, "The hardest thing was letting my guard down," she said. "I was in a private room so I didn't have other eyes looking at me or judging me. It made it easier for me to say, 'I can't read.' This was the only place I could go to find some assistance.

"It really opened my eyes that I didn't have to stop with a GED; I could go to college and reach my dreams."

Lighthearted, Sympathetic Look at Local Mosques Finds Much Diversity

It's a very traditional community and doesn't abide by Western traditions of table manners. Everyone did have their own plate, but since there were no spoons, you had to dig in with your hands to get your food. I was a bit reticent at first, but a man encouraged me to help myself, saying this is exactly how the army did it.
                              — "30 Mosques in 30 Nights"
 

Zuhair Sadaat, 25, knew the Bay Area Muslim world was more varied than his parents’ 3,000-member, suburban Santa Clara mosque, where the congregation encompasses doctors, engineers, and other successful professionals.

In 2010, he set out to discover just how diverse it was.

The result: “30 Mosques in 30 Days,” a blog that's clicking with American-born Muslim millennials.
Sadaat (rhymes with Zagat) visits a different mosque each night of the holy month of Ramadan, sizing up everything from shoe shelves and parking to the imam’s ability to inspire when leading the nightly taraweeh prayers.

He began the blog last year. This year he's visiting some of the same and some new mosques during the current Ramadan, which began Aug. 1.

Sadaat compiles a droll, candid and revealing catalog that sizes up everything from shoe shelves and parking to the imam’s ability to inspire when leading the nightly taraweeh prayers.

All in all, it's another one of those oases in a pretty rough neighborhood. And man, it is rough because this place is imposing from the outside. If that iron gate's closed, you're shiz out of luck. Come during prayer time or don't come at all.

Sadaat is a UC Berkeley-educated grant writer. (He calls himself “a nonprofiteer.”) He began his odyssey in his hometown of Santa Clara and now lives in Richmond, where he devotes plenty of space in the blog to rectifying misconceptions about his beloved adopted city. He worked his way north, then East across the Bay, before stopping to tell it like it is in six counties.

The three mosques in Richmond, and many more in Oakland, pull members from different strands of Muslim culture and ethnicities in the East Bay.

I wasn’t even planning on visiting this mosque tonight. I mean, sure, it was on my radar, but I was aiming for an entirely different Oakland mosque. Yes, there are so many mosques in Oakland you can shoot for one and land in another.  

Some included only a handful of worshippers; others, hundreds. Some were spacious and beautifully architected; others a grim use of available space.

In a word, eclectic.

A building in the middle of the warehouse district. A building in the middle of the warehouse district surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence with spikes on top. Welcome to Richmond, son.

One thing inside the masjid which stuck out was that they had El Corán on the shelves. No, not just one Quran in Spanish, but 12. Surprisingly, however, I did not see any Hispanics in the crowd.

What's cool about the prayer space is that the mosque wasn't leveled properly so everyone is praying uphill. It's a strange feeling praying on a surface which is angling upwards. I really don't think I could get used to it even if I came here every day.

Three messages lie behind these light-hearted thumbnail sketches, all maddeningly simple: Muslims are human. Muslims differ from one another, as do mosques. And many, many Muslims call the Bay Area home.

He throws his hands up at some of the attitudes he encounters, especially in regards to the role of women. If lots of women came to pray here in one mosque, men stare blankly at another: Women? What would women be doing here, there's no kitchen.

His journey to Mecca on the Hajj informed his feelings about gender: “In the pilgrimage, men and women do pray next to each other,” he said in an interview. “It’s not even logistically possible not to. So I don’t understand why people get upset.”

Sometimes blog visitors take issue with his observations, like when he despaired that a mosque sunk money into a new minaret instead of something more practical, like a men’s room (the money had been earmarked for a minaret, they argued). But mainly he gets thumbs-ups.

He said there's much more he could be doing to promote his blog, but he's been cool to the idea. For one thing, he doesn't want to become recognizable.

I'm meeting guys who are struggling to make ends meet because they've been relegated to part-time jobs while supporting entire families. There's plenty of cases like that in the South Bay too, but I guess it took me relocating to a new neighborhood to become familiar with them.

His varied mosque explorations beyond his home town mosque, "MCA" (Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara), form the heart of his blog, which he hopes will "educate the general populace about the number and diversity of Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area."

The stark contrast between this mosque and the mosque in which I was raised made me think I made a good decision wrapping up this project here and not somewhere else. The whole point of me burning dozens of gallons of gas this month was to see just how different the communities of the Bay Area are. Well, it doesn't get much different from MCA than this. 

The Greening of Richmond

EAST BAY EXPRESS

March 09, 2011 News » News

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Roses once grew in vibrant profusion in Richmond, the products of Japanese-American nurseries that thrived from the turn of the 20th century until World War II. 

Later, the remaining greenhouse growers were put out of business by the soaring costs of diesel fuel, and by NAFTA, which rewarded their competitors in Latin America. 

Weeds and wildflowers now blanket the abandoned greenhouses, and shards of glass litter the ground. But Richmond, long known for its hardscrabble image, may bloom once again thanks largely to the efforts of City Councilman Tom Butt.

The struggles that urban farms face in the East Bay have been well documented over the years, but Richmond's experience could prove to be different. Butt, an avid gardener, will soon host an urban farming summit, and his efforts to help urban farmers thrive have the backing of a majority of the Richmond City Council. It's also somewhat unusual for an elected official to take the lead in shepherding urban agriculture projects through the maze of local government. 

"In general, it's a group of citizens or one farmer" who presses for, and wins, the changes needed to help urban farmers survive, said Janelle Orsi, an Oakland lawyer who pilots the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

At home, Butt tends his own herd of three goats and two sheep, and keeps honeybees, and grows fruit and vegetables. The career architect describes it as "a large piece of property that's virtually useless because it's essentially vertical." His yard, nonetheless, is a can't-miss stop each year on the local Bringing Back the Natives garden tour.

After a visit to the seven-acre Sunnyside Organic Seedlings, which operates in several of the old Richmond greenhouses, Butt came back to his office and fired off a missive announcing the urban farming summit, a brainstorming session that would explore how small farming enterprises could thrive with better access to  credit and capital, available land, and markets — plus more cooperation from regulatory agencies. Butt is  inviting lawmakers, growers, and urban farming nonprofits to the summit, along with people in the food business, including chefs and restaurateurs.

After contacting Annie's Annuals, EcoVillage Farm, The Watershed Nursery, Urban Tilth, Richmond Library Seed Bank, Richmond Garden Club, and The Watershed Project, Butt concluded that they face common  challenges. His agenda: Identify every urban agriculture operation in West Contra Costa County and create a list of contacts; find potential areas of collaboration among existing organizations that can strengthen the movement; identify regulatory constraints throughout the county that can be modified to benefit urban  agriculture; and identify potential markets. 

"I wasn't raised on a farm, but you know something about fresh fruit and vegetables when you grow up in Arkansas," he said.

An affable man, Butt is plain-spoken and has won over voters with his tough political stances. For years, he was one of the few Richmond city leaders with the courage to stand up to Chevron while the oil giant dominated city politics. Butt also has a vision for Richmond, and was talking about smart growth, green energy, and sustainability years before they became part of the modern lexicon. 

"It frustrates me to no end that most of the food we buy in this country is brought here from someplace else," he said. "Pick a vegetable — let's say broccoli. Guaranteed, somebody is growing broccoli within twenty miles of where you live, but when you go to the store, what you'll buy is broccoli that was grown 1,800 miles away. There's something wrong with this picture here."

People in the urban farming movement say not only is it unusual for an elected official to take the lead in advocating for growing policies, but that local legislators and staff often stymie plans to green urban areas and plow under lawns in favor of food-bearing plants. 

"A common wish of urban agriculture supporters is for local government officials to be less skeptical about their work," wrote Jerry Kaufman and Martin Bailkey in a working paper on land policy for the Lincoln Institute, a Massachusetts think tank. Residents who wish to grow food face constraints as well. Orsi said local laws often require uniformity, especially in the front yards of residences. Green lawns and landscaping are believed to promote property values. The City of Berkeley fined a resident in 2009 for growing fruit and vegetables in his front yard, which violated zoning law, she said.

But urban farming proponents say Butt and Richmond enjoy an advantage. A majority of the council shares his vision, including retired cardiologist Jeff Ritterman, who sits on the board of Richmond Ecovillage, a five-acre teaching farm, and Jovanka Beckles, who put urban farming in her campaign platform. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin also is applauding the summit. The city, she said, can help provide matching funds, which attract private funders, and can write grants.

Butt also is making his push at a propitious time, growers say. The annual Scion Exchange by the California Rare Fruit Growers, held recently in El Sobrante, "was really swamped with people this year — lots of new people, lots of people from these various other groups, with a lot of cross-fertilization going on," said member Gail Morrison. "This frenzy of activity is new in the last year or two."

At Sunnyside Organic Seedlings, Pilar Reber sells young plants to large farmers' markets and retailers. She fills trays with her own soil recipe, seeds them using an electric seeder, then wraps stacked trays until they sprout. The company's profits increased by 14 percent last year and are likely to increase by as much again in the coming year. 

"People are always looking for an emerging market," Reber said. "Here it is."

But Reber was nearly a casualty of the bureaucratic resistance to urban farming. At one point, a local redevelopment official insisted that she obtain a use permit that required a costly consultation with an architect. But $2,000 and one laid-off employee later, another county staffer told her the use permit was unnecessary. 

"The county really jerked me around," she said. "We want to make sure people going down this road don't have to deal with this. There are government constraints on this at every level."

Butt also is reaching beyond the city to county lawmakers to help farms in unincorporated areas — like North Richmond, where Sunnyside grows lettuce in an aquaponic garden. "We want to make sure in the county general plan, we support that purpose," said county Supervisor John Gioia, who will also participate in the summit. "This is an issue for the greater Richmond area."

Park Guthrie, former director of the nonprofit Urban Tilth, also cheers the idea of a summit that "will get everyone in the same room, talking." The challenges facing urban farmers are considerable, he said. "People don't have any idea how hard it is to make it profitable," he said. "With more space you can be more efficient. In urban areas, the biggest cost is land."

On a recent Sunday, volunteers joined staff from Urban Tilth for a workday in a flat, lush meadow, with volunteers preparing the soil for early spring crops: potatoes, mustard greens, spinach, carrots, beets, radishes, chard, arugula, lettuces, and fava beans for the nitrogen they contribute to the soil. Surrounded by a terraced suburb, the property is owned by Adams School. Urban Tilth also has a teaching garden at Richmond High School that yielded 6,000 pounds of food in just one semester. Its other projects include a medicine garden, watershed, school gardens, and plots along the Richmond Greenway.

Butt said the first summit, scheduled for May, will look at what farmers have done to succeed, and then start crafting policy. Eventually, grocers in the Richmond flatlands could be required to carry produce along with chips and pork rinds, he said. 

"I dream of the day when there is no such thing as a vacant lot," he said. "You either have a building that's fulfilling some important function, or growing food for the community. What an asset."