Castro Cove is a "portion of the

San Pablo Bay San Pablo Bay is a tidal estuary that forms the northern extension of the San Francisco Bay in the East Bay and North Bay regions of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California. Most of the Bay is shallow; however, there is a deep wate ...

" in

Richmond, California Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was municipal corporation, incorporated on August 3, 1905, and has a Richmond, California, City Council, city council.

located between Point San Pablo and the confluence of Wildcat Creek into

Castro Creek Castro Creek is a creek in Richmond, California, in the western part of the city adjacent to the Chevron Oil Refinery. Wildcat Creek drains into it directly and though other Wildcat Marsh tributaries into Castro Cove of San Pablo Bay. The creek ...

.Monitoring Program Summary
, California Coastal Water Quality Monitoring Inventory, retrieved August 31, 2007

Overview

The

cove A cove is a small bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creek (tidal), creeks, or recesses in a coast ...

is made up of

mudflats Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats or, in Ireland, slob or slobs, are coastal wetlands that form in intertidal areas where sediments have been deposited by tides or rivers. A global analysis published in 2019 suggested that tidal ...

bay mud Bay mud consists of thick deposits of soft, unconsolidated silty clay, which is saturated with water; these soil layers are situated at the bottom of certain estuary, estuaries, which are normally in temperate regions that have experienced cyclic ...

, and

intertidal salt marsh A salt marsh, saltmarsh or salting, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. It i ...

owned by

Chevron USA Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation predominantly specializing in oil and gas. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to ...

. The cove forms an important

estuarine An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

environmental resource for

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay (Chochenyo language, Chochenyo: 'ommu) is a large tidal estuary in the United States, U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the cities of San Francisco, California, San ...

. It is the home of many endangered species including the

Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse The salt-marsh harvest mouse (''Reithrodontomys raviventris''), also known as the red-bellied harvest mouse, is an endangered rodent endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area salt marshes in California. Taxonomy The two distinct subspecies are both ...

, Ridgway's rail,

steelhead Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the Fish migration#Classification, anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or Columbia River redband trout (''O. m. gairdneri'', also called redband steelhead). Steelhead are native to cold-wa ...

, and Olympia Oyster.Castro Cove/Chevron Richmond, CA
, ''

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with Weather forecasting, forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, Hydrography, charting the seas, ...

'' (NOAA), retrieved August 1, 2007 Other

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

invertebrates, mammals, fish, and birds also live in the habitat; all the animals may have been injured by contamination, whether endangered or of

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

. Castro Cove is named after

Don Víctor Castro Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *Don (river), a river in European Russia *Don River (disambiguation), several other rivers with the name * Don, Benin, a town in Benin * Don, Dang, a village and hill station in Dang district, Gu ...

Pollution

The cove is also a recreational, fishing, boating, and shellfishing area. The Richmond Rod & Gun Club Yacht Harbor is located on the western coast of the cove. The

Chevron Richmond Refinery The Chevron Richmond Refinery is a petroleum refinery in Richmond, California, on San Francisco Bay. It is owned and operated by Chevron Corporation and employs more than 1,200 workers, making it the city's largest employer. The refinery process ...

located at the south end of the inlet dumps 5.6 million gallons daily of treated industrial use waters into the

Cove A cove is a small bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creek (tidal), creeks, or recesses in a coast ...

, Castro Creek and

. From 1902 until 1987 the refinery released various contaminants in its wastewater and other run-off, which severely contaminated the Bay mud of the cove. In 1998 the California Regional Water Quality Control Board began to plan cleanup of the site and pressured Chevron. The water board used the authority of the Bay Protection and Toxic Clean-up Program to require Chevron to produce a sediment characterization work plan in 1998. Years of discharge or polluted water left the cove with high levels of

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons A Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is any member of a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple fused aromatic rings. Most are produced by the incomplete combustion of organic matter— by engine exhaust fumes, tobacco, incin ...

(PAHs) and mercury contamination.

Cleanup

Between 1999 and 2001 benthic toxicity tests found PAHs and mercury levels at up to 507 mg/kg and 13 mg/kg respectively at this site and a portion was designated as an area of concern (AOC). The most contaminated, AOC is adjacent to the former wastewater outfall which has been relocated into

. A

California Environmental Quality Act The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA ) is a California statute passed in 1970 and signed in to law by then-governor Ronald Reagan, shortly after the United States federal government passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), ...

(CEQA)-mandated mitigated negative declaration was completed and a corrective action plan was designed. The plan which includes a natural resource damage assessment will cordon off the AOC with steel sheet piling and have the contaminated muds and sediment dredged and pumped into a disused treatment pond. In that treatment pond the toxic waste will be dried and then neutralized with a stabilizing agent like

fly ash Coal combustion products (CCPs), also called coal combustion wastes (CCWs) or coal combustion residuals (CCRs), are byproducts of burning coal. They are categorized in four groups, each based on physical and chemical forms derived from coal combust ...

or cement. The inactive pond will then be regraded and capped with vegetation. The remediation project is scheduled for the summer of 2007.

References

{{coord, 37.956, -122.401, display=title Bodies of water of Richmond, California Bays of California Bays of Contra Costa County, California San Francisco Bay Geography of Richmond, California Coves of the United States Wetlands of the San Francisco Bay Area