The Richmond Field Station (RFS) is a satellite campus of the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
located in
Richmond, California
Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was municipal corporation, incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a Richmond, California City Council, city council. . The name was changed to the Richmond Bay Campus (RBC) in 2012 and then Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay (BGC) in October 2014, reflecting plans to expand the site to address global issues, first as a second campus for
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...
(LBNL), then as an expansion of the main campus in Berkeley itself. In 2016, the expansion plans were suspended and the name reverted to Richmond Field Station.
Site
The Richmond Field Station is in the South Shoreline neighborhood of Richmond, just north of
Albany and west/south of
I-580, approximately 15–20 minutes away from the main campus in
Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
by car. The site is in total, including the adjacent Regatta Industrial Center purchased by the university.
There are three distinct habitats on site: the Upland Area, Transition Area, and Western
Stege Marsh Stege Marsh, also known as the South Richmond Marshes,[Eastshore S ...](_blank)
.
[ The marsh area is further subdivided into low, middle, and high ]salt marsh
A salt marsh or saltmarsh, 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 is dominated ...
es and tidal wetlands with native species including the endangered California clapper rail
Ridgway's rail (''Rallus obsoletus'') is a near-threatened species of bird. It is found principally in California's San Francisco Bay to southern Baja California. A member of the rail family, Rallidae, it is a chicken-sized bird that rarely flie ...
.[
A wooden seawall was constructed along the tidal mudflat prior to 1950, including a wooden pier that extended south, possibly before the acquisition of the site by California Cap.][ The Stege Marsh was formed after the ]Southern Pacific Railroad Company
The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...
added fill to the site to build a rail spur in 1959.[
]
History
Native Americans used the site for fishing and shellfish harvesting, as evidenced by the presence of neighboring shellmound
A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofac ...
s, some of which were removed in 1915 for the development of the Harborgate tract in Richmond.[ It was part of the ]Rancho San Pablo Rancho San Pablo was a land grant in present-day Contra Costa County, California given in 1823 by Governor Luís Antonio Argüello to Francisco María Castro (1775–1831), a former soldier at the San Francisco Presidio and one-time ''alcalde'' ...
land grant given to Francisco Maria Castro in 1823, which was subsequently subdivided and sold in the 1850s. One of the owners was Richard Stege
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stron ...
, who raised bullfrogs for sale to San Francisco restaurants.[ By the 1880s, the site was acquired by the California Cap Company, which manufactured explosives and blasting shells alongside smaller companies such as the U.S. Briquette Company and Pacific Cartridge Company. California Cap ceased operations in 1948.][ Explosive manufacturing activities included the production of ]mercury fulminate
Mercury(II) fulminate, or Hg(CNO)2, is a primary explosive. It is highly sensitive to friction, heat and shock and is mainly used as a trigger for other explosives in percussion caps and detonators. Mercury(II) cyanate, though its chemical formula ...
and has resulted in mercury contamination at the site.[
The first of what would become Richmond Field Station were acquired from California Cap in 1950;] the western section (between Regatta Blvd and Avocet Wy) was acquired in 1951.[ An additional parcel (formerly the neighboring Regatta Industrial Center, just west of the original site) was acquired after 2008.][
Starting from the 1950s, UC Berkeley conducted large-scale engineering research at RFS for projects which were not suited for the central campus in Berkeley, including research in solid waste and sewage, transportation and lighting, and beach erosion.][ For sanitary engineering research, the laboratory established at RFS has been called the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory, Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Health Research Laboratory, and Environmental Engineering and Health Sciences Laboratory; its activities included construction of a rectangular oxidation pond, a circular digester, and treatment of chicken wastes, which included an on-site chicken coop.][ RFS also includes the ]Earthquake Engineering Research Center
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
, with a large earthquake shaking table
There are several different experimental techniques that can be used to test the response of structures and soil or rock slopes to verify their seismic performance, one of which is the use of an earthquake shaking table (a shaking table, or simply ...
to simulate seismic events.[ In addition, the ]Northern Regional Library Facility
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a r ...
is located at RFS; NRLF is a cooperative library storage facility encompassing more than 4.7 million items in three buildings, storing some of the holdings of the libraries of the University of California campuses in northern California, including Berkeley, Davis
Davis may refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Mount Davis (Antarctica)
* Davis Island (Palmer Archipelago)
* Davis Valley, Queen Elizabeth Land
Canada
* Davis, Saskatchewan, an unincorporated community
* Davis Strait, between Nunavut and Gre ...
, Merced
Merced (; Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on April 1 ...
, San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, Santa Cruz, and the California State Library
The California State Library is the state library of the State of California, founded in 1850 by the California State Legislature. The Library collects, preserves, generates and disseminates a wide array of information. Today, it is the central ...
.[
Several tenants lease space at RFS from the University of California, most notably the ]U.S. EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...
, which operates its Region 9 Laboratory at RFS.[
]
Second campus
On January 3, 2011, UC Berkeley announced a request for qualifications (RFQ), soliciting sites for a second campus for LBNL, requiring the new site to accommodate of new research and development facilities; the RFQ included a caveat that UC had already identified Richmond Field Station as a suitable candidate site. The city of Richmond responded by passing Resolution 10–11 on February 1, advocating for the second campus to be sited at RFS after receiving numerous letters of support from the community. Later that month, LBNL and UC Berkeley completed a conceptual plan for the second campus at RFS and issued a second RFQ for developers of its Richmond Field Station Campus Concept Plan on May 12.[ Subsequently, LBNL announced the second campus at RFS would be named the Richmond Bay Campus in January 2012, but budget cuts in 2013 forced them to scrap their plans. Despite the budget cuts, the ]Regents of the University of California
The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of the same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university sy ...
approved the long-range development plan (LRDP) and environmental impact report for RBC in May 2014. Under the LRDP,
UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks
Nicholas B. Dirks is an American academic and the former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. Dirks is the author of numerous books on South Asian history and culture, primarily concerned with the impact of British colonial rule. ...
announced the proposed development would continue as the Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay on 29 October 2014. In an address to the Academic Senate, Dirks stated the new campus would serve as a research hub and education center to solve global problems in energy, medicine, economy, and environment. The stated research mission was similar to that originally intended for the RBC.
In August 2016, just before he resigned as chancellor, Dirks announced that the university would be suspending plans for the project. The name has been suspended as well and has returned to Richmond Field Station.
Transportation
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in California
Ten of the first twenty confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States occurred in California, the first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. All of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China, as testing wa ...
, UC Berkeley operated a Bear Transit
Bear Transit is the bus service operated by the Department of Parking and Transportation of the University of California, Berkeley. Its fleet includes a combination of shuttle vans and passenger buses (small and regular-sized), with all of its pa ...
route between the main campus in Berkeley and RFS. The route was not resumed when campus operations restarted in June 2021, and public transit users were advised to take AC Transit
AC Transit (Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District) is an Oakland-based public transit agency serving the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit also operates "Transbay" ro ...
route 79 to El Cerrito Plaza station
El Cerrito Plaza station is a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in El Cerrito, California, located adjacent to the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center. It primarily serves southern El Cerrito, northern Albany, and Kensington, along with nearb ...
, then transfer to route 71 and walk to RFS. AC Transit Route 74 also passed close to the RFS campus.
References
External links
{{Portal, San Francisco Bay Area
LBL website
University of California, Berkeley
2014 in California
Education in Richmond, California