Enforcing clean-up of petroleum concentrations left behind by an oil refinery at Alameda Point in the early 1900s did not appear to be a top priority until startup company Pacific Fusion came to City Hall in 2024 with a proposal to purchase about 12 acres of land, including the area where the old refinery was located. The proposal involves building a demonstration research facility, with $900 million in investment capital to back it up.
Two years earlier, in 2022, the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) had reached a voluntary agreement with Chevron, which bought the refinery in the early 1900s and subsequently closed it down, to clean up the site to meet regulatory standards. But Chevron’s two deadlines for producing a cleanup plan, the first on February 28, 2025, and the second on July 18, 2025, were not met.
Meanwhile, on July 16, 2025, the New Mexico Economic Development Department and Pacific Fusion issued a joint news release announcing that they had signed a memorandum of understanding “to pursue the siting of a research and development facility in Albuquerque.” “New Mexico is a natural fit for this project,” said Keith LeChien, Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer at Pacific Fusion.
On Friday, August 1, 2025, the City of Alameda sent a letter of urgency to the Water Board asking the agency to hold Chevron to a timely cleanup, lest Pacific Fusion tire of waiting for certainty about when they could begin construction on Alameda Point. The City informed the Water Board that, in June, City Council had approved a purchase option agreement for the development of a first-of-its-kind nuclear fusion demonstration facility.
“However, Pacific Fusion is considering several sites for this project, including one outside of California, and they are expressing serious concerns about selecting Alameda as their facility site due to Chevron’s inability to meet its deadlines to the Water Board,” Assistant City Manager Amy Wooldridge implored in the letter, which was co-signed by Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft.
The deadline for submitting a cleanup plan to the Water Board had been extended from February 28, 2025 to July 18, 2025 at Chevron’s request so they could perform more soil testing to refine their plan. As it turns out, Chevron has not even started the additional testing, further aggravating tensions about the delays.
Chevron has asserted to the Water Board that the delays have been caused by the City not issuing permits, according to the City’s letter to the Water Board. The City counters that the permits were not sought until July and were issued in a timely manner.
“Chevron could have applied for these permits months ago, and we had several conversations with Chevron inquiring as to why they were not starting the sampling work concurrently with the Vulnerability Assessment,” the letter states.
“While we appreciate Chevron’s efforts to voluntarily come to the table, at this point, they have not shown a willingness to execute on a timely remediation schedule,” the letter notes. “The City and the State of California are now at risk of losing a major employer and clean energy innovator to another state because of these delays. We ask that the Water Board increase its enforcement of Chevron’s cleanup obligations, before Pacific Fusion decides to build this facility outside of California.”
The City is asking the Water Board to ensure that Chevron submits its cleanup plan and companion document, called a Vulnerability Assessment, no later than September 15. The assessment will evaluate the potential impacts from sea level and groundwater rise.
The City had previously expressed its hope that the on-site remediation be completed by the end of January 2026 in order to meet Pacific Fusion’s goal of beginning work in early 2026, according to a letter sent to the Water Board on May 27,
Pacific Fusion Chief Operating Officer Carrie Von Muench told the Albuquerque Journal the company “will make a decision this fall whether the R&D facility will be in Albuquerque, Alameda, California, or Livermore, California.”
The Alameda Post reached out to Chevron for comment, but at the time of publication they have not responded to the request.
Contributing writer Richard Bangert posts stories and photos about environmental issues on his blog Alameda Point Environmental Report. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Richard-Bangert.
