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…