Monthly Archives: September 2017

Air Monitoring, Air pollution, Air Watch Bay Area, Bay Area Refineries, Keeping Watch on Earth News

YOU can help monitor the air in Benicia and the Bay Area…

With major input from Benicia and area activists and experts, Air Watch Bay Area is now up and running…

Press Release, Wednesday, August 9, 2017
[Contact listing at end]

Air Watch Bay Area launches new digital platform for reporting and investigating oil refinery pollution

Staying informed about what’s in the air is a priority for Bay Area residents living near the region’s five oil refineries. As we mark the five-year anniversary of the Chevron Richmond refinery fire, a new suite of digital tools designed to reveal and act on air pollution is now live at: http://airwatchbayarea.org/. The Air Watch Bay Area website and reporting app (available for Android or iOS) build on and extend residents’ successful activism for real-time air monitoring for many of the region’s frontline communities (Richmond, Rodeo, Crockett and Benicia). The website and app enable users to:

  1. Report air pollution — rate smells, upload photos, and describe symptoms;
  2. See pollution reports in context, alongside chemical levels, wind direction, and reports from other community members;
  3. View the history of chemical levels measured by fenceline and community monitors;
  4. Contribute to an independent community database of incidents, while also submitting reports to regulatory authorities at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD);
  5. Connect with community organizations and resources to advocate for cleaner air, particularly in frontline communities;
  6. Grow the community of people engaged with Bay Area air quality and environmental justice advocacy.

Frontline community residents, in collaboration with the Fair Tech Collective at Drexel University and the Community Robotics, Education, and Technology Empowerment Lab (CREATE Lab) at Carnegie Mellon University, helped to develop these tools — to build capacity for broadened civic engagement with air quality. “Air Watch Bay Area builds on a community of people who are dedicated to refinery air quality vigilance and for the first time shows the Big Picture of all the refineries in the Bay Area,” according to Constance Beutel of the Benicia Good Neighbor Steering Committee.

Exposing oil refineries to public scrutiny
In a region where many are committed to environmental sustainability and health, local oil refineries too often operate beyond public scrutiny. Air Watch Bay Area helps expose refineries to scrutiny by highlighting air pollution data across frontline communities in Richmond, Crockett, Rodeo, and Benicia. As fenceline monitoring requirements recently adopted by BAAQMD come into force, the site will expand to include data from Martinez, where neither Shell nor Tesoro currently have fenceline monitoring programs, as well as additional data from other communities.

Air Watch Bay Area features residents’ own pollution reports alongside both historical and real-time air quality data, made available through successful environmental justice advocacy. The site is the first to present such archival air quality data, which are necessary to help residents “connect the dots” between chemical levels in ambient air and health issues that may not appear until hours or days after exposure. Residents from all refinery communities can make pollution reports, adding to available air pollution data even where monitoring is not being conducted.

Holding regulators & public officials accountable to public health, environmental justice
Ultimately, Air Watch Bay Area’s digital tools offer Bay Area residents new levers for holding regulators and elected officials accountable to public health, environmental justice, and sustainability. “Often when citizens file air pollution complaints, the information seems to drop into a black hole. The ability for fenceline communities to archive their complaints is key to holding refineries and regulatory agencies accountable,” stated Nancy Rieser of Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment (C.R.U.D.E.).

When people report odors or photos to Air Watch Bay Area, they contribute to a publicly visible “paper trail” of incidents. This public paper trail, alongside individuals’ direct reports to BAAQMD, helps Bay Area residents advocate for cleaner air. It helps foster community empowerment and ownership of data, to address persistent air quality problems. “This site will be an important tool for anyone researching and evaluating refinery emissions that endanger health in our community,” said Rieser.

New data stories: Giving monitoring “teeth”
“Air monitoring has become a popular answer to the environmental health concerns of frontline communities. Just look at the state of California’s recent move to increase community air monitoring while undercutting environmental justice groups’ calls for caps on refinery emissions [in AB 617 and 398],” says Dr. Gwen Ottinger, Drexel University professor and principal investigator on the National Science Foundation grant that funded the creation of Air Watch Bay Area. “The problem with that approach is that monitoring in isolation is toothless.”

For monitoring to really have an impact, communities need to be able to leverage air quality data while challenging “upstream” causes of emissions. According to East Bay resident Cheryl Holzmeyer, a research and outreach associate of the Air Watch Bay Area project, “It’s crucial that air monitoring go hand-in-hand with efforts to cap emissions and prevent the refining of tar sands and heavy crude oil at Bay Area refineries. Decision-makers need to embrace new data stories — bridging people’s lived experiences of health and illness, refinery emissions levels, oil feedstock quality, and alternative visions of just transitions away from fossil fuel dependency.” By making historical data accessible and bringing people’s experiences into the picture through online pollution reporting, Air Watch Bay Area’s digital tools offer new ways to contribute to such stories.

● More on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/AirWatchBayArea/

Contacts:
Constance Beutel (Benicia Good Neighbor Steering Committee) 707-742-4419
Kathy Kerridge (Benicia Good Neighbor Steering Committee) 707-816-2401
Nancy Rieser, Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment (C.R.U.D.E.) 510-322-1459
Jay Gunkelman (Vallejo) 707-654-8899
Cheryl Holzmeyer, Fair Tech Collective, Drexel University 510-417-9348
Gwen Ottinger, Fair Tech Collective, Drexel University 610-608-2146

Crude By Rail, Derailment

Loaded crude cars derail in Missoula rail yard

Repost from The Missoulian

Loaded crude cars derail in MRL Missoula yard

By Kim Briggeman, Sep 15, 2017
091617-mis-nws-derailment
Derailed crude oil train cars sit off the tracks near Reserve Street in Montana Rail Link’s Missoula yard on Friday. The re-railing process was expected to be completed Friday night. | TOM BAUER, Missoulian

One tanker carrying crude oil was badly listing and three others were off the track Friday after a morning derailment on the west end of Montana Rail Link’s Missoula yard.

“So far it doesn’t appear anything leaked, but they’re going to keep a close eye on it when they move it,” Michelle Hutchins of the city-county health department’s Missoula Valley Water Quality District said at midafternoon.
Hutchins said the derailed oil tankers are of the newly designed variety, built stronger and with other safety technology incorporated.

“So that seems to have done its job,” she said.

The low-speed derailment happened at around 8:30 a.m. Friday. Montana Rail Link’s Jim Lewis said the cars were part of a westbound loaded crude train that was leaving the yard. There were no injuries and no hazardous materials were released. The cause of the incident is under investigation.

“Mainline traffic has not been interrupted and MRL haz-mat and mechanical experts are supervising the re-railing process, which is expected to be completed by Friday evening,” Lewis said in an email at 4:45 p.m. “Local, state and federal agencies were notified per standard protocol.”

The derailment occurred on tracks closest to West Broadway, a few hundred feet east of the Reserve Street overpass.

It’s in the same area where 30 empty tank cars derailed in December 2014 in a switching snafu, after a loaded car made low-speed contact with one of them. [Ed. – see back stories here.]
Last December a coupling broke in the pump house at MRL’s west refueling station near Zootown Arts Community Center. Some 7,000 gallons of diesel fuel poured out before the break was discovered and the valve turned off.
Racial justice

The alt right: white people have to own this problem

Samantha Bee / Full Frontal: Life After Hate

Image result for elmer griffin whiteness
Glenn A. Elmer Griffin, Professor, Critical Theory and Social Justice, Occidental College, Los Angeles CA

My daughter attended Occidental College awhile back. At the time, I was impressed that Professor Glenn A. Elmer Griffin was teaching a class on Whiteness.  He’s still teaching it. The course examines “whiteness in the historic, legal, and economic contexts which have allowed it to function as an enabling condition for privilege and race-based prejudice.”

Most of us white folks don’t think much about being white.  With Trump pressing his angry, self-centered agenda and in a day of the resurgence of the alt right, nazi, ku klux clan and other white supremacy groups, it’s especially important now for those who care about racial justice to focus on how it is that white folks contribute, consciously and/or without awareness, to the great divide that is American culture.

I loved it when Comedian Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal show partnered with the nonprofit Life After Hate to challenge white supremacy. Here’s the video clip – really funny, well done.

More about Life After Hate: https://www.lifeafterhate.org/.
Another great video on their SUPPORT OUR MISSION page.

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Howard “Skip” Elliott, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Pipeline transport, Trump

Former exec with major coal transporter nominated to head pipeline safety agency

Repost from ThinkProgress

Former exec with major coal transporter nominated to head pipeline safety agency

With no pipeline experience, big learning curve expected.

By Mark Hand, September 11, 2017, 4:59 PM
FILE – In this Sept. 11, 2010, file photo, a natural gas line lies broken on a San Bruno, Calif., road after a massive explosion. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. pleaded not guilty Monday, April 21, 2014, to a dozen felony charges stemming from alleged safety violations in a deadly 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion that leveled a suburban neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area. As survivors of the blast looked on, attorneys for California’s largest utility entered the plea in federal court in San Francisco to 12 felony violations of federal pipeline safety laws. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

President Donald Trump intends to nominate a long-time executive with the freight rail industry to serve as administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a regulatory agency that oversees the nation’s extensive pipeline network.

For the past decade, Howard “Skip” Elliott held the title of group vice president of public safety, health, environment, and security for CSX Transportation, a Jacksonville, Florida-based subsidiary of CSX Corp. Altogether, Elliott has a 40-year history in the freight rail industry, although he does not have any government service experience. Elliott’s nomination to head PHMSA is subject to Senate confirmation.

One industry observer noted Elliott will have a big learning curve, coming from the railroad industry, since pipeline safety regulation and oversight is complicated with many diverse stakeholders and controversial issues, including the definition gathering lines and pipeline integrity management requirements.

Pipeline industry officials, though, praised Trump’s nomination of Elliott, citing his extensive experience and leadership in freight rail safety. “We urge the president to nominate, and the Senate to hold a hearing and quickly confirm this qualified nominee,” Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) President and CEO Don Santa said in a statement Monday. INGAA is the primary industry trade group for U.S. natural gas pipeline companies.

PHMSA, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, was created in 2004 and is composed of two offices: the Office of Pipeline Safety and the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety.

According to analysis by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a pipeline watchdog group, new natural gas pipelines are failing at a rate slightly above gas pipelines built before the 1940s. Natural gas transmission lines built in the 2010s had an annual average incident rate of 6.64 per 10,000 miles over the time frame considered. Those installed prior to 1940 or at unknown dates had an incident rate of 6.08 per 10,000 miles, SNL Energy reported.

CSX trains have been in numerous accidents in recent years. In early 2014, a tanker of crude oil and a boxcar of sand nearly toppled over a bridge in Philadelphia after a freight train owned by CSX derailed. Later that year, an oil train operated by CSX derailed and caught fire in Lynchburg, Virginia. Less than 24 hours later, about 10 cars of a CSX coal train went off the tracks, though all of the cars remained.

Elliott is a recipient of an Association of American Railroads award for lifetime achievement in hazardous materials transportation safety. He is a “pioneer and leading advocate” in developing computer-based tools to assist emergency management officials, first responders, and homeland security personnel in responding to a railroad hazardous materials or security incidents, the White House said in a statement released Friday.

CSX is the largest coal transporter east of the Mississippi River and operates a railroad network that runs through the heart of the Appalachian coal fields. CSX also transports crude oil from the Midwest to refineries and terminals along the Hudson River, New York Harbor, Delaware River, and Virginia coast.

Drue Pearce, who is serving as acting administrator of PHMSA, will assume the title of deputy administrator if Elliott is confirmed. She previously served as federal coordinator for Alaskan Natural Gas Transportation Projects, a government position created to streamline the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48 states. The pipeline was never built.

In the Obama administration, Marie Therese Dominquez headed PHMSA from June 2015 through January 2017. Dominquez worked in government prior to joining PHMSA, serving as principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army Corps of Engineers and working at the National Transportation Safety Board. Cynthia Quarterman, who worked as a lawyer for pipeline companies, including Enbridge Inc., served as PHMSA administrator from 2009 to 2014. Earlier in her career, Quarterman served as director of the Minerals Management Service in the Clinton administration.