Tag Archives: Pittsburg CA

Packed house for WESPAC scoping meeting in Pittsburg CA

From an email by Pittsburg Defense Council

Wow! What a turn-out!

From: Pittsburg Defense Council
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2015 6:00 PM

A massive THANK YOU! to everyone who attended the Scoping Meeting at Pittsburg City Hall yesterday evening. The room was packed and the meeting ran for more than two hours, with the public comment period taking up most of that time.

All of the speakers brought articulate and well-researched comments and questions, and the atmosphere was one of respect and consideration. We were all incredibly impressed and honored to be in such great company.

The next step is to make sure all of our questions about the environmental impact of the proposed WesPac project are considered in the report analysis. The only way to do this is to write a public comments letter – you can email it or send it ‘snail mail.’  …MORE (Including guidelines for letter writing)

Pittsburg CA: Suit claims EPA failed to investigate

Repost from the Contra Costa Times

Pittsburg: Suit claims EPA failed to investigate complaints of environmental discrimination

By Bay City News Service, 07/21/2015 09:43:40 AM PDT

PITTSBURG – A consortium of environmental groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to investigate complaints of discrimination in the placement of power plants or hazardous waste dumps in various locations across the country, including two power plants in Pittsburg.

The EPA has 180 days to respond to the complaints, but according to the suit, which was filed on July 15, the federal regulator has not responded to the complaints in 10 to 20 years in some cases.

The suit includes allegations about facilities in Michigan, Texas, New Mexico, Alabama and California.

In Pittsburg, the suit alleges that the local regulatory agencies — the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the California Air Resources Board, and the California Energy Commission — discriminated against residents by locating two power plants in an already environmentally over-burdened area, according to Marianne Engelman Lado, a lawyer with Earthjustice, which is representing the plaintiffs.

“This is in a community where people have high rates of asthma or cancer and they were concerned that these plants would add to that,” Engelman Lado said.

Californians for Renewable Energy, or CARE, filed a complaint with the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights in April 2000 charging the local agencies discriminated against the predominantly nonwhite and low-income residents by failing to consider the additional environmental burden of the two new plants, the complaint alleges.

Permitting for the plants, the Los Medanos Energy Center LLC and Delta Energy Center, continued and the plants were approved and went online in 2001 and 2002, respectively, according to the complaint. The EPA accepted the complaint in December 2001 but has yet to conduct an investigation into the allegations, despite attempts in 2006 and 2009 by CARE to prompt the federal agency to respond, the complaint alleges.

In June 2002, the EPA classified Los Medanos Energy Center as being in “significant violation” of the Clean Air Act and over the last five years the facility has had to pay over $3,000 in fines for violating the act, according to the complaint.

In the meantime, residents have been suffering the consequences, Engelman Lado said.

“The plants are still standing and they’re polluting,” she said. “They’re emitting toxins and the community is living with that everyday.”

Engelman Lado said it’s clear the EPA has violated the law, and she’s hoping the lawsuit will result in the EPA completing their investigation.

Engelman Lado added she’s confident that when the EPA does complete the investigation, it will make findings of discrimination.

“We would hope, whether through a court order or by sitting down at the table, we could bring resources to bear to say, ‘What can we do to help these communities who are suffering from a lack of infrastructure or resources,'” she said.

That could take the form of more monitoring, infrastructure to mitigate some of the negative impacts of the power plants, or more extensive buffers between the community and the plants.

A representative from the EPA did not return a request for comment.

Pittsburg CA: Critics blast proposed oil terminal, even without Bakken crude trains

Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[Editor:  Significant quote: “WesPac officials said they dropped inbound crude oil shipments by rail from their plans for several reasons, including public sentiment against it, an unstable regulatory environment surrounding those shipments, and drops in crude oil prices that have made such shipments less economically viable.”  – RS]

Pittsburg: Critics blast proposed oil terminal, even without Bakken crude trains

By Sam Richards, 04/07/2015 12:31:04 PM PDT

PITTSBURG — Train loads of Bakken crude oil are no longer in the plans for a proposed oil storage terminal near the waterfront, but that does not mean the project is being welcomed to town with open arms.

The City Council voted 5-0 Monday night to approve amending the environmental report for WesPac Midstream LLC’s proposed Pittsburg Terminal Project, which would renovate and modernize a long-dormant PG&E tank farm between West 10th Street and the Sacramento River waterfront.

The key change is that the five previously planned 104-car trains of domestic oil, mostly the volatile Bakken crude, are no longer part of the project. The new EIR will reflect that.

Councilman Sal Evola stressed that the vote reflected the council’s desire for “the process” to play out and fully vet the proposal.

“Every project at least deserves its fair process,” Evola said. “I’m all for preserving our industrial base, but we have to do it safely, and fair process is needed.”

Others were less interested in process, saying the WesPac proposal to bring an average of 242,000 barrels of crude or partially refined crude oil to be unloaded daily from ships and from pipelines, and stored in 16 tanks on 125 acres, is a problem for various reasons.

Speakers told the council that vapors from the storage tanks, the possibility of spills into the Sacramento Delta and the danger of the tanks exploding — all near hundreds of downtown homes — are potential issues, and that the project should simply be rejected.

“The only way you can mitigate this project is not do it,” said Willie Mims, representing the NAACP and the Black Political Association.

And though some at the meeting Monday night are grateful that WesPac that no longer plans to bring crude oil to the terminal by rail, others told the council that leaving out rail shipments doesn’t come close to salvaging the project. Some 30 people holding up “No WesPac” signs or wearing similar T-shirts crowded the council meeting.

Without the trains, the Pittsburg Terminal Project would now take oil from ships and a pipeline from the Central Valley and store it for later processing by refineries in Martinez, Benicia, Rodeo and Richmond.

Pamela Aranz of Antioch, representing the group Global Community Monitor, was one of several speakers who criticized the WesPac proposal as a dinosaur — old-fashioned, with increasingly outmoded technology. Others said the oil terminal would be at cross purposes with a nicely developing downtown area. Developing wind and/or solar power on that land, Aranz and others said, would make better sense.

Plans for the Pittsburg Terminal Project, first proposed in 2011, had been dormant for the past year, after local groups like Pittsburg Defense Council had protested the prospect of trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil rolling in to the city. Communities across the United States — including Pittsburg, Richmond and Berkeley — have come out in opposed to crude by rail shipments through their cities after several high-profile derailments, including one in Lac Mégantic, Quebec, in 2013 killed 47 people and destroyed part of that city.

The new environmental report, to be paid for by WesPac, will replace an earlier one that was criticized in 2014 by the state Attorney General’s office because it did not suitably analyze air pollution impacts, address the risks of accidents involving storing and moving oil, consider the project’s climate change impacts, and consider a “reasonable range of alternatives” that could reduce impacts. WesPac officials said they dropped inbound crude oil shipments by rail from their plans for several reasons, including public sentiment against it, an unstable regulatory environment surrounding those shipments, and drops in crude oil prices that have made such shipments less economically viable.

If the needed approvals come at a typical pace, renovation work at the old PG&E tanks could begin in early 2016, and likely would take between 18 and 24 months.

Representatives from several area labor union locals supported moving ahead with the environmental study. Some said Monday night they wanted the jobs, both to rebuild the terminal and to operate it. Others said they favored the environmental process determining whether the terminal would be a safe place for union workers to be.

That, Evola said, is one benefit of continuing the process. “We want to be overly transparent,” he said.

That is fine with Lisa Graham and other members of Pittsburg Defense Council.

“We’ll be shining a bright spotlight on the project in the coming months,” she said.

Recent Grassroots Victories: Standing Against Big Oil’s Crude-by-Rail Push

Repost from NRDC Switchboard

Standing Against Big Oil’s Crude-by-Rail Push

By Franz Matzner, April 6, 2015

Franz MatznerOver the last few days, we’ve seen a series of grassroots victories that prove we’re not stuck with Big Oil’s plan to foist dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure on communities across the country.

Oil Train Fire.jpg
A March 5, 2015, oil train derailment on the banks of the Galena River in Illinois. (Environmental Protection Agency)

Just last week, TransCanada (of Keystone XL infamy) confirmed that it is dropping a marine crude oil export terminal in Quebec due to environmental concerns, a move that will delay the target opening date for the massive Energy East tar sands pipeline by at least two years.

Across the continent, Big Oil was also dealt two blows against its attempts to import extreme crudes into California by rail. In the face of strong community opposition, midstream oil company WesPac has abandoned its plan to build a rail terminal that would have brought dirty crude oil into the San Francisco Bay Area.

A few years ago, WesPac proposed a rail and marine terminal that would transport 242,000 barrels per day of crude oil–nearly a third of the capacity of Keystone XL–through Pittsburg, CA, a small community of 60,000 residents and then on to Bay Area refineries. The problems with WesPac’s proposal are myriad: it would expose Pittsburg’s population, largely communities of color and low-income communities, to the risks of exploding trains and increased air pollution, and it would require a massive investment in fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when we should be moving toward clean energy solutions.

The project was so ill-conceived that, following comments by NRDC and others, the California Attorney General wrote a letter finding “significant legal problems” with the project’s environmental review documents. Accordingly, the city decided to put the project on hold and revisit its environmental review process. That’s where things stood for over a year, until last week, when WesPac announced that it would drop the rail terminal aspect of the project altogether.

As community and environmental advocates have repeatedly pointed out, oil trains pose serious risks–risks that were highlighted by a series of fiery accidents over the last few weeks. (Notably, some recent accidents have involved Canadian tar sands crude, in addition to a bevy of dangerous mishaps involving North Dakota’s Bakken crude, which has long been known to be highly volatile and has been the culprit in most oil train disasters.)

This win in Pittsburg follows a recent decision by another Bay Area city, Benicia, to withdraw and revise its environmental review documents for a proposed crude-by-rail terminal at Valero’s Benicia refinery. As NRDC and others, including the California Attorney General, pointed out in legal comments, the terminal would pose serious safety and health threats to Benicia and to residents along the rail line. Momentum is also building against another crude-by-rail proposal up for consideration further south in San Luis Obispo County.

These victories show the power of local communities to stop Big Oil in its tracks.

The battle, however, is far from over: Valero is still trying to push forward with its rail terminal, and WesPac’s proposed marine terminal would have significant impacts on the fragile San Francisco Bay Delta and nearby residents. In fact, WesPac’s plans may still include the renovation of long-dormant storage tanks to stockpile large volumes of volatile crude oil, even though those tanks are literally a stone’s throw from homes, churches, and a school.

Train Map.jpg
The proposed WesPac project. (Draft Recirculated Environmental Impact Report, Figure 2-2)

Some critics have used the boom in crude oil trains as evidence that we should allow more pipelines. They offer the false choice of risk from pipelines or risk from oil trains. The truth is more sinister. Big Oil wants more of both. Pipelines and rail serve different geographic areas and often carry different types of oil. The problem is that both forms of transportation have risks, and both bring fossil fuels perilously close to our communities. Clean energy investments do the opposite: they eliminate the dangerous risks of spills and bomb trains, while cutting carbon pollution.

It’s time our elected leaders follow the example of communities across the country by saying “no” to Big Oil and “yes” to clean solutions that accelerate fuel efficiency, electric vehicles, clean fuels, and renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Franz A. Matzner is associate director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. His policy background includes energy, climate, and forestry. He previously held the position of senior policy analyst for agriculture and the environment at Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS). Matzner graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-author of the NRDC report “Safe At Home: Making the Federal Fire Safety Budget Work for Communities.”