Category Archives: Contra Costa County

Communities for a Better Environment sues Contra Costa County and Phillips 66

Repost from The Contra Costa Times

Rodeo refinery project subject of legal challenge

By Tom Lochner, 03/04/2015 11:37:08 AM PST

MARTINEZ — An environmental group has sued Contra Costa County over its approval of a propane and butane recovery project at a Rodeo refinery, contending it is a piece of a grander plan to process heavy, dirty tar sands crude that would come to California by rail.

Phillips 66, which owns the Rodeo refinery and another refinery near Santa Maria, in San Luis Obispo County, is a co-defendant in the suit, filed Wednesday in Contra Costa Superior Court in Martinez by Communities for a Better Environment. The two refineries together constitute the two-part San Francisco Refinery, according to the Phillips 66 website.

“Phillips 66 cannot meet its propane recovery objective without switching to a lower quality feedstock, like tar sands, and without other Phillips 66 projects to assist in that overall switch,” CBE attorney Roger Lin said in a news release.

CBE has said that the refinery, with the acquiescence of authorities, seeks to “piecemeal” what the environmental group describes as “a tar sands refining project that could worsen pollution, climate, and refinery and rail explosion hazards.” The environmental impact report, CBE contends, “hid the project from the public and failed to mitigate its significant environmental impacts.”

A rail spur project at the Santa Maria refinery, designed to receive about five trains a week, each with about 80 tank cars of crude oil, is under review by San Luis Obispo County.

The trains could arrive at Santa Maria from the south, via the Los Angeles basin, or the north, possibly along the shores of San Pablo and San Francisco bays and through San Jose.

Crude oil is partially refined at the Santa Maria refinery, then sent on to Rodeo via a 200-mile pipeline.

Phillips 66 spokesman Paul Adler said Wednesday that the Board of Supervisors got it right on Feb. 3 and that its decision “will help ensure the long-term viability of the Rodeo Refinery and the many jobs it provides.”

“Our plans for this project reflect our company’s commitment to operational excellence and safety while enhancing the competitiveness of the facility,” Adler said in an email.

“Following two years of careful analysis by the Contra Costa County board and its expert staff, claims that this project is a crude by rail project were dismissed,” Adler added. “Continued allegations by Communities for a Better Environment that this is a crude-by-rail project are inaccurate and misleading.”

Officials at County Counsel Sharon Anderson’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

Along with the Rodeo project’s environmental impact report, the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 3 rejected two appeals of a November 2013 county Planning Commission-approved use permit for the project. The appellants were CBE and the law firm of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger on behalf of the Rodeo Citizens Association. The board vote was 4-1, with Supervisor John Gioia voting no.

The Rodeo project calls for installation of new equipment to recover and sell propane and butane instead of burning it as fuel at the refinery or flaring off excesses.

Phillips 66 has said the project would reduce emissions of several pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, partly by using cleaner-burning natural gas as refinery fuel and because sulfur would be extracted to prepare the propane and butane for sale.

The new equipment would include a hydrotreater, six storage vessels and two new rail spurs related to shipping the recovered propane and butane out of the refinery in tank cars.

Lawsuit filed to Stop Tar Sands in the Bay Area

Reposted from Communities For a Better Environment

Lawsuit filed TODAY to Stop Tar Sands in the Bay Area!

This morning CBE sued Phillips 66 and Contra Costa County based on the County’s omission of critical crude quality information and its failure to mitigate the significant environmental, public health and safety impacts from Phillips 66’s Propane Fuel Recovery Project before approving the project and issuing permits.

Read more in CBE’s press release [here] ; and see today’s filings [here].

BNSF train car derails in Richmond, CA

Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[Editor: see also this NBC Bay Area video news report by Cheryl Hurd.  Apologies for the commercial ad.  – RS]

Burlington Northern Santa Fe car carrying pork derails in Richmond, raising concerns about more hazardous materials

By Robert Rogers, December 3, 2014

RICHMOND — The derailment Friday of a single rail car containing refrigerated pork is under investigation by Burlington Northern Santa Fe officials, who say it occurred during a low-speed movement within its rail yard and suggests no added risk for the rail transport of more hazardous materials in Contra Costa County.

“This was a very minor incident with a single car going less than 10 mph,” BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said. “There are many precautions we take to ensure that 99.997 percent of all hazardous materials we transport reach their destinations without a release caused by an accident.”

The car was being pulled by a locomotive through the yard just west of Richmond Parkway near Pennsylvania Avenue when it tipped over.

Kent said people cut through a chain-link fence soon after and took boxes of refrigerated pork that spilled from the crumpled hull. Empty cardboard Tyson Foods boxes were seen scattered in the neighborhood nearby.

Kent said the incident is under investigation, and she declined to say what may have caused it or whether the line on which the derailment occurred is ever used to transport hazardous materials.

The incident and its aftermath — the car remains broken beside the tracks and will soon be scrapped — has only heightened concerns in a community already on edge over the recent influx of crude-by-rail shipments, much of it from the Bakken region of North Dakota.

City officials last month sent a letter to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District urging the agency to revoke a permit allowing Kinder Morgan to offload Bakken crude and Canadian tar sands oil at its Richmond rail yard, the major draw for local crude-by-rail traffic.

In September, a lawsuit by environmental groups seeking to revoke that permit — which was issued without public notice — was tossed out by a judge on the grounds that it was filed too late.

Kent said BNSF transports two oil-carrying trains per month in California but declined to say exactly where, citing security concerns.

Industry experts expect crude-by-rail traffic to increase in the coming years, as North American oil extraction grows, and the product must be refined in facilities across the United States, including several in Contra Costa County.

Randy Sawyer, Contra Costa County’s chief environmental health and hazardous materials officer, said trains of up to 100 cars travel into Richmond before being transferred to trucks or pipelines to be refined. He noted that cars carrying hazardous materials are more robust than the one that carried the spilled pork, and they would be unlikely to spill in a low-speed derailment.

Nonetheless, “A crude car could tip over also,” Sawyer said. “It’s a possibility.”

Kent said Friday’s derailment does not indicate a wider problem.

“We operate all of our trains with safety as our first priority,” Kent said. “However, when it comes to hazardous material we do have more restrictive operating procedures.”

County Supervisor John Gioia said BNSF officials have told him they are developing “more resilient” cars for crude oil, a development he took to mean that the company expects the crude-by-rail market to continue to grow, and that federal regulators are likely to impose new standards as communities across the country see increased crude-by-rail traffic in their midst.

“Any train derailment concerns me because there could be anything from injury to a larger public safety issue; it’s all important,” Gioia said. “But this new (incident) hasn’t told me anything new other than what we know already based on derailments in other parts of the country: that trains with hazardous materials pose a risk.”

Pittsburg: WesPac oil-by-rail storage project remains on hold

Repost from The Contra Costa Times

Pittsburg: WesPac oil-by-rail storage project remains on hold

By Paul Burgarino, 08/02/2014

PITTSBURG — The brakes remain on a massive $200 million plan to transport domestic crude oil by railroad cars and ships, store it in refurbished storage tanks and pipe it to refineries throughout the Bay Area.

And after almost six months of no action, it may stay that way for a while.

Pittsburg officials said it will be at least early 2015 before the project is brought before city decision-makers — if it ever is.

“Right now, we’re kind of in a holding pattern and waiting for a green light from the applicant,” City Manager Joe Sbranti said.

In February, city leaders — prompted by a letter from the office of state Attorney General Kamala Harris urging further scrutiny on air quality and the risk of accidental spills, as well as fierce community opposition — told WesPac Energy that it would be reopening the public comment period on its draft environmental documents.

The WesPac project calls for an average of 242,000 barrels of crude or partially refined crude oil to be unloaded daily and stored in 16 tanks on 125 acres once used by Pacific Gas & Electric to store fuel oil two decades ago.

Since earlier this year, Pittsburg planners and a hired consultant have briefly discussed some of the issues raised, but that has ceased until WesPac decides whether it will put more money toward continuing the process, Sbranti said. All costs for studies of development projects are covered by applicants, he said.

The earliest a revised contract would be considered by the City Council is September, Sbranti said. After that, he estimated additional studies could take anywhere from six to 10 months.

“If and when they decide to come forward, they are entitled to and deserve a fair hearing,” Mayor Sal Evola said. “As it stands today, as far as we know, they’ve put the project on hold.”

Art Diefenbach, project manager for WesPac, said in an email, “We have nothing new to share about our project at this time.”

The facility, located on the western edge of town near homes, schools, churches and the Pittsburg Marina, would handle an estimated 88 million barrels of domestic and imported crude oil and partially refined crude. Its capacity is massive, and 20 percent of the state’s processed oil could pass through it over the course of a year, according to the Jan. 15 letter from Harris’ office.

Supporters of the $200 million project say it will bring jobs and revenue to the city, make use of a dormant industrial parcel, and help refineries meet their future needs at a time when oil production in California is declining and existing storage is near capacity.

The Pittsburg Defense Council, along with several environmental groups, is fighting the project over concerns about air quality, environmental issues and safety concerns involving the transportation of crude by rail.

“We’ve been keeping an eye out for when it comes back on city agendas, and being vigilant,” said longtime resident and Defense Council member Lyana Monterrey. The group has also been keeping an eye on crude-by-rail issues in Berkeley, Richmond and Benicia, she said.

The Pittsburg critics point to a train carrying Bakken crude that exploded in July 2013 in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people, and other derailments and explosions have occurred in the past year in Alabama and North Dakota.

Crude shipments by rail from the Midwest and Canada into the state have increased from about 1.1 million barrels in 2012 to about 6.3 million barrels in 2013, according to the California Energy Commission. One thing the WesPac issue has brought forward is a “heightened sense of awareness” about rail safety, as both the Union Pacific and Burlington North Santa Fe lines cut through Pittsburg, Evola said.

Pittsburg, he said, is lobbying for a bill currently in the state Assembly requiring railroads to report details of transports of hazardous materials on a quarterly basis to the state Office of Emergency Services.