Category Archives: Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Climate action, Climate Change, Jobs and Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Climate Action March in San Francisco, Sat. Sept. 8

Repost from Natural Resources Defense Council – Expert Blog

Marching for Climate Action Momentum

Sept. 7, 2018, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, NRDC Chief Program Officer 
Keystone XL climate action rally that took place after Trump announced he would be approving the pipelineNRDC/Maria Martinez

Globally, the public sense of urgency to tackle climate change is strong. We are increasingly overwhelmed by evidence of climate change already happening. The health impacts of air pollution, the rising and warming of our oceans, and damage to our forests, communities and homes paint a bleak picture of what the future will be if we do not shift from our dependence on fossil fuels to a clean energy economy.

It is often our most vulnerable communities and populations that suffer from these impacts of climate change and fossil fuel dependence. We are already seeing the economic benefits of shifting to clean energy and there is more that we can do to help this shift along and to ensure that no community is left behind.

This is why on September 8, I’ll be joining the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice march in San Francisco. We will show the strong support for bold action from world leaders gathering for the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco September 12 – 14, 2018. The Summit is meant to show how the global community is stepping up action in the fight against dangerous climate change.

As countries the world over look to further strengthen their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement by 2020, the summit has the potential to mark a critical turning point. Those who still deny climate change will be held accountable for the damage that today’s climate pollution is already causing. They will be held accountable for their lack of leadership to put the needed clean energy solutions in place.

In most of the world, the public debate over climate change is not about the reality or urgency but about political commitment to the solutions.

However, the United States lags behind and climate change is highly politicized as a proxy for the question of whom to trust. More than a year ago, President Trump announced plans to withdraw U.S. participation from the Paris climate agreement and thereby abandon global leadership on the environmental challenge of our time. He also has moved to undermine four major climate change fighting initiatives through gutting the Clean Power Plan, rolling back clean car and fuel efficiency standards, delaying methane control on existing oil and gas wells and blocking the super climate change pollutant HFC controls.

American federal government action is critical to meeting our domestic global carbon pollution reduction goals and to encouraging climate action progress internationally. Yet, with the U.S. federal government not only sitting this one out, but actively working to reverse progress on climate solutions, we must get as far as we can as fast as we can in the meantime while setting up the framework for when the U.S. again becomes a climate leader in the future.

It is both necessary and possible for countries around the world to strengthen their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement as we work to hold down the rising global temperature. The summit will highlight the positive action that is already underway to combat climate change and put clean energy solutions in. Regional, state and local governments, communities, investors and businesses from around the world: that is where we see real reductions in climate pollution and innovative clean energy solutions emerging.

The Paris climate agreement was an important step toward curbing climate change, but the world needs to go further faster if we are to keep our world habitable in the face of climate change.

On Saturday, we will march to remind our leaders that we have their backs. Tackling climate change is a matter of survival. It is what is right: environmentally, ethically and economically. The march for climate, jobs and justice is a chance to remind ourselves about how critical it is to honor the connections between our natural world and the well-being of our communities and families. It is a chance to demand climate action.

Bakken Crude, DEIR, Derailment, Moratorium, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Petroleum Coke (Petcoke), Tar sands crude, Valero Crude By Rail, Volatile gases

Diane Bailey: Valero’s Promise to Benicia: We’ll only have an environmental disaster once every 111 years

Repost rom NRDC Switchboard, Diane Bailey’s Blog

September 17, 2014

Valero’s Promise to Benicia: We’ll only have an environmental disaster once every 111 years.

Diane Bailey

Actually, that’s kind of worrisome, especially considering that if you don’t experience that disaster yourself, your kids probably will.  This is one of the many absurd elements showing Valero’s cavalier attitude toward public safety in the draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for its proposed crude by rail project, for which public comments were due this week.  The hazard analysis in this report is also a serious underestimate, according to the State among many others: The California Public Utilities Commission notes the serious failure of Valero to address the “potential for tragic consequences of crude oil tank car ruptures” from its proposed Crude by Rail Project.

casselton ND 12 30 13.jpg
Valero’s Promise to Benicia: We’ll only have an environmental disaster once every 111 years

This dangerous crude project is so riddled with problems that many communities up-rail are now voicing serious concern.  The City of Sacramento highlights the high concentration of people around the rail freight lines (“more than 147,000 City residents live within ½ mile”) serving the “Valero Benicia refinery [which] is one of two California refineries that are in the process of securing permits to build rail terminals to import Canadian tar sands and Bakken crude oils.” (emphasis added)  And the City of Davis suggests that the “highest levels of protection [be implemented] before disasters such as hazardous material releases and explosions occur [so that] we can avoid having such disasters in the first place.”

Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community explain why the project is fatally flawed with 132 pages of concerns.  Valero’s crude by rail proposal is like so many other projects popping up all over the nation in a mad rush to access cheaper, extreme and dangerous crude oils, with little regard for public health or safety.  This project is a total disaster (based on NRDC, CBE and other comments) because it brings:

  • More Refinery Pollution: Bringing in extreme crudes like tar sands and fracked Bakken crude will only increase refinery pollution.  Valero’s Benicia refinery already releases 70 percent more toxic chemicals than the average for California.
  • Toxic Plumes Along Rail Lines: This thing called “crude shrinkage” happens during transport, where entrained gases escape, leading to a 0.5 to 3 percent loss of crude oil.  It’s a big problem for volatile crude oils like Bakken, and coupled with the high benzene levels found in some North American crudes (up to 7%), it creates a serious toxic plume around rail lines.  For instance, we estimate over 100 pounds per day of excess benzene emissions from the Valero proposal in the Bay Area (or 1800 times more than the draft EIR reports).
  • Extreme Crudes are Dangerous: Valero and other oil companies pretend that they can mix extreme crudes like tar sands and fracked Bakken into the ideal “Alaskan North Slope look-alike” crude, which sounds great, except that it doesn’t work that way in reality.  Both Bakken and tar sands carry their dangerous properties into any crude oil blend making it more volatile, toxic, and corrosive.
  • CBR Terminals at Refineries Amplify the Hazard: Valero proposes to site its crude by rail unloading facility within 150 feet of a number of very large refinery tanks that store highly flammable and potentially explosive material.  If a derailment occurred at the terminal, it could set off a chain reaction of fire and explosions at the refinery.  And there have been three derailments in Benicia outside the Valero refinery in the past year; luckily those trains were carrying petroleum coke, not crude oil.
  • Risk of Catastrophic Accidents All Along the Rail Route:  Valero’s “Barkan report” that estimates a release only every 111 years from the proposed 100 daily tank cars carrying crude is absurd for many reasons.  Most egregious is that it fails to consider recent data, like the six major crude oil train accidents over the past year that have resulted in massive fireballs and destruction, including 47 casualties in Lac Mégantic. The safety risks to tens of thousands of people living around these freight rail lines remains grave.

The oil industry has been promoting “look-alike” crudes that attempt to mimic conventional crude by blending extreme bottom of the barrel crudes.  The mile-long trains laden with these extreme crudes are a Trojan horse that puts millions of Californians at risk and threatens to undo several decades of environmental progress.  We need a moratorium on all new crude by rail projects, including Valero-Benicia, until the state can assess the cumulative impacts of these projects, make sure environmental impacts are fully mitigated and assure communities that they will be safe.

Draft EIR, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Oil spill, Rail accidents, Risk Assessment, Valero Crude By Rail

Benicia DEIR downplays risks in marked contrast to NRDC assessment

Repost from AllGov California

This Is Where Deadly Crude Oil Trains May Be Rolling Through California

By Ken Broder, June 20, 2014
(graphic: Natural Resources Defense Council)

Although this country’s oil boom has been accompanied by an explosion of dangerous crude-carrying trains―literally and figuratively―a much-anticipated environmental impact report (Summary pdf) says the spill threat from Valero Refining Company’s proposal to run 100 tanker cars a day through Roseville and Sacramento to its Benicia refinery is negligible.

The draft EIR, written by Environmental Science Associates of San Francisco for the city of Benicia and released on Tuesday, singled out air pollution, “significant and unavoidable,” as the sole danger among 11 “environmental resource or issue areas.”

The next day, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released seven maps detailing the rail routes through the “Crude Oil Train Derailment Risk Zones in California,” which stretches from the Bay Area to the Central/San Joaquin Valley and encompasses 4 million people.

The NRDC’s assessment of risk was markedly different than in the EIR. Noting that “California has seen a dramatic increase of crude by rail, from 45,000 barrels in 2009 to six million barrels in 2013” without any new safety measures or emergency response put in place, the NRDC report said the aging “soda cans on wheels” are not built to handle the particularly volatile crude being fracked out of the ground in America’s rejuvenated oil fields like those in North Dakota, and shipped to refiners.

Tracks would run within half a mile of 135,000 people in Sacramento and 25,000 people in Davis.

The NRDC wants old tanker cars removed from service, lower speeds for trains, rerouting through less-sensitive areas, disclosure of what kind of crude is being carried, more visible emergency preparedness, fees on shippers to pay for emergency response, high-risk designations for oil-trains and more comprehensive risk assessments.

The EIR was a bit more upbeat.

It concluded that oil spills between Roseville and Benicia would occur about once every 111 years. The project would have no impact on agriculture and forestry resources or mineral resources. It would also have less-than-significant impacts on aesthetics, population and housing, public services, recreation and utilities and service systems.

In other words, the assumption is there won’t be anything like the tragic accident in July 2013 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, where 72 tank cars of crude oil exploded, killing 47 people and destroying much of the town’s core. As Russell Gold and Betsy Morris explained in the Wall Street Journal, “Each tank car of crude holds the energy equivalent of 2 million sticks of dynamite or the fuel in a wide body jetliner.”

The Sacramento Bee said the risk assessment’s author, Christopher Barken, previously worked for the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s leading advocacy group in Washington, and does research supported by the railroad association.

Barken’s website at the University of Illinois, where he is a professor and executive director of the Railroad Engineering Program, says, “Our strong relationship with the rail industry means our research has an impact.”

In describing the twice-a-day snaking of 50-car trains through heavily populated areas, the report offered far more information than has generally been made available by rail companies to state and local governments, as well as disaster first-responders. But the EIR did acknowledge Benicia would not reveal seven Valero “trade secrets” (pdf) at the oil company’s request.

That “confidential business information” included the specific crude Valero would be shipping in by rail and the properties of crude it refined now or in the past. That lack of information would be complicating factors in accurately assessing pollution and risk.

California, like states and localities across the nation, are scrambling just to get a handle on how much crude-by-rail is coursing through their jurisdictions, much less assessing what regulations and safety measures need to be put in place. They are working blind.

A study by Politico analyzed 400 oil-train incidents nationally since 1971 and found a dramatic escalation the past five years. Property damage from 70 accidents through mid-May this year is already $10 million, triple the year before.

“It has become abundantly clear that there are a whole slew of freight rail safety measures that, while for many years have been moving through the gears of bureaucracy, must now be approved and implemented in haste,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said.

They must. Because the trains are already rolling and Valero would like to get its California project finished by the end of the year. America is waiting.