Monthly Archives: March 2019

Keeping Watch on Earth News, ORCEM, Vallejo Marine Terminal

VMT/Orcem: City Council frustrated, impatient, proposal on its last legs?

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor –  More:   View the Attorney General’s scathing 13-page letter.  For opponents’ perspective, see Fresh Air Vallejo.  For official project documents, see Vallejo’s City website.   – R.S.]

City Council frustrated about update on status of Vallejo Marine Terminal

By John Glidden, March 14, 2019 at 4:10 pm

Frustration ruled Tuesday night’s Vallejo City Council meeting, as councilors and community members expressed irritation over the lack of significant communication from the principals of Vallejo Marine Terminal (VMT).

The meeting discussion was the latest in the long saga surrounding the VMT/Orcem project, which is being proposed for development in South Vallejo.

“How much longer do we go?” asked Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan. “We need to put this to bed once and for all.”

City Hall previously said and reiterated its position on Tuesday that staff was ready on March 1 to release the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the VMT/Orcem project but the lack of needed signatures and pertinent information from VMT’s new principals — William Gilmartin and Alan Varela — caused the city to check that decision.

Vallejo City Attorney Claudia Quintana said the new principal’s failure to sign an assignment and assumption agreement makes it unclear who is making the decisions for VMT. In addition, the city previously claimed VMT has failed to provide answers to Vallejo’s data requests for the Barge Implementation Strategy and Fleet Management Plan.

In Match 2017 the Vallejo Planning Commission rejected VMT/Orcem’s application to build a a deep-water terminal (VMT) and cement facility (Orcem) on the same 31 acres at 790 and 800 Derr St. next to the Mare Island Strait in South Vallejo.

The companies appealed the decision and later that year a divided council ordered staff to complete the environmental report.

There were also questions asked about who actually owns the land, the city of Vallejo or VMT? Quintana said that in certain documents VMT has argued that it owns land belonging to the city. This is the same area of land which has been leased to Orcem.

Sampayan’s frustration was joined by councilmembers Robert McConnell and Katy Miessner.

McConnell inquired if Orcem has standing in an appeal, even though it doesn’t have control of the proposed project site.

He also asked a series of questions that Quintana said she couldn’t answer until the city could meet with VMT and Orcem representatives together.

McConnell questioned that if some of the land may be owned by Solano County, did the county Planning Commission need to review the project? What kind of cleanup was completed on site when the previous owners left and has the city of Vallejo ever inspected the property?

McConnell wonder aloud if the city has lost out on other opportunities to develop the land while VMT fails to signal if it wants to have its appeal heard.

“If there were such opportunities that were passed over by the city of Vallejo, it may well be prejudicial to us, as well,” he said.

He also asked about VMT itself, saying he conducted an online search of the business, which yielded little results.

“Who are we dealing with here?” McConnell asked.

It appears that VMT’s website is no longer active.

Both Varela and Gilmartin work for the Oakland-based ProVen Management, a general engineering contracting firm started by Varela. The Times-Herald called the Oakland-based business on Wednesday and was told that both men were “out of the office.” A voicemail left with the business was not returned. Emails to Gilmartin, Varela and their attorney Krista Kim were not returned on Wednesday.

City staff said Tuesday that they have reached out to VMT over 40 times during the past two months, trying to get the necessary actions completed.

Meanwhile, Miessner expressed her concerns with Vallejo’s use of Stantec Consulting Services, to update the project’s Environmental Justice Analysis. The council agreed to use Stantec earlier this year.

She read from a blog shared on the Stantec website “Watch out Nimby! You have an enemy…”

Miessner said she would prefer the city not use Stantec. She called into question the company’s objectivity and possible ties to the cement industry.

She also called Orcem’s recent paid advertisements in the Times-Herald as “bizarre.”

“Let’s put an end to the delays,” Orcem’s most recent quarter-page ad reads. “Let the public see the FEIR. Let the City Council vote.”

“If I were a developer, trying to work with the city, I don’t think I’d be insulting the staff I’m trying to work with. It’s very bizarre to me,” she said.

She also said VMT has yet to fund its portion of the Environmental Justice Analysis report, and execute the fourth amendment to the reimbursement agreement required for consultants working on the FEIR to finish their work. VMT’s share of EJA is about $22,778.

City officials said during the meeting, and again on Wednesday that Orcem deposited its share for the EJA but had yet to release the funds so they could be used.

“Of course it’s available,” Steve Bryan, president of Orcem Americas, said on Wednesday about the funds. “I sent them the money.”

Bryan said he wants the accurate and complete FEIR to be released for public review.

“We paid for a complete one,” he added. “I’m confident it will go out.”

In addition, Bryan said he has spoken with VMT recently and he confirmed “they are going to answer” the city.

Quintana said the city is looking to release the environmental documents as informational-only until VMT provides the needed information and signatures.

On Wednesday, the city sent VMT and Orcem, along with their respective legal teams, a letter asking for a sit down between the three sides.

In the letter, staff write that the council has given them 90 days to return “with a resolution to these issues and a determination as to whether the appeal and FEIR will be processes as previously requested or the the VMT/Orcem project application has been abandoned.”

Vice Mayor Pippin Dew-Costa, and councilmembers Rozzana Verder-Aliga, and Hakeem Brown were all absent from Tuesday’s council meeting as they attended a conference in Washington D.C.

Environmental review, Keep it in the ground, ORCEM, Vallejo Marine Terminal

Orcem/VMT Letter: Environmental Misdirection

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald, Letters

Environmental misdirection

By Jeff Carlson, March 12, 2019 at 6:00 am

The corporate interests desperate to salvage an ill-conceived waterfront slag cement mill application, now staggering on its last legs under appeal, will attempt to pull off a sly last minute magic trick. Like most magic tricks, it relies on misdirection to draw the observer’s attention away from what they should really be looking at. Instead of talking about community values and our aspirations for the future character of our city for decades to come, the applicants want us to focus on the arcane intricacies of a technical environmental review process.

It’s a cynical calculated strategy designed to take a process intended to inform decision-makers and the public and turn it into an inaccessible debate among “experts” — impossible for the general public to follow or critically evaluate. Just check out the EIR analysis of traffic impacts from all the heavy diesel truck and crosstown freight train trips the project would generate at various intersections. See if you can make heads or tails of how they arrive at their numbers. Likewise for the modeling of the impacts to air quality from all the various pollutants the project would release. One more version of an environmental report and re-hash of emissions thresholds and mitigations adds nothing useful to the discussion, but the applicants are determined to create the illusion that the decision should hinge on nothing else.

The city staff who worked on this project application for years recommended that the permits be denied, not because the project crossed this or that threshold of significance in the environmental review, but because a heavy industry project in that location is fundamentally incompatible with the surrounding neighborhood land uses. The city commission primarily responsible for making rational decisions about land use compatibility and planning overwhelmingly agreed, and voted to deny the permits. The city’s general plan update process conducted at a cost of millions of dollars with broad public participation over a period of years resulted in a very different vision for a walkable connected waterfront, in line with the Bay Commission’s public access guidelines.

Why should we pay any attention to one more round of technical environmental analysis? If a deep-pockets corporation can pay experts-for-hire to come up with greatly improved numbers at this late date, it only goes to show what those numbers are really worth. It’s particularly galling after years of trying to avoid and game the environmental review process that the applicant’s would now so desperately cling to it as their last hope.

Former City officials and some members of the lead agency repeatedly demonstrated impermissible pre-approval of the project over a period of years prior to environmental review, beginning with the resurrection and transfer of a lease for public trust land with amendments that anticipate major impactful development. A one-vote majority of the Vallejo City Council colluded in secret with the applicants in a private planning initiative, and explicitly tied the goals of their ad hoc committee with approval of the project before even a first draft EIR was ready. CEQA requires that the public be allowed to evaluate and comment on an environmental analysis based on a stable project description. All the talk of trying to approve a final version of a radically altered project now without re-circulating a new draft EIR for public comment is not at all realistic and will never fly.

This decision is not about thresholds of significance or mitigation measures, it’s about what we value as a community and consider worth preserving and protecting. Residents in the proposed project impact zone already suffer some of the highest rates of pollution-related health effects in the state, including low birth weight babies and heart and lung diseases. No matter what a final EIR and the mercenary experts have to say, it won’t change the fact that instead of an accessible walkable waterfront, local residents would get heavy neighborhood truck traffic and another load of particulate and gas pollutants on top of the unfair burden they already carry.

Let’s ignore the magical misdirection and expert dog and pony shows masquerading as participatory public forums, and keep our attention focused where it belongs. The quality of economic development matters, and the old take-whatever-comes-along approach to city planning is completely irrational. The council is under no legal obligation to wait for another version of the EIR, and I’m sorry — the applicant’s fairness argument is laughable. This project was never worth anywhere near the resources and effort the city put into it, and the costs in terms of political division and acrimony continue to pile up. Time to pull the plug and turn out the lights on this magic show.

— Jeff Carlson/Vallejo
Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Canadian oil trains, Contra Costa County, Phillips 66, Richmond CA, San Francisco Bay Area, Tar sands crude, Tar sands invasion

From California to Alberta: we must stand against tar sands

Repost from STAND.earth
[Editor: STAND is asking for your signature on a petition.  Go here.  – R.S.]

NO MORE TAR SANDS TANKERS IN CALIFORNIA

The science is in— tar sands oil is much dirtier than conventional crude. It has an outsized climate impact, is terrible for air quality, and when it spills it’s much harder to clean up than conventional crude oil. And now Phillips 66 wants to expand its refinery to process more tar sands in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This would significantly increase the amount of oil tankers coming into the Phillips 66 refinery in the bay! In addition to its negative impacts on California,increasing tar sands production is bad for indigenous communities at the source in Alberta, and transporting it via oil tankers threatens devastating oil spills in the waters of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon as well.

It’s important that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, Gov. Newsom, and other key decision makers do everything they can to stop Phillips 66 from completing this expansion project.

Thanks to public pressure from people like you, in 2017 we defeated Phillip 66’s plan to build an oil train terminal in San Luis Obispo that would have also imported tar sands. Phillips 66’s marine terminal and refinery expansion is their last ditch effort to bring more dangerous and dirty tar sands to their Bay Area refinery and we need your help. Will you join us in urging Gov. Newsom and other key decision makers to reject this harmful proposal?

To BAAQMD, Contra Costa Board of Supervisors, Gov. Newsom, and other key decision makers in California:

Tar sands oil harms our air, water, climate, and indigenous communities. We respectfully urge you to reject Phillips 66’s refinery expansion that would double the number of tankers delivering to their refinery and allow them to process tar sands.

To add your voice, click here.

Canadian oil trains, Crude By Rail, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Oil trains, Tar sands crude

Derailments raise questions about the surge in oil trains

Repost from The Star, Toronto, Ontario

Derailments raise questions about the surge in oil trains

By Gillian Steward, Mon., March 11, 2019
A train derailment is shown near Field, B.C., on Feb. 4. A Canadian Pacific freight train fell more than 60 metres from a bridge near the Alberta-British Columbia boundary in a derailment that killed three crew members. The westbound freight jumped the tracks at about 1 a.m. near Field, B.C.
A train derailment is shown near Field, B.C., on Feb. 4. A Canadian Pacific freight train fell more than 60 metres from a bridge near the Alberta-British Columbia boundary in a derailment that killed three crew members. The westbound freight jumped the tracks at about 1 a.m. near Field, B.C. (JEFF MCINTOSH / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Now that so much oil is being shipped by rail from Alberta to points south and west, the sight of a crumpled freight train on the banks of the Kicking Horse River high in the Rocky Mountains has taken on a new twist.

Normally most of that oil would be shipped by pipeline but with the Trans Mountain project and other pipeline expansions stalled or abandoned, the oil industry has taken to shipping the stuff to refineries and ports by train.

A coalition of Indigenous and environmental groups along with the B.C. government successfully stalled the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that would carry diluted bitumen from Alberta through B.C. But is this what they wanted? Trains loaded with oil navigating narrow mountain passes, rolling through small communities?

Three crewmen were killed in that horrific derailment in early February when a loaded, parked, Canadian Pacific train of 112 cars started to roll down the track west of Lake Louise.

According to the Transportation Safety Board, it barrelled along for three kilometres before 99 cars and two locomotives toppled off a curve ahead of a bridge and into or near the river.

The only saving grace from this accident is that none of the derailed cars contained bitumen, heavy oils, or other petroleum products. If they had there would have been a toxic mess that would no doubt have cost millions of dollars to clean up.

There have been other CP derailments since. Not as deadly as the one in the Kicking Horse Pass but enough to raise questions about the dangers of shipping oil by train instead of pipeline.

On Feb. 28, 20 rail cars went off the tracks west of Banff. Three days later rail cars carrying diesel fuel and grain went off the tracks in Golden B.C. The next day 20 cars on a CP train derailed in Minnesota. And just this past Saturday two CP trains collided in the rail yards in Calgary forcing at least a dozen cars off the tracks.

Again, there were no dangerous goods spilled. But I have seen trains with well over 100 oil tankers roll through Calgary. During the 2013 flood a CP train carrying petroleum products derailed on a bridge and hung precariously over the surging Bow River.

According to the National Energy Board trains are shipping record amounts of oil. Between December 2017 and December 2018 crude oil exports by rail more than doubled to 353,789 barrels a day — add on domestic shipments and the total is even higher.

And it isn’t about to slow down.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley recently announced her government will spend about $3.7 billion to lease about 4,400 new rail cars to move up to 120,000 barrels per day by 2020, with shipments starting as early as July this year.

Apparently, trains loaded with oil rolling through B.C. isn’t what John Horgan’s government had anticipated when it vowed to use all the tools in its tool box to block the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Because now the B.C. government wants more regulatory control over rail shipments of heavy oil even though rail transportation falls under federal jurisdiction. And it wants to know exactly how much heavy oil is being shipped by rail in B.C.

So far that information has only been made available to federal agencies. B.C. will argue its case before the B.C. Court of Appeal on March 18.

It’s obvious that the B.C. government and its supporters don’t want any bitumen or heavy oils transported through B.C. This is not just about the expansion of one pipeline, it’s about stopping heavy oils, a key resource in Alberta, from being shipped anywhere by any means in B.C.

But now the B.C. government is dealing with the law of unintended consequences.

Holding up the Trans Mountain pipeline has led to more oil trains, and heightened the possibility that one of them could derail and spill barrels of heavy oil.

Horgan is no doubt praying that there will be no derailment of oil cars anywhere in B.C. Because if that happens he will have a lot to answer for.