Repost from Stop Crude By Rail on Facebook
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Repost from Stop Crude By Rail on Facebook
If you would like a replacement of your sign or a new yard sign, please email Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community at info@SafeBenicia.org.
Repost from The Contra Costa Times
SAN FRANCISCO — A lawsuit by environmental groups seeking to stop shipments of crude oil by rail to Richmond was tossed out by a judge Friday on the grounds that it was filed too late.
Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in March. The suit involved a Feb. 3 permit issued to Kinder Morgan to receive crude oil by rail at its Richmond trans-loading facility along the BNSF Railway tracks off Garrard Boulevard, where the oil is transferred to trucks.
Kinder Morgan Material Services LLC and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP were co-defendants.
The Feb. 3 permit amended a July 2013 permit that allowed Kinder Morgan to operate a denatured ethanol and crude oil bulk terminal. Ethanol is a volatile liquid derived from grain that is used as fuel or as a fuel additive, among other uses. The Feb. 3 amendments included modified testing procedures and standards for trucks. But the judge applied the 180-day statute of limitations to when the July 2013 permit was issued.
Both permits were issued ministerially and without environmental review.
Kinder Morgan has declined to say where the trucks are headed, citing confidentiality, but they are widely believed to be bound for the Tesoro Golden Eagle refinery in Martinez. Tesoro was an intervenor in the lawsuit, which had sought a preliminary injunction against further crude oil operations at Kinder Morgan and suspension of the air district permit pending a full review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Earlier this year, a Tesoro spokeswoman confirmed the Martinez facility receives between 5,000 and 10,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude, a light, flammable variety named after oil fields in North Dakota and adjacent areas. That amount is equivalent to about two to four trains per month, the spokeswoman said, and is received through a “third-party facility” that she did not identify.
Air district counsel Brian Bunger hailed Friday’s decision as “a correct application of the law.”
“We’re pleased with the outcome,” Bunger said.
Air district spokeswoman Lisa Fasano said late Friday that “The Air District will continue to work with state legislators and policy makers regarding where and how crude oil is transported into the region for refining.”
But Earthjustice blasted the dismissal, saying it allows Kinder Morgan and the air district to “get away with opening (Richmond) to crude oil transport by rail without public notice.”
“This is just how the agencies and industry wins — hide the information, make the change under the cover of night, and hope people don’t notice while the clock winds down on any hope to stop these dangerous and callous developments,” Earthjustice attorney Suma Peesapati said in a news release. “What’s worse is this emboldens other companies to do the same thing and hide their switch to crude oil.”
Kinder Morgan spokesman Richard Wheatley said his company is “satisfied with the outcome.”
“It was a well-reasoned and thoughtful decision by the judge,” Wheatley said in an email Friday. “We look forward to continuing to serve our customers safely and reliably.”
Tesoro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Responding by email Friday, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, who sits on the air district board, said: “Despite this case’s dismissal, I remain concerned about the safety of transporting Bakken Crude and believe it’s important for the Federal Government to strengthen safety standards.”
Repost from Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A San Francisco Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by environmental groups against Kinder Morgan’s Richmond, California, rail terminal, which quietly began unloading crude oil from trains this year, saying the plaintiffs waited too long to file their complaint.
The groups argued that since the company was given permission from regulators to begin accepting the deliveries without public notice, they were not immediately aware of the change.
Judge Peter Busch acknowledged there were “deep concerns” about the new cargo, which passes through the densely populated city of Richmond, but said the plaintiffs missed the 180-day window to request that the permit be revoked.
Suma Peesapati, an attorney for the environmental groups that brought the suit, said the company and regulators knowingly deceived the public.
“This is just how the agencies and industry win – hide the information, make the change under the cover of night, and hope people don’t notice while the clock winds down on any hope to stop these dangerous and callous developments,” she said.
Kinder Morgan and the regulator, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said they followed the law as written and denied doing anything in secret. California law does not require public notification or an environmental review for the permit, which was issued in February.
Friday’s ruling was met with hisses from environmentalists who attended the hearing, some of whom participated in a protest the previous day where they chained themselves to a fence at the facility.
The Kinder Morgan terminal is the most substantial oil-by-rail facility in the state, handling up to 72,000 barrels per day. The crude is unloaded from incoming trains and placed on trucks bound for a Tesoro-owned refinery in Martinez.
The number of trains ferrying crude oil by rail to California from Canada and North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation has jumped dramatically in recent years, prompting safety and environmental concerns.
In July 2013, a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in a town in the Canadian province of Quebec, killing 47 people.
(Reporting by Rory Carroll and Jennifer Chaussee; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Ken Wills)
Repost from SFGate
A judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by environmental groups over shipments of volatile crude oil to the Richmond rail terminal, saying they had waited too long to challenge regulators’ approval of the project – approval they discovered only after the deadline for going to court.
Trains from the Midwest have been carrying the oil to the terminal of the Kinder Morgan energy company since early February. The environmental law firm Earthjustice learned of the shipments from news reports in mid-March and sued later that month, saying air-quality regulators should have conducted an environmental study of the potential for toxic emissions as well as the explosions that have occurred elsewhere.
But the Bay Area Air Quality Management District had decided in July 2013 to let Kinder Morgan receive crude oil instead of ethanol, which had been delivered to the terminal since 2009.
Acting under its legal authority, the district made no public announcement of the new permit, but – according to Friday’s ruling – its action started the clock ticking on a 180-day deadline for a lawsuit.
That deadline expired two months before the suit was filed, said San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch.
“I understand the deep concern,” Busch said in a courtroom filled with opponents of the shipments, some of whom wore “Stop Crude by Rail” stickers on their shirts. But he said courts must follow “the Legislature’s determination of the appropriate time period to impose finality.”
In setting that firm timetable, he said, “the Legislature contemplated circumstances where the public wouldn’t know” a project had been approved.
Communities for a Better Environment, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed the suit.
Their lawyer, Suma Peesapati of Earthjustice, argued that the 180-day timeline should have started much later, either when the public learned of the oil shipments or when Kinder Morgan halted them for two weeks to bring in oil trucks with stronger protections against vapor release.
According to documents now available, Peesapati told the judge, the district and the energy company had studied the project for a year and initially agreed that it was likely to harm air quality, a conclusion that would have required a full environmental study and public input. Then, she said, the district reversed course and “cooked the books” to cover its tracks.
“There was a bait and switch,” Peesapati said. “The public had no way of knowing.”
Lawyers for the district and Kinder Morgan said they had acted safely and legally. John Lynn Smith, the company’s lawyer, said it conducted five months of tests before beginning the shipments, and used trucks that kept vapor releases to their levels during the ethanol deliveries.
Busch said neither the commencement of the oil shipments nor the truck substitution made significant changes in the project the air district had already approved.
Peesapati said the environmental groups would consider an appeal. The district’s approval process “was biased in favor of Kinder Morgan at every turn,” she said.
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