Benicia Public Library’s Sustainability Series continues with free zero-waste cooking demonstration this Thursday, May 11, at 7pm
The first 50 participants will receive groceries to take home with them to try the demonstrated recipes and techniques themselves. | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply, adding up to billion of pounds of food and just as much money wasted every year. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency reports that food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills, where it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
As our individual grocery bills and greenhouse gases climb, it becomes increasingly important on a personal and global level to be mindful of food waste.
As a part of the Book to Action Sustainability series All Benicia Can Save, the Benicia Public Library is hosting a special cooking demonstration. This coming Thursday, May 11th at 7pm, join Chef Stephanie Oelsligle Jordan for a Zero-Waste Cooking Demonstration.
During this FREE, 90-minute demonstration participants will learn to curb food waste in the kitchen before the plate even makes it to the table while creating excellent dishes using seasonal produce.
No registration is required. The Library is located at 150 E L Street in Benicia.
The first 50 participants will receive groceries to take home with them to try the demonstrated recipes and techniques themselves!
Ramón Castellblanch: Moving key meetings to business hours will stifle the public’s voice in policymaking. | Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash
Over the years, Solano County has set up a number of advisory boards comprised of volunteers from the community. Underlying these boards’ establishment is the fact that County staff and its Board of Supervisors can’t know everything that they need to know to fairly administer County government. To promote sustainable agriculture, an agricultural advisory board was set up; to protect Solano’s unique historical documents, an historical records board was set up; to help plan the County response to its rising drug use disorder crisis, an alcohol and drug board was set up.
. . . the main factor in recommending continuation [of these boards] didn’t appear to be usefulness; it appeared to be whether or not advisory boards were state-mandated. [The supervisors] didn’t seem to consider their value to Solano; but to County administrators.
This year, a committee led by Supervisors John Vasquez and Monica Brown reviewed the value and continuation of these committees. In that review, the main factor in recommending continuation didn’t appear to be usefulness; it appeared to be whether or not advisory boards were state-mandated. They didn’t seem to consider their value to Solano; but to County administrators.
The Brown-Vasquez ad hoc committee met with none of the advisory boards that it was evaluating. Still at the Board of Supervisors’ May 2 meeting they recommended a blanket termination of all those that were not state mandated with one exception: the Nut Tree Airport committee. Why they that committee was spared may be indicated by its agenda: it actively works to help businesses at the airport.
The particular rationale for terminating the Alcohol & Drug Advisory Board (ADAB) was that the Mental Health Advisory Board could do its work fighting Solano’s opioid epidemic. But, a check of MHAB minutes over the past months shows nothing in them about fighting the epidemic. Further, the MHAB meets during business hours, cutting down public voice. At the hearing, Supervisor Wanda Williams asked if current ADAB members would then be on the MHAB. Despite asking several times, she couldn’t get a straight answer to her question, implying that the answer was, “no”.
While discussion of the Brown-Vasquez report implied that there was a state law requiring merger of MHAB and ADAB; there is no such law. State law does mandate counties to have a MHAB which would help explain why the MHAB wasn’t mentioned in Brown-Vasquez report. Another factor in the omission may be that Brown is a MHAB member.
The ADAB and Historical Records Commission were able to muster vigorous political defenses at the May 2 meeting and were given reprieves. A rationale for the ADAB’s retrieve was that it would give it time to merge with the MHAB, even though that merger was not assured nor justified.
The particular rationale for terminating the Alcohol & Drug Advisory Board (ADAB) was that the Mental Health Advisory Board could do its work fighting Solano’s opioid epidemic. But, a check of MHAB minutes over the past months shows nothing in them about fighting the epidemic. Further, the MHAB meets during business hours, cutting down public voice.
So, after the County behavioral health director had shut it down citing the recommendation of the ad hoc review committee, the ADAB is back in business. Its next regular meeting will be May 10 at 6 p.m. As the County has discontinued facilitating online access to advisory board meetings (while maintaining online access to Board of Supervisors meetings), the in-person meeting will be held in Conference Room A of the classic County Events Center, 601 Texas St., Fairfield. As the room seats over a hundred, there should be ample ventilation and space for attendees, providing some protection against COVID.
The top item on its new business agenda is BOS action re: ADAB. As the County has also discontinued providing inexpensive meals to dinner-time advisory board meetings, ADAB members will provide them on a one-time basis.
People living near the Martinez Refining Company in Martinez are under a health advisory from the Contra Costa Health Services to not eat food grown in their gardens until they have tested or replaced their soil due to a refinery accidentally release of dust containing heavy metals in November | Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group
Tens of thousands of people living in and around the Martinez Refinery Company still don’t know for certain if — or to what extent — they were poisoned last November.
But five months after 24 tons of toxic, dusty residue from gasoline, diesel and jet fuel flowing through the refinery first showered down on its next-door neighbors, new soil samples collected this week may finally confirm what dangers still linger there by late May or early June, county health officials announced Thursday.
People living nearby were told in March to discard any food grown in gardens and fruit trees, just to be safe.
Last Thanksgiving, the company posted on Facebook that the fine white substance that blanketed cars, porches and plants over the holiday was from a “non-toxic”, “non-hazardous” and “naturally occurring” catalyst dust expelled from its facility on the edge of town.
But within a few days, the Contra Costa County Health Department alerted residents that the ashy grit actually contained aluminum, barium, chromium and other hazardous metals — chemicals that are linked to nausea, vomiting, respiratory issues, immune system dysfunction, cancer and even death.
People living nearby were told in March to discard any food grown in gardens and fruit trees, just to be safe.
On Thursday, TRC, a Concord-based environmental consulting firm, started collecting soil samples from 14 different sites neighboring the refinery, which is located at 3485 Pacheco Blvd. Toxicologists will now evaluate the extent of contamination that residents were exposed to through skin contact, inhalation or consumption of food grown in the ground, according to Laura Trozzolo, a senior human health risk assessor with TRC.
She said the soil sample locations were chosen based on a map of where the plume of particles likely landed, using models from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District created using residents’ observations and wind simulations.
Trozzolo said that neither the five-month delay in data collection — due to the county’s lengthy contracting procedures — nor the recent historic storms that drenched the area should negatively impact lab findings.
“If we’ve had any deposition that might have landed on the surface over time, we’re still going to be capturing that within that top six-inch soil layer,” Trozzolo said during a press conference Thursday afternoon. “We do believe that we’re still characterizing and capturing conditions that occurred during that November event.”
“We’re responsible, as the oversight committee, for holding the facility accountable.” — Nicole Heath, Director Contra Costa County’s Hazardous Materials Program
Nicole Heath, director of the county’s hazardous materials program, said a 1990s-era industrial safety ordinance allows them to initiate an independent investigation and community risk assessment any time there’s a “major chemical accident or release,” such as the Martinez Refinery Co. event.
She said that ordinance allows the county to form an oversight committee, which brings together elected officials, county staff and community members with representatives from the refinery and its labor force.
“An independent incident investigation will look at root cause analyses, which would then determine exactly what happened, why it happened and what can we do to prevent things like this from happening again,” Heath said, later adding that similar chemical releases happened twice before at the refinery in the early 2000s, which was owned by Shell at the time. “We’re responsible, as the oversight committee, for holding the facility accountable.”
Meanwhile, the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office opened up a case in January on the refinery’s failure to notify hazmat officials about the hazardous release, according to Matthew Kaufmann, the county’s deputy health director.
Kaufmann said that while the health department can invoice the refinery to reimburse expenses during their investigation, the DA will be in charge of deciding whether or not the Martinez Refining Company should be responsible for financially compensating residents who lost food and soil.
Physical remediation efforts are also stalled until the upcoming lab results are complete, Heath said.
In the meantime, the county is still recommending that residents impacted by the toxic dust avoid eating any produce planted in the soil. However, gardeners are also encouraged to plant new seeds, in the event that soil samples don’t uncover any hazards.
“We are waiting to have the information from the soil sampling and risk assessment from TRC so that we can provide the answers that we know the community is so desperately, desperately seeking,” Heath said. “These corrective actions are in such a nature that they are intended to prevent something similar from happening again.”
FAIRFIELD — The Solano County Board of Supervisors this week dissolved two advisory committees and restructured several others in an effort to transform how the board receives input from residents.
At Tuesday’s meeting in a close vote, the board disbanded the Agriculture Advisory Committee and unanimously dissolved a domestic abuse advisory committee known as the Solano Partnership Against Violence.
“It’s very disappointing that on a 3-2 vote they dissolved an important voice of agriculture. It’s just kind of sad,” said Ian Anderson, a member of the Agricultural Advisory Board and a fourth-generation farmer in Solano County.
The move is part of an annual evaluation the county conducts of advisory bodies and reports to voting members of the county board, who determine if there is an ongoing need for each board, commission or committee. An ad-hoc committee made up of supervisor John Vasquez and Monica Brown reviewed the evaluation and made recommendations to the full board to maintain, restructure or dissolve the advisory bodies.
During this FREE, 90-minute demonstration participants will learn to curb food waste in the kitchen before the plate even makes it to the table while creating excellent dishes using seasonal produce.
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