NOTE: The information below is not the latest. TAP HERE for today’s latest information.
By Roger Straw, Monday, March 21, 2022
Solano County’s Monday report: 120 new COVID infections, 35 hospitalizations and 2 new deaths. Fifteen deaths reported in February, sixteen already just 21 days into March.
Solano Public Health COVID dashboard, Monday, March 21, 2022:
DEATHS: Solano reported 2 new COVID-related deaths in today’s report, one age 50-64 and one age 65+. Fifteen new deaths were reported in February, ALL over 65 years of age. So far in March, 16 County residents were reported to have died with COVID. A total of 412 Solano residents have now died of COVID or COVID-related causes over the course of the pandemic.
TRANSMISSION RATE: With today’s report, Solano remained just barely in the SUBSTANTIAL transmission rate with 231 new cases in the last 7 days. Less than 225 new cases over 7 days would move the County into the MODERATE rate for the first time since July 9, 2021. CDC FORMULA: Based on Solano County’s population, 450 or more cases in 7 days places Solano in the CDC’s population-based definition of a HIGH transmission rate. We would need to drop below 225 cases in 7 days to show MODERATE community transmission.
>ACTIVE CASES: Solano reported 215 ACTIVE cases today, down significantly from 306 at last report, and our lowest numbers since July 6, 2021.
CASES BY CITY – Monday, March 21:
BENICIA added 5 new cases today, a total of 3,118 cases since the outbreak began. That’s over 11% of Benicia’s total population. TRANSMISSION RATE: Benicia’s 7-day case count dipped into the MODERATE range last Monday and rose slightly to 15 on Thursday, but fell again today to only 10, back into the highly desirable MODERATE rate of transmission. For a city with Benicia’s population, anything over 27 cases in 7 days is considered HIGH TRANSMISSION. 14 to 27 cases is considered SUBSTANTIAL. Below 14 is rated MODERATE. (See chart below.)
Dixon added 8 more cases today, total of 4,330 cases.
Fairfield added32 new cases today, total of 22,573 cases.
Rio Vista added 2 new cases today, total of 1,187 cases.
Suisun Cityadded26 new cases today, total of 5,924 cases.
Vacaville added 15 new cases today, a total of 21,555 cases.
Vallejoadded32 new cases today, a total of 25,424 cases.
Unincorporatedadded 0 new cases today, a total of 199 cases.
TEST RATE: Solano County’s 7-Day Percent Positive TEST RATE fell dramatically in March, and remains at only 4% today. Even at this lower rate, SOLANO DOES NOT COMPARE FAVORABLY: The CALIFORNIA 7-day % positive rate remained at only 1.3% today. [Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracking Center] and the U.S. 7-day % positive rate was up slightly today from 2.2% to 2.4%. [Source: CDC COVID Data Tracker.]
HOSPITALIZATIONS:
CURRENT: Good news: the number of those currently hospitalized with COVID in Solano County fell today from 13 persons to only 7 persons. Current hospitalizations don’t tell the whole story, though, as this number reflects both admissions and discharges. Only from the increase in total hospitalizations (below) can we know how many new admissions have come into our hospitals as of this date.
TOTAL hospitalizations: Solano played “catch-up” in its Age Group and Race/Ethnicity charts today, adding 35 new hospitalizations, (only some of which are new this week), for a pandemic total of 3,804. (The County’s hospitalization numbers for Race/Ethnicity is less accurate, but presented here to show relative percentages.)
ICU Bed Availability in Solano County increased slightly today from 46% to 49%, in the County’s GREEN safe zone .
Ventilator Availability in Solano County fell dramatically today from 80% available to only 67% available, but still in the County’s GREEN safe zone.
>The data on this page is from the Solano County COVID-19 Dashboard. The Dashboard is full of much more information and (as of 3/14/2022) is updated Monday and Thursday between 4 and 6pm. On the County’s dashboard, you can hover a mouse or click on an item for more information. Note the tabs at top for “Summary, Demographics” and “Vaccines.” Click here to go to today’s Solano County Dashboard.
See also my BENINDY ARCHIVE of daily Solano COVID updates (an excel spreadsheet). I have also archived the hundreds of full CORONAVIRUS REPORTS posted here almost daily on the Benicia Independent since April 2020.
In the 1984 film, The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a robot sent from the future to the (then) present, to try to condemn the human race to a horrible fate. In its 1991 sequel, he reversed the role, seeking to save the world. His iconic line from both movies was, “I’ll be back.”
In 2022, Arnold’s in fact back again. This time, to try to help save us in real life.
As part of the information war raging in connection with the actual combat in Ukraine, on March 17 Schwarzenegger released a stunning anti-invasion video, aimed at Russians and with Russian subtitles.
His core message: “Your lives, your limbs, your futures are being sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.”
He brilliantly prefaces that by starting with praise for a Russian weightlifter whom he idolized as a boy. He highlights Russians’ heroic defense of Leningrad in World War 2 against a Nazi force that included Arnold’s own father, turning what would seem to be a counterproductive fact into a very personal, very persuasive point.
He ridicules Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absurd claim that his country’s so-called “special military operation” seeks to unseat a cabal of neo-Nazis in Kyiv. Arnold emphasizes that the supposed head of that supposed cabal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Jew who lost three uncles to the Holocaust.
And he says so much more, so splendidly, with words for Russia’s people, soldiers, leaders and protestors.
But please see for yourself. It’s absolutely worth nine minutes of your time:
Will it matter?
The crucial question, of course, is whether Russians consider it worth their time. Will many see the video?
It seems so. Within a day of the clip’s appearance, it was viewed more than 28 million times globally on Twitter and shared more than 669,000 times on Telegram, an encrypted social media platform that’s one of the only ways for Russians to get uncensored information.
Even if they see it, though, will many Russians’ believe it? Maybe.
Certainly, here in America we know something about people clinging to the lies they want to believe, a problem compounded in Russia by Putin’s crushing of public and media dissent. But Schwarzenegger’s movies – including 1988’s Red Heat, partly filmed in Moscow – established him as a star in the former Soviet Union. He also visited there in 2010, as California’s governor. The head of a U.S. center that studies political extremism and national security claims that the he has significant credibility and popularity in Russia, particularly with the older generation there.
What a war, what a world
Schwarzenegger’s talk to the Russians comes on the heels of Zelensky’s virtual address to the U.S. Congress the previous day, persuasively seeking sustained and even increased support. Neither the translation of his Ukrainian words nor his own English coda will count as Churchillian. But he got the message across:
The video Zelensky presented toward the end of his talk was even more powerful. The title might as well have been, “War is hell.” It’s that disturbing. But again, it’s well worth viewing to grasp in a gut way what the Ukrainians are enduring: [video above, at minute 11:23]
What a 21st century war, when a leader broadcasts to our Congress from a bombarded, besieged capital, wielding a video as an astoundingly effective weapon. More than ever before, an information war is a key part of a literal war. It’s something defenders of democracy everywhere will hopefully keep in mind in the looming political, and hopefully non-lethal, struggles ahead.
And what a world, where an Austrian former bodybuilder brilliantly backs a Ukrainian former comedian against a Russian former spy praised by an American former TV host, all of them elevated at various points to be presidents or a governor.
I’ll close with something else to keep in mind, another line from the Terminator franchise: “The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”
BAY AREA AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT DISTRICT
HEARING BOARD, MARCH 15, 2022
DOCKET NO. 3731:
APCO vs. VALERO REFINING COMPANY – CALIFORNIA
Accusation of Violation of Regulation 8, Rule 2; and (Proposed) Stipulated Conditional Order for Abatement (BENICIA)
Air District board approves abatement order for longstanding toxic releases at Valero Benicia refinery
The Valero Benicia refinery. Photo: Downtowngal/Wikimedia Commons.
Vallejo Sun, By Scott Morris, Mar 15, 2022
BENICIA – A hearing board for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District approved an abatement order for the Valero Benicia Refinery on Tuesday to correct an issue where a hydrogen vent has been allowed to spew thousands of tons of pollution into the air for decades.
The approval of the abatement order was expected as both the air district and Valero recommended its approval. But the ordeal has exposed some of the limits of the air district’s ability to detect and address harmful emissions from the refinery and raised questions about whether it withheld vital information from the Benicia community regarding Valero’s operations.
The excess emissions from a hydrogen vent were first detected by Valero in 2003 when it started measuring output from the vent, but the air district believes it likely had been going on even earlier and has no measurements from that time.
Since 2003, the air district estimates that the vent was releasing about 4,000 pounds of hydrocarbons per day, far more than state regulations allow. Overall, Valero released more than 10,000 tons of excess hydrocarbons over 16 years, including 138 tons of toxic air contaminants benzene, ethylbenzene, tolyrene and zolerine.
Following the discovery, Valero made a change to its process where it recycled the hydrogen, which resulted in a 70% reduction in emissions in 2020 and a 98% reduction in 2021 from 2019 levels, nearly bringing the refinery into compliance, according to new data released by the air district on Tuesday.
However, air district counsel Joel Freid said that the 2021 data had only been submitted last week and had not yet been vetted by the air district.
Summary of Valero hydrogen venting carbon emissions 2003-2021
Year
Total carbon emissions (lbs.)
Emissions limit (lbs.)
2003
2,183,855
5,475
2004
1,146,268
5,475
2005
245,225
5,475
2006
197,280
5,475
2007
288,269
5,475
2008
1,198,433
5,475
2009
224,440
5,475
2010
1,459,327
5,475
2011
287,821
5,475
2012
663,168
5,475
2013
788,064
5,475
2014
679,170
5,475
2015
1,159,426
5,475
2016
2,044,739
5,475
2017
3,023,303
5,475
2018
523,640
5,475
2019
566,485
5,475
2020
169,941
5,475
2021
8,732
5,475
Total 2003-2021
16,857,586
104,025
Air district officials have said that the refinery should have reported the emissions, which were not detected by any existing monitoring or inspection mechanisms, but Valero officials said during Tuesday’s hearing that the company was not aware the vent was subject to regulation and only used the data it collected for its internal operations.
When the air district discovered the excess emissions in 2019, it didn’t report its findings publicly either, working with Valero to fix the problem for nearly two years before disclosing it to city leaders and the community. That has led to criticism of a lack of transparency by the air district.
Tuesday’s hearing involved witnesses describing the air district’s findings and Valero’s response to the hearing board, a quasi-judicial body that adjudicates compliance issues and hears appeals. Since both sides had agreed with the abatement order prior to the hearing, there was little argument.
The refinery is one of five oil refineries in the Bay Area and processes 170,000 barrels – approximately 7 million gallons – of crude oil per day. Valero purchased the refinery from ExxonMobile in 2000 and has operated it since.
The air district found a hydrogen vent releasing excess emissions at another Bay Area refinery in July 2017 and the following year launched an investigation into whether any of the other four Bay Area refineries had similar vents. It discovered the excess emissions by Valero in 2019.
The equipment that led to the emissions is a vent for excess hydrogen. Hydrogen is used by the refinery in various parts of its production process and while the refinery approximately produces what it needs, it creates some excess that is released into the atmosphere. This isn’t an issue with pure hydrogen, but air district officials would later discover that the hydrogen released by Valero was hardly pure.
Gasses vented by a refinery are not allowed to exceed 15 pounds per day and 300 parts per million of carbon, according to Linda Duca, a supervising air quality specialist at the air district. The emissions from Valero were about 10,000 parts per million.
According to the air district, after an exhaustive search of the air district’s permitting records, it discovered there was no acknowledgement of the vent’s existence.
“We have one inspector assigned to Valero, that inspector is responsible for inspecting 239 sources,” Duca said during Tuesday’s hearing. “The stack does have steam coming out of it but it doesn’t have smoke or any unusual color coming out of it that would draw the inspector’s attention. It really did take this across the board hydrogen venting audit to discover this.”
As for why Valero didn’t report it, Valero Benicia director of health, safety, environmental and regulatory affairs Kimberly Ronan said Tuesday that Valero didn’t realize that state regulations applied. The regulations had been last amended in the early 1980s and the stack predated Valero’s acquisition of the refinery, so only a change in regulation or a change in Valero’s process would trigger a review of the regulatory applicability, she said.
“It’s fair to say we obviously knew that there were some impurities in the hydrogen stream,” Ronan said.
After discovering the violations, Valero instituted a partial fix in 2019 that resulted in a reduction in emissions but still more than state law allows. Valero has designed an engineering fix that it says will be implemented during the facility’s next “turnaround,” a periodic full plant shutdown for maintenance.
Exactly when that will be, however, is unclear as the turnaround schedule is proprietary information the company keeps secret as it can affect fuel supply and gas prices.
Valero had a two-month turnaround late last year, refinery manager Josh Tulino said during a December meeting of the Benicia Refinery Community Advisory Panel. During that event, a contractor working on a piece of equipment had an accident and died.
Air district faces accusations of lack of transparency
Since announcing the proposed abatement order, the air district has taken steps to conduct community outreach, including holding a virtual town hall meeting last month, where many members of the community were concerned both with how long it had taken the air district to detect the emissions and how long it had taken to inform the community.
During that meeting, Solano County public health officer Bela Matyas discussed the potential health effects of the emissions. While he said it was difficult to quantify, he said people with respiratory conditions could have that exacerbated. And while some of the chemicals released could be carcinogenic, the probability of a cancer case occurring was less than one case over 20 years of exposure.
“But that’s not the same thing as no risk,” Matyas said. “However low that risk number may seem, I don’t think it’s right to say it was a non-risk scenario.”
A week later, air district officials appeared at Benicia City Council meeting and faced many of the same concerns from the city council.
Air district Senior Deputy Executive Officer of Operations Damian Breen said at the March 1 meeting that the air district did a health risk analysis of the emissions in 2019, and determined that the facility would be required to install controls based on the toxic emissions that it was detecting.
Benicia Mayor Steve Young said he was concerned about that response as not even city officials were informed of the emissions before January of this year.
“You still did not release that information to the city or the county or the community,” Young said. “If you’re identifying toxic releases and then not telling people about it, that’s problematic for the community.”
Breen said that the air district did inform a county inspector of the emissions in June 2019 and followed up with emails in 2020.
“We take our duty to protecting this community very seriously,” Breen said. “We should have done better in this regard and we understand that and that’s why you see us changing our processes here.”
Breen said that had the air district been operating in 2019 as it is today, the case would have come before the hearing board sooner. “We’ve used our hearing board process very few times over the last 20 years, and we think it’s time that that changed,” he said.
Regarding Valero collecting data on the vent for its operations but never reporting it to the air district, Breen said, “they knew or should have known that those emissions should have been reported.”
The air district is still evaluating what monetary penalties will be imposed on Valero for the violations, but Breen said air district staff will recommend to the agency’s Board of Directors that as much of penalty as possible will go to the Benicia community, but did not say how.
The air district has also said it reported the violations to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has not ruled out criminal prosecution, though in last month’s meeting officials said they have not yet communicated with the state Attorney General’s Office nor the Solano County District Attorney’s Office.
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