Over the last three weeks, communities everywhere have watched in horror and solidarity with the people of East Palestine, Ohio. Few of those communities have experienced the depth of concern and understanding as here in Benicia, California.
Here’s my 1-minute video commentary.
Backstory, and looking ahead…
In 2013, the Benicia Valero Refinery proposed bringing in two 50-car bomb trains every day, filled with Canadian tar sands crude oil. It took 3 years, but a staunch group of citizens and an incredible army of allies eventually overcame Valero’s slick campaign. On September 20, 2016, with backing from the Benicia Planning Commission, the California Attorney General and the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, Benicia’s City Council voted to deny Valero’s proposal. The City breathed a sigh of relief. And we continue to marvel at our good fortune, and the good fortune of communities uprail from here.
Our collective breath of relief, however, must be challenged by the everyday passage of trains carrying multiple hazardous cargos through our town and across the bridge to other San Francisco Bay Area cities. Stricter regulations are needed from federal and state authorities. Regulations on the trains and the profit-seeking companies that run them, on the rails, and on public preparations for potential disasters. As I said in the video, This is NOT Benicia, but WHO WILL BE NEXT?
[BenIndy Editor – No mention of Benicia or Solano County in this article, but check out Caltrans’ Freight Rail Network map below, showing freight traffic through Benicia and surrounding areas. Our hearts go out to residents of East Palestine as we remember and give thanks for Benicia’s successful defeat of Valero’s Crude by Rail proposal in 2016. – R.S.]
Since the start of 2021, 334 trains have derailed in California
A train carrying toxic chemicals that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in early February has raised concerns about air, soil and water pollution in the region. | Credit Gene J. Puskar/AP)
The menacing cloud of toxic smoke over East Palestine, Ohio, after a train derailment earlier this month is hovering in the thoughts of Leisa Johnson every time a train chugs past her neighborhood along the coast in Richmond: Could a disaster like that happen in her own backyard?
Stuck at the train crossing for as long as 30 minutes sometimes, Johnson has a lot of time to think about what could go wrong as long trains with dozens of black tanker cars head to and from the Kinder Morgan crude oil processing plant and other industries.
“Most people in the public have no clue what’s on them,” said Johnson. “A few years ago, there was a freakin’ train derailed,” she recalled, sharing photos of a large black tanker car tipped on its side, houses visible directly behind it. Luckily there was no leak or spill that time, as far as she knows.
Every day, hazardous materials and toxic chemicals are transported through the Bay Area to oil refineries, pesticide plants, bleach manufacturers and agricultural centers in the area and around the state. Train traffic is especially heavy through the industrial hubs such as the Port of Oakland and the Richmond refineries.
Chevron Richmond Refinery, Oct. 18, 2021. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Since the start of 2021, 334 trains have derailed in California — nearly one every other day — including four that led to hazardous material spills, according to data from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Click image to enlarge. Source: Caltrans
Some fear an accident like the one that shook Ohio could be next.
“It could happen anywhere,” said Patti Goldman, a senior attorney with Earth Justice, an environmental advocacy group that has sued the federal government over rail safety regulations in the past.
On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, leading to a leak of vinyl chloride, a chemical used to make PVC pipes. Authorities evacuated the town of East Palestine and conducted a controlled burn of the leaking chemicals to prevent an explosion. EPA officials say the air and municipal water is now safe, but residents have reported health complications and concerns about returning.
Specifics about which hazardous chemicals are shipped through the Bay Area are hard to come by, partly for national security reasons. But crude oil coming in and out of refineries in Richmond is often a focus of concern. One report from the Natural Resources Defense Council found more than 50,000 people lived within a half-mile federally mandated evacuation zone for a derailment in the Richmond area.
Adam Springer, an assistant director of Contra Costa County’s HazMat team, said hazardous chemicals are “constantly” shipped through his county, including flammable gases, sulfuric acid, alcohols and anhydrous ammonia.
Springer said one of the most common problems is overfilled tankers loaded on trains that can release toxic chemicals through pressure valves when the liquid expands under heat.
“That happens actually quite often,” he said. But Springer said the county’s hazmat team is still waiting to see if Ohio’s derailment disaster highlights any specific risks in the Bay Area.
Union Pacific and BNSF the nation’s two largest rail companies have successfully fought multiple attempts to increase hazardous materials regulations. A 2015 California law that tacked on extra fees for hazardous material shipments to bolster the state’s emergency railway spill response was struck down by a court.
A black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, as a result of the controlled detonation of a portion of the derailed Norfolk and Southern trains Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
“These companies are putting the pursuit of lower operating costs, lower operating ratios and higher profits above safety,” said Louie Costa, the California State Legislative Director for Sheet Metal, Air, Rail Transportation Union (SMART), which represents train conductors and other rail workers. “The cuts they are making are putting the communities these trains run through, our employees and the citizens in those communities at risk.”
A threatened nationwide rail strike in 2022 made the public aware of complaints from the unions about the safety of our rail systems. The unions say understaffing and a new operating system are increasing the risk of accidents for the sake of profits.
“Trains have gotten longer and longer, which puts a lot more wear and tear on the tracks and the infrastructure,” said Costa, who says the workforce has been cut and the remaining staff are stretched thin. “All of that leads up to potential situations, like the one that happened in Ohio, and can happen here.”
Industry officials say trains are the safest way to transport many dangerous but critical substances and point to the much higher accident rates for trucks.
In a short statement, Union Pacific said the railroad has an emergency response center operating around the clock and “robust” emergency management plan in place for railway disasters. “Union Pacific shares the same goals as our customers and the communities we serve — to deliver every tank car safely. We are required by federal law to transport chemicals and other hazardous commodities that Americans use daily, including fertilizer, ethanol, crude oil and chlorine.”
Texas-based BNSF declined to offer detailed comments about its operations.
California has seen some major train derailment disasters in the past. In July 1991, a train carrying an herbicide derailed in Northern California, spilling 19,000 gallons of the hazardous material into the Sacramento River near Dunsmuir.
A derailed train car rest in the Sacramento River near Dunsmuir on July 15, 1991. The cars spilled weed killer, which killed animals and vegetation downstream to Lake Shasta. (Jay Mather/Sac Bee)
“Every living creature in the water, downstream from the spill, died,” according to the summary report from the over decade-long recovery project. “The chemical plume left a 41-mile wake of destruction, from the spill site to the entry point of the river into Shasta Lake.”
Other train derailments involving hazardous materials have happened in the Bay Area more recently, with less catastrophic results.
Costa said that from the perspective of the workers, rail transport has “gotten exponentially … less safe.” As a former conductor, he said he took pride in delivering his cargo safely, but concerns among the workers are growing. “If you go into the crew rooms, that’s the talk,” he said, “something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen.”
“Well something happened, and we pray that it doesn’t happen here,” Costa said.
After a spate of highly publicized freeway shootings on the Highway 4 and Interstate 8- corridors in Contra Costa County, the Freeway Security Network was installed with a 3.5 million dollar grant from the California State Transportation Authority. The FSN is an interconnected network of cameras, automated license plate readers and gunshot detection microphones along the targeted highways. The East Bay mayors of Pittsburg, Antioch, Pinole, Hercules San Pablo and Richmond joined the regional collaborative in 2017. The network was described as a “gamechanger” by the East Bay Times in December of 2017.
By October of 2019, the Freeway Security Network was operating with 24 surveillance cameras, 165 gunshot detection microphones, and 32 automated license plate readers (ALPR) installed along State Highway 4 and Interstate 80. In a year, the system scanned 283 million license plates at a rate of 155,000 a day.
The California Highway Patrol was required to submit an annual fiscal report documenting the productivity of the Freeway Security Network. The initial report for the first year of full operations was acquired by Oakland Privacy via a public records request.
In 2018 and 2019, the Freeway Security Network corridor saw 8 freeway shootings annually. In the six months following the activation of the surveillance network, freeway shootings in the corridor exploded upwards with 14 recorded shootings in the period January 2020 to June 2020. This article from KTVU describes the continuation of the upward trend in 2021.
There was no deterrent effect from the Freeway Surveillance Network. But surely 3 million dollars in surveillance technology led to the capture of suspects in at least one of the 14 freeway shootings in 2020? According to the report, it did not.
The report did mention four incidents where suspects were arrested for open crimes, including one carjacking, two burglaries and one case of “other crimes” in the initial year of operations, but not one single freeway shooting. Closing those four cases cost California’s taxpayers $875,000 each. By any standard, that is a low return on investment.
The Contra Costa Sheriff’s office also paid out $50,000 when a member of Oakland’s Privacy Commission was erroneously pulled over and faced a gun to his head over Thanksgiving weekend over a rental vehicle that had previously been reported stolen and then was rented out again without clearing the stolen vehicle alert.
If large sums of money are invested in surveillance technology to respond to headlines about freeway shootings, the follow-up process to see if freeway shootings actually did decrease or at the very least, the people who did these shootings were captured, can’t be short-circuited. The Freeway Security Network hasn’t, to date, worked. Statements that more freeway surveillance on other parts of Interstate 80 or other highways across the Bay Area, including from the governor, the former mayor of Oakland and other public officials, are ignoring these results which are public for the first time. Whenever we invest millions of dollars in surveillance technology, these millions of dollars are not available for other pressing needs, including public education, health care, libraries, parks and housing assistance. Before we further defund public services to pay for surveillance, we should demand to see significant and measurable results in reducing freeway shootings. We don’t have them.
BENICIA – The Benicia City Council unanimously appointed Deputy City Manager Mario Giuliani as the city’s interim city manager at a special meeting on Monday night.
Giuliani will replace City Manager Erik Upson who is leaving on March 1 to take a position with a global security firm.
The city is still working on the details of Giuliani’s contract as Benicia’s interim city manager, a position which could lead to the more permanent city manager position after a trial period.
Giuliani has been Benicia’s deputy city manager for two years. Prior to that, he served as the city’s economic development manager for 13 years. Giuliani has lived in Benicia for 30 years, he has worked for Benicia, Walnut Creek and Vallejo parks departments and in the Benicia City attorney’s office.
“So much of a City Manager’s job is about communication, both the ability to convey a message but also to listen.” Giuliani told the Vallejo Sun.
According to Giuliani, a key experience that will inform his approach as city manager is his work on Benicia’s sales tax measures. Measure C, a 1 cent sales tax to provide funding for essential city services, passed in 2014 but Measure R, which would have increased Benicia’s sales tax by three-quarters of a cent to fund roads, failed by a narrow margin in November.
“From that loss it’s important to take stock in the listening piece in communication,” Giuliani said in an email. “There was clearly a sentiment in the community that I missed or failed to properly address. How one accepts accountability in defeat is also a necessary experience and a trait needed for one to be successful.”
In the past, the City Council has filled the city manager position both by recruiting outside candidates as well as drawing from the city’s own ranks – as they did with Eric Upson, who was the city’s police chief prior to his appointment as city manager.
This time, considering the urgency of the city’s current projects and the qualifications of several city staff members, the Council chose to select from internal candidates.
“There are about five or six people who work for the City of Benicia that are very highly qualified, so that’s a blessing and on the other hand… how do you pick one,” Councilmember Tom Campbell told the Vallejo Sun.
The city manager is a difficult position, because the right candidate “has to have good interpersonal and communication skills, but they also have to be able to look at a set of numbers and policies and say this is how the city is going to run,” Campbell said. “Most city managers are really good at one or the other, it’s rare that you see them excel at doing both.”
Upson said that the biggest challenge that the new City Manager will face is balancing revenue with the cost of repairing and upgrading Benicia’s aging infrastructure, such as roads and the city’s water supply and wastewater system. “Unfortunately, it’s this generation that will have to deal with these issues,” Upson said in an email. “The wheels are simply going to come off otherwise.”
Despite the upcoming challenges, Upson said that he feels that he is leaving the city in a good position with a talented staff and a council that works together to address the difficult problems.
Last month, Upson announced that he would retire from his position as city manager just over two years after he was appointed. He accepted an offer from a security firm that recruited him for an international position. He said that the opportunity to travel and a salary that will go farther as his children enter college were the factors that tipped the scales toward the new position.
“You may still see me around as I intend to stay on as a Volunteer Reserve Police Officer, working occasionally to support the Police Department,” Upson said in a statement.
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