Tag Archives: 350 Bay Area

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Keeping Watch on Earth News

We did it! The Air District Passed the Strongest Regulation on Refinery Pollution

By Roger Straw, July 22, 2021

Air District approves Rule 6-5, a new rule requiring Bay Area refineries to clean up their air pollution

Benicia and Bay Area environmental activists are celebrating this week after years of advocacy to get the area’s refineries to reign in the worst of their air pollution.

Our Air District’s newly adopted Rule 6-5, “Particulate Emissions from Refinery Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Units” will require refineries to install “wet gas scrubbers,” like the one at Valero Refinery in Benicia.

Andrés Soto, Communities For a Better Environment

Andrés Soto, Benicia resident and longtime organizer for Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), worked tirelessly for years advocating for rule 6-5.  In a CBE press release, Soto wrote,

“This is a huge win for environmental justice communities who have been fighting for this rule for years as a matter of racial, environmental, and climate justice. Despite a widespread misinformation campaign by the refineries and their allies of exaggerated costs that threatened our communities with doomsday scenarios, the Board of Directors made an historic vote today on behalf of disproportionately impacted communities.”

“We look forward to Chevron and PBF doing the right thing and installing wet gas scrubbers that will dramatically clean up their pollution and create numerous jobs in the process, without further delays,”

Benicia Mayor Steve Young

In hearing testimony before the Air District Board on Wednesday, Benicia Mayor Steve Young urged approval of Rule 6-5.  He pointed out that here in Benicia…

“…we have over a decade of experience of the value of the wet gas scrubbers. Valero installed a wet gas scrubber in 2010, and emissions data has shown a significant reduction in the overall emissions of criteria pollutants since it went online. Valero voluntarily addressed the problem of PM 2.5 emissions from their cat cracker by installing the wet gas scrubber. It is past time to do the right thing for clean air in the Bay Area. Please approve Rule 6-5”

In a Wednesday blog posting, 350 Bay Area urged thank-yous for the Air District Board members who voted yes in the 19 to 3 vote to approve Rule
6-5.  Thank goodness, both of Solano County’s Board members voted yes!  Take a minute and send your thanks to Solano Supervisor Erin Hannigan and Suisun City Mayor Lori Wilson.

Solano Supervisor Erin Hannigan
Phone: (707) 784-6662
ehannigan@solanocounty.com
675 Texas Street, Suite 6500
Fairfield, CA 94533-6352

Suisun City Mayor Lori D. Wilson
City Hall: 707-421-7300
Direct: 707-410-0585
lwilson@suisun.com
701 Civic Center Blvd.
Suisun City, CA 94585

More from 350 Bay Area:

After delaying the vote last month, the Air District Board voted this morning in favor of rule 6-5, the rule requiring refineries to clean up their air pollution.

This is a BIG deal and many activists have worked hard to make this happen. It’s been a years’ long coalition effort, but organizing works. The health and environmental justice arguments and dogged appeals to each board member (finally) paid off.

A big special thank you to our folks who stepped up to contact their representatives on the Board, and kudos to the coalition of community groups who put in years of effort. Huge gratitude to Communities for a Better Environment, Sunflower Alliance, APEN, and the health professionals from PSR and Climate Health Now. The headlines (Reuters) are already reading: Northern California requires oil refiners to slash air pollution — in which 350 Bay Area leader, Jan Kirsch, is quoted.

“I was there for the vote. Great victory for all involved. I will send a thank you to John Bauters from my esteemed home of Emeryville” — 350 Bay Area Leader

Toolkit: thank your representative!
The final vote was 19 YES and 3 NO.
350Bay Area Staff comment:

“The Air District Board’s decision to step up and fulfill the mandate of our regional Air District was necessary to protect lives and the health of our communities, particularly the already-disadvantaged communities in the path of the emissions monsters. We recognize that it took political courage to stand up to the refineries and other fossil fuel interests, who pulled out all the stops with an aggressive disinformation campaign as the decision neared. The community responded to this disinformation campaign robustly and with a focus on justice. That alone is a win for the Bay Area.

The win at the Air District is one that we embrace, and we welcome the eventual improvement in the air around the Bay Area. We are grateful to the large coalition of community organizations and individuals who spent many years collaborating and educating. We remain concerned that these common sense solutions that save lives and money still take so much work to enact, and are committed to continuing the work of improving air quality and phasing out fossil fuels to save lives and climate stability.”

— Nik, 350 Bay Area Staff

A well deserved celebration is in order today (YAY), and don’t forget to thank any/all representatives who voted YES in this historic vote.

For truly cleaner air,
Your 350BA Organizers

350 Bay Area, Gas drilling, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Oil drilling, Progressive Democrats of Benicia, Take Action

ACTION ALERT – Support oil and gas drilling setbacks

ACTION ALERT

TAKE A STAND WITH PDB AND  350 BAY AREA ACTION
TO SUPPORT FRONTLINE COMMUNITIES
in demanding health and safety setbacks
from oil and gas drilling in California

SB 467, the Dirty Drilling Phase out and Setbacks bill, did not pass through the Natural Resources and Water Committee last week because it was ONE VOTE SHORT, but the fight is not over. 

The bill is now being amended to ensure that frontline communities are protected from toxic oil and gas drilling by requiring a 2,500 foot setback for the over 2 million Californians that live, work, go to school, and are cared for with oil and gas drilling right in their backyards.

Texas has setbacks—and CA does not. This harms mostly low-income and Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. We have just a few days to get at least one vote to move this bill forward to protect the health and safety of our children, neighbors, friends, and workers from the oil and gas industry’s harmful practices. Here’s your chance to join the statewide VISÍON ALLIES Coalition and tell our lawmakers to do something for the health of Californians.

CALL THREE SENATORS NOW AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE 

The target is 1,000 calls to three Senators to urge them to vote YES when the amended bill comes back for a vote. 

Ralph Dennis, Benicia

Thank you for taking action today to secure the health and safety of vulnerable frontline communities. 

Ralph Dennis, Chair

Benicia City Council, Crude By Rail, Environmental Impacts, Environmental review, Federal pre-emption, Local Regulation, Public Health, Public permitting, Valero Benicia Appeal, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

LETTER OF OPPOSITION: Five environmental attorneys and others

By Roger Straw, March 31, 2016

On March 31, five environmental attorneys and a host of experts and others (including Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community) sent the Benicia City Council this strong 3-page letter of opposition to Valero’s oil trains proposal.  (For a much longer download, see the Letter with Attachments [13 MB, 214 pages].)

Attorney signatories:

    • Jackie Prange, Staff Attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council;
    • Roger Lin, Staff Attorney for Communities for a Better Environment;
    • George Torgun, Managing Attorney for San Francisco Baykeeper;
    • Clare Lakewood, Staff Attorney for Center for Biological Diversity;
    • Elly Benson, Staff Attorney for Sierra Club.

Others signing the letter:

    • Ethan Buckner, ForestEthics;
    • Katherine Black, Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community;
    • Janet Johnson, Richmond Progressive Alliance;
    • David McCoard, Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter;
    • Jessica Hendricks, Global Community Monitor;
    • Colin Miller, Bay Localize;
    • Denny Larson, Community Science Institute;
    • Nancy Rieser, Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment;
    • Steve Nadel, Sunflower Alliance;
    • Kalli Graham, Pittsburg Defense Council;
    • Richard Gray, 350 Bay Area and 350 Marin;
    • Bradley Angel, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice;
    • Sandy Saeturn, Asian Pacific Environmental Network

SIGNIFICANT EXCERPT:

The City Council can, and must, uphold the Planning Commission’s unanimous decision to deny the use permit for the Valero crude-by-rail project. Federal law does not preempt the City from denying the permit for this project. Furthermore, the City should not tolerate Valero’ s delay tactic of seeking a declaratory order from the Surface Transportation Board (STB). As explained below, the STB does not have jurisdiction over this project and will almost certainly decline to hear Valero’ s petition for the very same reason that preemption does not apply. Finally, even if preemption were to apply here, the project’s on-site impacts, especially the increases in refinery pollution, require the City to deny the permit.

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Cap-and-trade, Carbon emissions, Emissions caps, Greenhouse gas emissions, Local Regulation, Public Health, San Francisco Bay Area

Letter to the Bay Area Air District: require strict emissions caps on refineries

Posted with permission

Benicia Resident Marilyn Bardet’s letter to the Chair of the Board, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)

Direct staff to require numerical emissions caps on all refinery emissons
By Marilyn Bardet, Sept 16, 2015

Dear Chair Groom,

Marilyn Bardet
Marilyn Bardet, Benicia CA

In response to the overwhelming testimony the District has received from all corners of the Bay Area, as chair of the BAAQMD board of directors, you, with your board, have the authority to direct District staff to revise DRAFT Rules 12-15 and 12-16 as currently released, to require strict numerical emissions caps on all refinery emissions, including GHG.

By all means of public testimony over a two-year period, you have heard from concerned and affected members of the public, respected regional and national organizations (including Sierra Club, NRDC, CBE, 350 Bay Area, APEN, Sunflower Alliance) and other experts in the field who have recommended and put forward well-defined revisions that would impose strict numerical emissions caps on refinery emissions tied to current emissions baselines for TAC, VOCs, heavy metals and PM2.5, including GHG.

You know that oil companies in the region aim to acquire and process the most dangerously polluting crude in the world — tar sands. Refineries processing changed crude slates whose blends have increasing amounts of heavy crude, unconventional crudes such as Bakken oil, and/or tar sands will adversely impact regional and local air quality, especially affecting front-line communities and those “downwind communities.” Allowing emissions to “go up to” long ago established permitting levels (Valero Benicia’s permit was established in 2003) is tantamount to the District “giving in” to benefit the oil industries’ profit, not public health.

The District’s mandate is to clean up the air for the benefit of public health, and, in accordance with state mandates, to protect the climate by drastically reducing GHG. Oil refining is the biggest industrial source of GHG. Carbon trading by refineries will simply send “pollution credits” elsewhere and keep toxic emissions “at home” that kill thousands of people in the Bay Area each year. GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion threaten to destroy our global climate and way of life.

Strong refinery rules that set numerical limits on toxic emissions tied to current baselines and limit GHGs are our best chance to protect public health and protect the climate.

We need your leadership more than ever now! I am writing to ask that you make it clear to your directors that the “highest good” must be done by BAAQMD in the name of public health and climate protection, such that, until revisions to Rules 12-15 and 12-16 are adopted that set refinery emission caps at today’s levels, including for GHG, the agency will suspend permitting for refinery projects.

This is a bold request, but these are very uncertain times that require every precaution and concerted action by leadership to create policies that protect people and the planet.

Thank you for your public service, and for you attention to my comments.

Respectfully,

Marilyn Bardet
Benicia