Benicia City Council passes Industrial Safety Ordinance in unanimous vote
San Francisco Chronicle, by Julie Johnson, April 2, 2025
Months after Bay Area regulators handed a record-setting fine for pollution violations to oil giant Valero Refining Co.’s Benicia facility, city leaders voted to establish stronger oversight over refinery emissions.
The Benicia City Council unanimously passed regulations Tuesday creating a new air quality monitoring program and requiring the refinery and other entities handling hazardous materials to promptly report emissions.
Vice Mayor Trevor Macenski said they hope to “foster a resilient business environment within Benicia while ensuring that our citizens don’t all need inhalers.”
The city’s plan is modeled after a similar ordinance in Contra Costa County, which for more than two decades has empowered county health officials to investigate potential emissions problems at three oil refineries, including Chevron, across the Carquinez Strait.
The Solano County city has lacked similar oversight power for Valero. Benicia leaders have been frustrated in recent years by revelations of emissions problems at Valero and a lack of notification from agencies charged with pollution oversight. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District waited three years to inform Benicia residents after agency staff discovered Valero was spewing illegal amounts of cancer-causing gases and chemicals into the air and had done so for 16 years.
Council Member Kari Birdseye, who campaigned on more refinery oversight when she was elected in 2022, said in an interview that the air district’s $82 million fine was a “wake-up call” for Benicia.
“Our community wants to know exactly what’s going wrong and how we can ensure those types of things don’t happen again,” Birdseye said.
The ordinance, which takes effect 120 days after the vote, allows the city to investigate pollution issues when other agencies, such as the Bay Area air quality district, state or federal agencies, aren’t conducting investigations. It also requires facilities such as the refinery to report potentially hazardous releases to the city.
The vote was unanimous despite strong opposition from some business representatives and Valero executives, who previously called the ordinance “governmental overreach.”
Valero refinery officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment this week.
The ordinance would also pertain to a dozen other businesses in the city, including the city’s water and wastewater treatment plants, paint company Sherwin-Williams, a chemical decontamination firm, cork supply company, and several manufacturers.
Under a current contract with the city, Valero provides the city a base amount of $331,320 annually. The ordinance would terminate that contract and replace it with fees based on how much hazardous material Valero handles. That applies to other industrial facilities that fall under the ordinance as well. The city’s new plan starts with no fees for the smallest operators and increases up to $386,260 annual fee for the largest.
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