California energy report examines plug-in vehicles, crude oil by rail
By Alexei Koseff, 11/23/2014
After months of workshops, the California Energy Commission has assembled its annual update of the Integrated Energy Policy Report, an assessment of the state’s energy and transportation sectors that provides an overview of major trends and issues, as well as policy recommendations.
The commission will be soliciting public comments on the draft report, which can be reviewed online, during a 10 a.m. meeting at its building on 9th Street.
Among the topics addressed in this year’s update are California’s alternative and renewable fuels program, a statewide plug-in electric vehicle infrastructure, and the increasing transportation of crude oil by rail.
VIDEO: PG&E is slapped with a fine for exerting improper influence over the California Public Utilities Commission, while officials get off scot-free. Something is not right here, Dan Walters says.
GOBBLE GOBBLE: Thanksgiving is a good opportunity for lawmakers to give back to their communities, especially when they’ve got forthcoming special elections to campaign for. Assemblyman Isadore Hall, D-Compton, who is running to replace former state Sen. Rod Wright in the 35th District next month, is participating in a turkey giveaway in Compton this morning, while Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, seeking to replace Congressman-elect Mark DeSaulnier in the 7th District, has scheduled a turkey distribution in Bay Point.
SIXTH SENSE: Humboldt State University research scientist Mahesh Rao discusses how remote sensing technology has been used to examine the effects of California’s severe drought on the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills, noon at the Cal/EPA building on I Street.
IMMIGR-ACA-TION: More than 11 million undocumented immigrants are estimated to live in the United States. Will they benefit some way under the health insurance changes of the Affordable Care Act? The Commonwealth Club of California hosts a panel on the future of health care for immigrants, underwritten by The California Wellness Foundation, 6 p.m. at the club’s San Francisco office.
Repost from NBC Bay Area [Editor: Shocking coverage. Apologies for the video’s commercial ad. – RS]
Waste Water from Oil Fracking Injected into Clean Aquifers
California Dept. of Conservation Deputy Director admits that errors were made
By Stephen Stock, Liza Meak, Mark Villarreal and Scott Pham, 11/14/2014
State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation.
Those aquifers are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, protected by the EPA.
“It’s inexcusable,” said Hollin Kretzmann, at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. “At (a) time when California is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history, we’re allowing oil companies to contaminate what could otherwise be very useful ground water resources for irrigation and for drinking. It’s possible these aquifers are now contaminated irreparably.”
California’s Department of Conservation’s Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay Area, “In multiple different places of the permitting process an error could have been made.”
“There have been past issues where permits were issued to operators that they shouldn’t be injecting into those zones and so we’re fixing that,” Marshall added.
In “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing operations, oil and gas companies use massive amounts of water to force the release of underground fossil fuels. The practice produces large amounts of waste water that must then be disposed of.
Marshall said that often times, oil and gas companies simply re-inject that waste water back deep underground where the oil extraction took place. But other times, Marshall said, the waste water is re-injected into aquifers closer to the surface. Those injections are supposed to go into aquifers that the EPA calls “exempt”—in other words, not clean enough for humans to drink or use.
But in the State’s letter to the EPA, officials admit that in at least nine waste water injection wells, the waste water was injected into “non-exempt” or clean aquifers containing high quality water.
For the EPA, “non-exempt” aquifers are underground bodies of water that are “containing high quality water” that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.
If the waste water re-injection well “went into a non-exempt aquifer. It should not have been permitted,” said Marshall.
The department ended up shutting down 11 wells: the nine that were known to be injecting into non-exempt aquifers, and another two in an abundance of caution.
In its reply letter to the EPA, California’s Water Resources Control Board said its “staff identified 108 water supply wells located within a one-mile radius of seven…injection wells” and that The Central Valley Water Board conducted sampling of “eight water supply wells in the vicinity of some of these… wells.”
“This is something that is going to slowly contaminate everything we know around here,” said fourth- generation Kern County almond grower Tom Frantz, who lives down the road from several of the injection wells in question.
According to state records, as many as 40 water supply wells, including domestic drinking wells, are located within one mile of a single well that’s been injecting into non-exempt aquifers.
That well is located in an area with several homes nearby, right in the middle of a citrus grove southeast of Bakersfield.
This well is one of nine that were known to be injecting waste water into “non-exempt” aquifers. It’s located just east of Bakersfield.
State records show waste water from several sources, including from the oil and gas industry, has gone into the aquifer below where 60 different water supply wells are located within a one mile radius.
“That’s a huge concern and communities who rely on water supply wells near these injection wells have a lot of reason to be concerned that they’re finding high levels of arsenic and thallium and other chemicals nearby where these injection wells have been allowed to operate,” said Kretzmann.
“It is a clear worry,” said Juan Flores, a Kern County community organizer for the Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment. “We’re in a drought. The worst drought we’ve seen in decades. Probably the worst in the history of agriculture in California.”
“No one from this community will drink from the water from out of their well,” said Flores. “The people are worried. They’re scared.”
The trade association that represents many of California’s oil and gas companies says the water-injection is a “paperwork issue.” In a statement issued to NBC Bay Area, Western States Petroleum Association spokesman Tupper Hull said “there has never been a bona vide claim or evidence presented that the paperwork confusion resulted in any contamination of drinking supplies near the disputed injection wells.”
However, state officials tested 8 water supply wells within a one-mile radius of some of those wells.
Four water samples came back with higher than allowable levels of nitrate, arsenic, and thallium.
Those same chemicals are used by the oil and gas industry in the hydraulic fracturing process and can be found in oil recovery waste-water.
“We are still comparing the testing of what was the injection water to what is the tested water that came out of these wells to find out if they were background levels or whether that’s the result of oil and gas operation, but so far it’s looking like it’s background,” said James Marshall from the California Department of Conservation.
Marshall acknowledged that those chemicals could have come from oil extraction, and not necessarily wastewater disposal.
“But when those (further) test results come back, we’ll know for sure,” Marshall said.
When asked how this could happen in the first place, Marshall said that the long history of these wells makes it difficult to know exactly what the thinking was.
“When you’re talking about wells that were permitted in 1985 to 1992, we’ve tried to go back and talk to some of the permitting engineers,” said Marshall. “And it’s unfortunate but in some cases they (the permitting engineers) are deceased.”
Kern County’s Water Board referred the Investigative Unit to the state for comment.
California State officials assured the EPA in its letter that the owners of the wells where chemicals were found have been warned and could ask for further testing of their drinking wells.
Railroads sue California over oil train safety rules
Union Pacific, BNSF Railway argue federal law pre-empts state regulations
By Tony Burchyns, October 9, 2014
California’s two major railroad companies filed a lawsuit this week to argue that the state lacks authority to impose its own safety requirements on federally regulated crude oil train traffic.
The lawsuit follows a new state law imposing regulations on the transportation of crude oil by rail in California. Union Pacific and BNSF Railway filed the case Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento to argue that federal law pre-empts California and other states from enforcing such regulatory regimes.
“The new state law requires railroads to take a broad range of steps to prevent and respond to oil spills, on top of their myriad federal obligations concerning precisely the same subject matter,” the railroads argue. “UP, BNSF and other members of (the American Association of Railroads) will be barred from operating within California unless a California regulator approves oil spill prevention and response plans that they will have to create, pursuant to a panoply of California-specific requirements.”
The railroads also will be required to obtain a “certificate of financial responsibility” from the state, indicating they are able to cover damages resulting from an oil spill. Failure to comply with the new state rules will expose railroad employees to jail time and fines, according to the lawsuit.
The California Office of Spill Prevention and Response, which was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, has declined to comment on the pending litigation.
The state law was passed in June following a sharp rise in crude-by-rail shipments in California from 2012 to 2013 and several high-profile oil train derailments in other states as well as Canada. In the Bay Area, crude-by-rail projects in Benicia, Richmond, Pittsburg, Martinez and Stockton have drawn local attention to the prospect of mile-long oil trains snaking through neighborhoods, mountain passes and sensitive habitats such as the Suisun Marsh.
Last week, California Attorney General Kamala Harris sent a letter to Benicia challenging plans to ship 70,000 barrels of crude daily by train to the city’s Valero refinery. Valero is seeking city approval to build a rail terminal to receive two 50-car oil trains daily from Roseville. The train shipments would originate in North Dakota or possibly Canada.
Harris, the state’s top law enforcement officer, criticized the city for underestimating the project’s safety and environmental risks. The letter was among hundreds received by the city in response to its initial environmental impact report. City officials say they are in the process of responding to all of the comments, and plan to do so before the project’s next, yet-to-be-scheduled public hearing is held.
Editorial: California makes progress on train safety by inspecting railroad bridges
By the Editorial Board, Oct. 9, 2014
Emergency responders learn about the different types of railroad tank cars in a safety class last week at a CSX yard in Richmond, Va. CSX uses its “safety train” to train first responders in communities where it hauls large volumes of crude oil. Curtis Tate / McClatchy-Tribune
It’s encouraging that important steps are being taken to make sure oil trains rumbling through California don’t derail, but the job isn’t nearly done yet.
For the first time, the California Public Utilities Commission plans to check behind safety inspections by private railroad companies of rail bridges across the state, focusing on those traversed by trains carrying crude oil.
The commission is deploying two new bridge inspectors – among seven new rail inspectors hired with money allocated by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature in response to rising concerns about more oil trains in California. The two inspectors will likely work as a team, visiting four bridges a week. They won’t be doing full inspections, but rather reviewing that the railroads’ safety checks are in proper order.
So the commission is compiling a priority list of the first 30 bridges for visits in 2015. Here are two possible ones that should be strongly considered: the heavily used, 103-year-old I Street Bridge in downtown Sacramento and the Clear Creek Trestle in Feather River Canyon. Both are expected to be on primary routes for oil trains.
It’s also significant that state and local officials are pushing for a more complete risk assessment of Valero’s proposal to run oil trains through Northern California to its Benicia refinery.
For one thing, state officials say they want more detail on how Benicia officials came up with a projection that a train derailment would spill 100 gallons or more of oil only once every 111 years along the 69 miles of track between Roseville and Benicia.
At the same time, California’s two U.S. senators are pressing federal transportation officials to expand their requirements for railroads to notify first responders of oil shipments. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s emergency order, issued in May, covers only shipments of at least 1 million gallons (about 35 rail cars) of crude from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota.
Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein say that notification ought to be required for any quantity of Bakken, or any kind of crude oil or other flammable liquid, for that matter.
They’re right. If safety is the goal, there’s no logical reason that smaller shipments and other kinds of crude aren’t covered. The notification mandate is among proposed rules on oil trains that federal officials plan to impose by year’s end. They also include phasing out older rail cars, lower speed limits and more comprehensive response plans for spills.
Those federal regulations will become even more crucial if California’s two major railroad companies – BNSF and Union Pacific – win their federal lawsuit filed Tuesday that challenges a new state law requiring them to come up with oil spill prevention and response plans. The companies argue that federal law prevents states from imposing such safety rules.
This is often how important safety improvements get made – step by step, at different levels of government, with advocates having to keep pushing for stronger protections against industry resistance. Everyone involved should have one priority – putting public safety first and foremost.
