In the next few days, there will be THREE opportunities to learn more about how to read and respond to a Draft EIR (Environmental Impact Report).
Workshop on How to Respond to Valero’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), This Saturday, June 28, 1-4pm, Benicia Public Library– Sponsored byBenicians For a Safe and Healthy Community. Learn about the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the procedures governing review of Valero’s proposal, including how you can comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). Instruction, brainstorming, and organizing our responses. Refreshments included! Bring a friend.
Next Monday, 6/30, 5:30pm, Ironworkers Hall, 3120 Bayshore Road, Benicia, sponsored by Valero.
Also on Monday, 6/30, 7pm, City Hall Council Chambers, 250 East L Street, Benicia, sponsored by City of Benicia staff at the request of the Benicia Planning Commission.
NOTE: If you can’t make one of these workshops, you are still encouraged to make your views known. Commenting on the DEIR can be as hard or easy as you make it. If you have something to say to the City of Benicia now, please send an email today. Send your comments to:
Amy Million, Principal Planner, Community Development Department, by email: amillion@ci.benicia.ca.us. AND
Brad Kilger, City Manager, by email: bkilger@ci.benicia.ca.us Amy and Brad may also be contacted by delivery to 250 East L Street, Benicia, CA 94510, or by Fax: (707) 747-1637.
Benicia Planning Commissioners, send via email to Amy Million, requesting her to forward on to Planning Commissioners.
Attorney General Confirms CBE Concerns over Chevron Refinery
June 9, 2014
A CBE News Release – A.G. Kamala Harris cited refinery safety, air pollution, and climate protection concerns with Chevron’s proposed Richmond refinery expansion—the same concerns raised by CBE.
Urging the City of Richmond “to revise the EIR so that it will fully inform the public and the City Council of the local and statewide impacts of this Project,” Attorney General Kamala Harris cited refinery safety, air pollution, and climate protection concerns with Chevron’s proposed Richmond refinery expansion—the same concerns raised by Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) last month.
The Attorney General’s June 6th comment letter identified at least five issues that need further evaluation in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Chevron Expansion (“Modernization”) Project:
Safety hazards of the proposed project;
Potential project impacts on statewide climate protection objectives;
disparately impacted local community;
Feasible measures to cut local air pollution; and
Reasonable alternatives that may be environmentally superior to the project as currently proposed.
Specific concerns Harris raised include, among others, increased safety hazards from refining higher sulfur oil, increased carbon emission intensity, and the reliance on ‘emission reduction credits’ that do not require emission reductions in the communities directly affected by the proposed project’s potential air pollution.
CBE called on the City to revise and recirculate Chevron’s draft EIR, in comments documenting these same concerns submitted May 2, 2014. Last week CBE challenged air quality officials’ action granting a permit for the project without any valid air quality or environmental review. The Richmond Planning Commission has scheduled a decision on the project and EIR for a public hearing on July 9, 2014.
Repost from The Sacramento Bee [Editor: A MUST READ – excellent background piece. Note multiple references to uprail communities’ concerns about Valero’s Crude By Rail proposal. – RS]
Crude oil rail transports to run through Sacramento region
By Tony Bizjak, June 7, 2014
A crude oil train operated by BNSF travels just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills into the Sacramento Valley. Jake Miille / Special to The Bee
Sacramento’s history as a rail town is long and rich. A potential new chapter, however, is creating concern: The city may soon become a crude-oil crossroads.
As part of a national shift in shipping practices, several oil companies are laying plans to haul hundreds of train cars a day of flammable crude through the region on the way to coastal and Valley refineries, passing through neighborhoods and downtowns, and crossing the region’s two major rivers. Saying they’ve been told little about the transport projects, area leaders are scrambling to gather information so they can advocate for local safety interests as several of the rail shipment proposals move forward.
“This is a real issue,” Sacramento Rep. Doris Matsui said this week after holding a recent conference call with fire officials. “Sacramento’s downtown and many neighborhoods sit next to the tracks. The feedback I received on that call is that our locals are not receiving the information they need to be ready for an incident.”
Several of the planned crude-oil trains will share tracks with Capitol Corridor passenger trains. Notably, Capitol Corridor chief David Kutrosky said last week he was not aware of the plans until informed by The Sacramento Bee.
Some of the trains are expected to carry Bakken crude, a North Dakota oil mined with fracking technology. Federal hazardous materials officials recently issued a warning that Bakken crude may be more flammable than traditional oil, citing derailments that resulted in fires, including a catastrophic explosion last year that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and leveled half of that city’s downtown.
Subsequent derailments in North Dakota and Virginia, though not fatal, caused fires and evacuations and showed disaster could strike again.
Kirk Trost, an attorney and executive with the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, a coalition of six counties and 22 Sacramento-area cities, said he will ask the SACOG board this month to issue a regional statement of concern about the potential rail projects. Trost and other local officials say they want to push oil and railroad companies to be more open about their plans and to work more closely with local leaders on safety issues.
“We’re not trying to stop the movement of crude through the region,” he said. “But if it comes, we want the safety interests of the region to be addressed.”
Those concerns are being echoed across the country as cities, many with downtown rail lines, react to the oil industry’s rapid evolution toward using trains to haul crude oil. The rail shipments spring from increased pumping of inexpensive crude in North Dakota and from tar sands in Canada, which have limited access to oil pipelines.
Federal officials are exploring the ramifications of having so much oil moving by train. The National Transportation Safety Board held April hearings highlighting the inadequacies of the nation’s current fleet of crude oil tank cars. The U.S. Department of Transportation says it plans to propose tougher standards for safer tank cars. Critics like Andres Soto of the activist Communities for a Better Environment group – who calls current crude tankers “rolling beer cans” – say the government isn’t doing enough.
California, with its coastal refineries and huge gasoline consumption, saw its rail shipments jump from 1 million barrels in 2012 to more than 6 million in 2013, according to the state Energy Commission. Those numbers still represent a small portion of crude oil shipments, but energy officials say they expect them to grow.
‘All flammable’
In response, the Governor’s Office has proposed more funding to deal with rail oil spills, and Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, is pushing legislation to require rail carriers to communicate information about the movement and characteristics of crude oil and other hazardous materials, and maintain a 24-hour, seven-day communications center.
Union Pacific railroad officials insist they’re taking action. They say the company has agreed to reduce crude oil train speeds in large cities such as Sacramento, and have spent millions of dollars on safety efforts, including expanded inspections and technology use, such as lasers and ultrasound, and real-time train tracking via track-side sensors.
“We take this very seriously,” UP spokesman Aaron Hunt said. Representatives of Union Pacific and BNSF, another major freight carrier in California, say they conduct ongoing training with local first responders on dealing with hazardous materials.
The railroads, however, are fighting to keep some train movement data from becoming public.
The Federal Department of Transportation issued an emergency order last month requiring railroads currently running trains with large amounts of Bakken oil to notify state emergency responders about train movements. That deadline is this weekend.
Railroads have said they want states to sign a nondisclosure agreement to keep the information confidential, shared only with emergency personnel. California state officials say they will not sign that agreement, but said Friday they do not know what level of information they may receive from the railroads, and are not sure how much information they would make public.
“We want to keep as much information as public as possible. Anything of concern to the public we want to be available to the public,” said Brad Alexander of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “Since we haven’t received information yet, we don’t know if there is certain national infrastructure risks to (some of the information) being public.”
BNSF officials said on Friday they will submit information to the state. Union Pacific said it does not currently ship Bakken in the state.
Some information about potential future crude-oil rail movements is becoming public. Valero Refining Co. of Benicia in the East Bay plans to run 100 train cars a day carrying crude oil through Sacramento on the Union Pacific rail line starting early next year, according to Benicia city documents. Company officials have been silent on how much of it will be Bakken, simply saying it will be North American crude. Two 50-car crude oil trains will be assembled daily in the Roseville railyard, then run through Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis to the refinery.
Valero spokesman Chris Howe said his company is focused on safety, and that derailments causing crude oil spills are rare. “We think some of the concerns voiced about transport of particular crudes by rail are a little exaggerated,” Howe said. “There is nothing inherently more dangerous about one crude than another. They are all flammable, and need to be handled carefully.”
He pointed out that the rail transport of less expensive oil from North America will save money and reduce the chance of ocean spills by allowing Valero to cut back dramatically on imports from Africa, the Middle East and South America.
Farther south in California, the Phillips 66 oil company plans to run up to 80 train cars of crude oil daily to its Santa Maria refinery, mainly through Sacramento and the Bay Area. Phillips spokesman Dennis Nuss said rail shipments will keep its refinery competitive as California oil sources diminish. He said the crude will come from a variety of locales, but is not expected to be Bakken. He estimated the trains likely will start running in 2016.
Roseville to Benicia
Two facilities in Kern County – one run by Alon USA, the other by Plains All American Pipeline LP – also plan rail upgrades to allow deliveries of more than 100 tank crude cars a day. Alon did not respond to Bee requests for information, but, according to Kern County environmental documents, trains to the Alon facility will share tracks with the San Joaquin passenger rail service, which runs from Sacramento to Bakersfield. Plains All American Pipeline spokesman Brad Leone confirmed that his company is building a station to handle 104 crude cars daily, with plans to start shipping later this year, but said he did not know what rail lines would be used.
Sacramento already is home to one crude-by-rail transfer station. Sacramento-based InterState Oil has been transferring crude-oil shipments from train cars to trucks headed to Bay Area refineries at the former McClellan Air Force Base in north Sacramento since last September. The company started crude transfers before getting the necessary air-quality permit, local air quality officials said, and Sacramento-area fire officials said they were not initially told about the crude transfer operations.
Local leaders in Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis say their front-burner concern is Valero’s plan to run two crude oil trains a day through the area. The city of Benicia, the permitting authority for Valero’s plan to build a rail spur to handle more trains, is scheduled to release a draft environmental impact report on the project Tuesday. Trost of SACOG and Davis official Mike Webb said Sacramento area representatives will dig through that report to see how definitively it addresses potential impacts, including derailment and spill risks, on the “up-rail” cities and counties between Benicia and Roseville.
The Sacramento group already has compiled a list of steps it wants taken, and says it hopes to use the moment to make the case that railroads and oil companies must work more closely with cities as the stakes rise.
Trost said the local group will call for a detailed advanced notification system about what shipments are coming to town. Those notifications will help fire agencies who must respond if a leak or fire occurs. Local officials say they also will ask Union Pacific to keep crude-oil tank cars moving through town without stopping and parking them here. The region’s leaders also want financial support to train firefighters and other emergency responders on how to deal with crude oil spills, and possibly funds to buy more advanced firefighting equipment. Sacramento leaders say they will press the railroad to employ the best inspection protocols on the rail line.
So far, the Davis City Council is the only entity in Sacramento that has formally spoken out about the shipments. It recently passed a resolution saying the city “opposes using existing Union Pacific rail lines to transport hazardous crude oil through the city and adjacent habitat areas.”
Davis officials point out that the existing Union Pacific line comes through downtown on a curve that must be taken at reduced speeds. Mike Webb, Davis director of community development and sustainability, said the city of Davis wants to push UP to employ computerized control of train speeds through town, rather than rely on a conductor to reduce speeds manually.
“The city is not opposed to using domestic oil, and the job creation that goes with that,” he said. “We want to be reasonable. Our primary concern is to ensure the highest degree of safety for our community. If trains carrying Bakken crude oil are coming through our community, we want it to be done in the safest way possible.”
Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2014/06/07/3378435/crude-oil-rail-transports-to-run.html#storylink=cpy
Repost from the Salem, Oregon Statesman Journal [Editor: See quotes from Benicia’s Andrés Soto near end of this article. – RS]
Sharp rise in West Coast oil trains, fears abound
Gosia Wozniacka, Associated Press | May 26, 2014
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — Residents along the scenic Columbia River are hoping to persuade regulators to reject plans for what would be the Pacific Northwest’s largest crude oil train terminal — the proposed destination for at least four trains a day, each more than a mile long.
The increasing numbers of trains, each carrying tens of thousands of barrels of potentially volatile crude from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, have raised concerns around the country after nine accidents in the past year, including one last month in Virginia.
In Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia from Portland, Oregon, the oil companies say their proposed terminal will create at least 80 permanent jobs and will bring an economic windfall to the region. But area residents and others in nearby communities are worried about the risks to people, wildlife, businesses and to their way of life.
“We depend on the Columbia for moving freight, generating power, irrigating farms, fishing,” said Eric LaBrant, president of the Fruit Valley Neighborhood Association, which represents about 2,000 residents who live next to the proposed site.
“Anywhere on the Columbia, an oil spill would cripple our economy,” he said.
The river is, in a way, the soul of the Pacific Northwest. It is cherished for its beauty, for its recreational offerings like wind surfing, and for the salmon and steelhead caught by sport fishermen, commercial fishermen and Native Americans.
The fight over the terminal underscores a new reality on the West Coast: The region is receiving unprecedented amounts of crude oil by rail shipments, mostly from the oil boom in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada.
More than a dozen oil-by-rail refining facilities and terminals have been built in California, Oregon and Washington in the past three years. As a result, long oil trains are already rolling through rural and urban areas alike — including along the iconic Columbia.
Another two dozen new projects or expansions are planned or in the works in those three states.
While traditionally most crude has moved to Gulf Coast and the East Coast terminals and refineries, experts say there’s a West Coast boom because of cheap rail transport prices and its proximity to Asian markets should Congress lift a ban on U.S. oil exports.
Oil by rail shipments through Oregon ballooned from about 1.6 million barrels of crude carried on 2,789 tank cars in 2009 to more than 11 million barrels on 19,065 tank cars in 2013, according to annual railroad company reports.
In California, the volume of crude imported by rail skyrocketed from 45,500 barrels carried on 63 tank cars in 2009 to more than 6 million barrels on 8,608 tank cars in 2013, according to data by the California Energy Commission.
The state estimates its oil-by-rail shipments will rise to 150 million barrels per year in 2016.
And in Washington state, crude oil shipments went from zero barrels in 2011 to 17 million barrels in 2013, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology, though officials said those numbers are rough estimates.
The two main rail companies, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, say they work hard to prevent accidents by inspecting tracks and bridges, investing in trailers with fire-fighting foam and providing hazmat training to emergency responders.
Still, the spike in shipments has led to concerns among officials in the Pacific Northwest over rail safety and oil spill responsiveness — and to opponents lashing out at rail companies for not disclosing how much oil is being shipped and where. Railroad companies aren’t required to disclose such information.
In some cases, oil-by-rail transports on the West Coast started without the knowledge of local communities or emergency responders.
A terminal near Clatskanie, 62 miles northwest of Portland, was permitted to move oil two years ago by Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality without a public process. This year, the state fined the facility for moving six times more crude than allowed.
The disclosure caused public protests, but the company, Global Partners, says it’s following the law.
In the San Francisco Bay area, where the local air district in February issued a permit to operate a crude-by-rail project in Richmond without notice to the public or an environmental review, residents and environmental groups filed a lawsuit.
They are seeking a preliminary injunction and a suspension of the air permit, pending a full environmental review.
“We feel that we were deliberately deceived by the permitting authority,” said Andres Soto, the Richmond organizer for Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental justice group that’s a plaintiff in the case.
“The delivery of this product right next to schools, to neighborhoods, where literally you can throw a rock and hit these rail cars, presents a clear danger to literally thousands of residents,” Soto said.
The fears are shared by many in Vancouver, where officials received more than 33,000 public comments about the project — detailing feared impacts to air quality, wildlife, recreation, tribal treaty rights, and home values, among others.
After a review, state officials will make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say.
