Tag Archives: San Francisco Bay Area

Repost from the Contra Costa Times
[Editor: It takes the Air District over 3 years to “settle” with Valero for polluting our air? In the past City officials have asked that these kinds of fines be redirected to the communities where the violations occur. My understanding is that BAAQMD Executive Officer Jack Broadbent indicated he would consider it, but never took any action. Seems the Air District wants to continue to use the fines for their own operations: “The penalty money will be used to fund air district inspections and enforcement actions.” – RS]

Valero refinery in Benicia to pay $122,500 in air pollution penalties

By Denis Cuff, 06/25/2015 12:49:50 PM PDT

BENICIA — The Valero oil refinery has agreed to pay $122,500 in civil penalties for air pollution violations during 2011, clean air regulators announced Thursday.

The settlement between Valero and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District covers 25 notices of violations, including one over odors at the refinery wastewater treatment plant.

Another 14 violations concerned excessive pollution detected by monitors at the Benicia plant, officials said.

“Violations of air quality regulations, no mater how minor, must be addressed and refineries held accountable,” Jack Broadbent, the air pollution district chief, said.

The penalty money will be used to fund air district inspections and enforcement actions.

The air district regulates stationary air pollution sources in the nine Bay Area counties.

Air Quality, Bakken Crude, Clean energy, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, Oil Industry, Oil spill, Pipeline transport, Tar sands crude

Recent Grassroots Victories: Standing Against Big Oil’s Crude-by-Rail Push

April 6, 2015 Roger Straw

Repost from NRDC Switchboard

Standing Against Big Oil’s Crude-by-Rail Push

By Franz Matzner, April 6, 2015

Franz Matzner Over the last few days, we’ve seen a series of grassroots victories that prove we’re not stuck with Big Oil’s plan to foist dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure on communities across the country.

Just last week, TransCanada (of Keystone XL infamy) confirmed that it is dropping a marine crude oil export terminal in Quebec due to environmental concerns, a move that will delay the target opening date for the massive Energy East tar sands pipeline by at least two years.

Across the continent, Big Oil was also dealt two blows against its attempts to import extreme crudes into California by rail. In the face of strong community opposition, midstream oil company WesPac has abandoned its plan to build a rail terminal that would have brought dirty crude oil into the San Francisco Bay Area.

A few years ago, WesPac proposed a rail and marine terminal that would transport 242,000 barrels per day of crude oil–nearly a third of the capacity of Keystone XL–through Pittsburg, CA, a small community of 60,000 residents and then on to Bay Area refineries. The problems with WesPac’s proposal are myriad: it would expose Pittsburg’s population, largely communities of color and low-income communities, to the risks of exploding trains and increased air pollution, and it would require a massive investment in fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when we should be moving toward clean energy solutions.

The project was so ill-conceived that, following comments by NRDC and others, the California Attorney General wrote a letter finding “significant legal problems” with the project’s environmental review documents. Accordingly, the city decided to put the project on hold and revisit its environmental review process. That’s where things stood for over a year, until last week, when WesPac announced that it would drop the rail terminal aspect of the project altogether.

As community and environmental advocates have repeatedly pointed out, oil trains pose serious risks–risks that were highlighted by a series of fiery accidents over the last few weeks. (Notably, some recent accidents have involved Canadian tar sands crude, in addition to a bevy of dangerous mishaps involving North Dakota’s Bakken crude, which has long been known to be highly volatile and has been the culprit in most oil train disasters.)

This win in Pittsburg follows a recent decision by another Bay Area city, Benicia, to withdraw and revise its environmental review documents for a proposed crude-by-rail terminal at Valero’s Benicia refinery. As NRDC and others, including the California Attorney General, pointed out in legal comments, the terminal would pose serious safety and health threats to Benicia and to residents along the rail line. Momentum is also building against another crude-by-rail proposal up for consideration further south in San Luis Obispo County.

These victories show the power of local communities to stop Big Oil in its tracks.

The battle, however, is far from over: Valero is still trying to push forward with its rail terminal, and WesPac’s proposed marine terminal would have significant impacts on the fragile San Francisco Bay Delta and nearby residents. In fact, WesPac’s plans may still include the renovation of long-dormant storage tanks to stockpile large volumes of volatile crude oil, even though those tanks are literally a stone’s throw from homes, churches, and a school.

Some critics have used the boom in crude oil trains as evidence that we should allow more pipelines. They offer the false choice of risk from pipelines or risk from oil trains. The truth is more sinister. Big Oil wants more of both. Pipelines and rail serve different geographic areas and often carry different types of oil. The problem is that both forms of transportation have risks, and both bring fossil fuels perilously close to our communities. Clean energy investments do the opposite: they eliminate the dangerous risks of spills and bomb trains, while cutting carbon pollution.

It’s time our elected leaders follow the example of communities across the country by saying “no” to Big Oil and “yes” to clean solutions that accelerate fuel efficiency, electric vehicles, clean fuels, and renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Franz A. Matzner is associate director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. His policy background includes energy, climate, and forestry. He previously held the position of senior policy analyst for agriculture and the environment at Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS). Matzner graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-author of the NRDC report “Safe At Home: Making the Federal Fire Safety Budget Work for Communities.”

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Environmental review, Pittsburg CA, WesPac Midstream LLC

Pittsburg CA: WesPac oil storage project no longer includes Bakken crude trains

April 1, 2015 Roger Straw

Repost from the San Jose Mercury News
[Editor: For original project documents and the recent announcement, see the City of Pittsburg’s WesPac Pittsburg Energy Infrastructure Project. – RS]

Pittsburg: WesPac oil storage project no longer includes Bakken crude trains

By Sam Richards, 04/01/2015 11:40:04 AM PDT

PITTSBURG — Amid the growing national debate over the safety of transporting crude oil by trains, an energy firm has dropped the rail component from a controversial proposal to transform an old PG&E tank farm into a regional oil storage facility here.

WesPac Midstream LLC’s proposed Pittsburg Terminal Project, which had been attacked by local activists as posing a serious safety threat, is back on the table after a year of dormancy.

But the elimination of the crude-by-rail element doesn’t mean critics are satisfied that a revived oil storage and shipping operation would be safe for the community. The dormant tanks are less than a half-mile from hundreds of houses and apartments on West 10th Street and in the downtown area between Eighth Street and the waterfront.

“There are still environmental issues … having the stored oil in those tanks so close to homes, ground pollution issues, vapors from the big tanks,” said Frank Gordon of Pittsburg, a vocal opponent of the project in the past.

The City Council on Monday is expected to approve another review of the proposed oil storage facility’s environmental impact reports — this time excluding the prospect of rail deliveries.

The WesPac plan, as presented in October 2013, included facilities just north of Parkside Avenue — south of the tank farm — to handle as many as five 104-car oil trainloads a week.

Art Diefenbach, WesPac’s Pittsburg project manager then and now, said this week that the “regulatory environment” surrounding rail shipments of crude oil — in particular, the more volatile Bakken crude from an area covering parts of North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan in Canada — isn’t stable enough to plan a major project around.

“We just can’t proceed with that uncertainty floating out there,” said Diefenbach, also noting that falling crude prices help make shipping oil by rail a less attractive alternative, at least in the short term.

He said protests against the crude oil trains — in Pittsburg, the East Bay and the nation — were a factor in the plan change, too. Such decisions, he said, “are always a combination of factors.”

Oil trains, he said, are out of the picture for the foreseeable future.

Several communities in the East Bay have expressed alarm in recent months about the transport of crude by rail through the region in the wake of several high-profile derailments and accidents in North America in recent years, including one in Quebec in 2013 that killed 47 people and destroyed part of a town. At a meeting in Crockett last week, residents raised concerns about plans to ship oil by rail through Contra Costa County and other parts of the Bay Area to a refinery in Central California.

Without trains, all oil arriving at the WesPac facility would be via either ship or a pipeline from the southern reaches of the Central Valley.

Pittsburg Mayor Pete Longmire said removing the trains from the WesPac equation should result in a safer project for the community. “And it’s probably less controversial than before,” he said.

Although the council will decide Monday night on only an amendment to one of the project’s environmental studies, Longmire expects a large crowd to turn out to discuss what many still likely see as a polluting facility that could present a health danger to the hundreds of people who live near the old tanks.

WesPac Energy, as the company was called then, first applied in March 2011 for needed permits to renovate and restart the former PG&E oil storage and transfer facilities off West 10th Street on the city’s northwestern edge. The $200 million project calls for an average of 242,000 barrels of crude or partially refined crude oil to be unloaded daily from ships on the nearby Sacramento River, and from pipelines, and stored in 16 tanks on 125 acres.

The oil would then be moved to Contra Costa County refineries, and the Valero refinery in Benicia, via pipeline for processing.

The Pittsburg Defense Council, a group of opponents to the WesPac project in general, had decried the prospect of Bakken crude oil coming into town for unloading. Some already has rolled through Pittsburg on BNSF rails, destined for a Kinder-Morgan facility in Richmond.

Diefenbach said that, assuming various approvals come at a typical pace, construction could begin in early 2016, and likely would take from 18 to 24 months.

Longmire said he doesn’t have strong feelings about WesPac either way at this point but insists that the project — with its jobs and its boost to the local economy — must be safe. Gordon said he is still leaning against it. They agree, though, the formal permitting process must be allowed to play out.

Said Gordon, “We’ll have to see what they do with the new” environmental impact report.

If you go…

The Pittsburg City Council meets at 7 p.m. Monday at City Hall council chamber, 65 Civic Ave. in Pittsburg. The public is welcome.

Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, Local Regulation, Public permitting

REUTERS: California opposition to oil-by-rail mounts

March 20, 2015 Roger Straw

Repost from Reuters

California opposition to oil-by-rail mounts

By Rory Carroll, Mar 19, 2015 3:03pm EDT

(Reuters) – A chorus of local governments across California opposed to crude oil trains grew louder this week in light of recent derailments, with a total of 14 cities and towns now trying to block the trains from running through their communities.

Five northern California cities – Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, Martinez and Davis – have voiced their opposition to crude by rail in general. An additional nine communities specifically oppose a Phillips 66 project to enable its refinery in San Luis Obispo to unload crude-carrying trains.

Fiery derailments in West Virginia, Illinois and Ontario in recent weeks have brought the issue back into the national spotlight. The most devastating crude by rail disaster, a July 2013 derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which killed 47 people, is mentioned in many of the opposition measures.

San Luis Obispo County is weighing whether to approve the Phillips 66 project, which would use Union Pacific rail lines to bring five 80-car trains per week to the refinery, starting in 2016.

That has prompted concern from communities along the company’s rail network, including densely populated cities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“The opposition is growing exponentially,” said Jess Dervin-Ackerman of the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter.

On Monday the Bay Area city of San Leandro passed a resolution opposing the Phillips 66 project, noting that at least 20 schools are located in the “blast zone” along the projected route.

Paso Robles, a city in San Luis Obispo County, could be the next to take a stand against the dangerous cargo. Its city council is expected to debate the topic at an upcoming meeting.

While local governments lack the ability to stop the trains, which fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government, they hope to put pressure on San Luis Obispo County officials.

“Every one of the tank cars on these trains carries more flammable crude oil than any municipal fire department can fight. That’s why California cities and towns are saying no,” said Matt Krogh of environmental group ForestEthics.

Phillips 66 said it has one of the most modern crude rail fleets in service and that every railcar used to transport crude oil in its fleet exceeds regulatory safety standards.

“The proposed rail project is designed with safety as the top priority and with safety measures embedded in the project,” said spokesman Dennis Nuss.

(Editing by Jessica Resnick-Ault and Matthew Lewis)