Tag Archives: Valero Crude by Rail

Benicia Planning Commission, Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, Crude By Rail, Environmental review, Valero Crude By Rail

Only two weeks (no, one week!) left to voice your opposition to Valero Crude By Rail

October 16, 2016

Send a letter of opposition today!

Below are just a few of the reasons you can cite in your letter to the City.  These points came from a handout by Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community.  Here are two other letter guides: Center for Biological Diversity and ForestEthics.  Send your email to : amillion@ci.benicia.ca.us or send to  Amy Million, Principal Planner, City of Benicia, 250 East L Street, Benicia, CA 94510.

• Tank car design is inadequate, with extremely poor safety records – BOTH DOT-111 AND the “safer” CPC-1232 cars are not safe and have derailed and exploded in other communities.  The  federal government can’t agree on a safe car and its years away from being implemented.
• New Federal Department of Transportation Rules (May, 2015) are inadequate and do not move quickly enough.
• Derailed oil trains that explode cannot be extinguished and so are left to burn themselves out which takes several days.  Emergency response plans are non-existent for a catastrophic derailment and explosion.
• The RDEIR proposes three dangerous routes: a) through the Sierras, the Feather River route – note the recent corn car derailment with resulting spill in the Feather River, b) the Dunsmuir route with the historic spill into the River and c) the Truckee / Donner Lake route with its treacherous mountain grades and beautiful resort areas.  All 3 routes go through areas described by the state as high hazard areas for derailments.  What are the risks of fires in our mountains and spills into all of the waterways the trains pass over?
• We question the statistics on the possible rates of derailments and train explosions.
• High hazard flammable trains will be going through highly populated areas like Davis and Sacramento when the National Transportation Safety Board says they should be rerouted whenever possible away from populated areas.
• Union Pacific can run trains any time they want to and even send in two train shipments in one day.  Neither the City of Benicia nor Valero have control over routes, cars, and shipment times.  Note statements about “federal pre-emption” in the appendices.
• What are the economic risks if there was a derailment and explosion and the refinery was to catch on fire?  Valero’s tank farm is in the blast zone.
• The Draft Revised EIR says there are significant hazards to the public through a reasonably foreseeable accident.  Why would we tolerate this?
• What are the environmental impacts when such extreme methods to get the oil, such as fracking and basically strip mining for tar sands are used to get the oil that is coming by rail?

• There’s lots more – add your own concerns – speak from the heart and with conviction!

Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community
SafeBenicia.org
Facebook.com/StopCrudeByRail
(707) 742-3597
DONATE OR SIGN THE PETITION HERE!

Opposed to Crude by Rail and/or critical of the EIR

• Over 1300 who signed the petition (mostly Benicians)
• Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community (SafeBenicia.org and on Facebook at StopCrudeByRail)
• Hundreds of Benicians and others who wrote letters calling into question the claims of the Environmental Impact Report
• California’s Attorney General
• The Sacramento Area Council of Governments
• The City of Davis, California
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• Sierra Club
• ForestEthics
• Center for Biological Diversity
• EarthJustice
• Sunflower Alliance
• Communities for a Better Environment
• Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition (BARCC)
• Crocket Rodeo United to Defend the Environment (C.R.U.D.E.)
• Idle No More – Bay Area
• Martinez Environmental Group
• 350 Bay Area
• Global Community Monitor
• … and many more

More information:

• Take Action (including more info on letter-writing)
• Project Documents (Valero’s proposal)
• Project Review (letters on the EIR submitted by agencies and individuals)
• Local Media Coverage (letters to the news media)

 

 

 

 

 

We have moved into the final phase of the City of Benicia’s comment period.  Your voice is important as the Planning Commission

Broken rail, City of Benicia, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection, Train weight, Union Pacific Railroad, Valero Crude By Rail

AUBURN CALIFORNIA: No to proposal that would bring oil through Auburn

Repost from the Auburn Journal

Another View: No to proposal that would bring oil through Auburn

By: Rosalie Wohlfromm / Guest Columnist

Rosalie WohlfrommDo you remember back in 2013, when there was a train derailment carrying crude oil in Lac-Megantic, Quebec? That incident resulted in a fiery explosion and caused the death of 47 people.

It has been reported that crude oil from North Dakota and Canada into California would be expected to rise from just 1 percent of total oil imports in 2013 to 25 percent by 2016, according to state energy officials.

This oil would travel by rail through densely populated areas to refineries on the coast. One of these routes is right through our town of Auburn.  We could see trains pulling 100 oil tanker cars going past our homes, schools and parks.

Since 2013, we have heard of numerous derailments causing evacuations of citizens from their homes. One of the latest was last February in Lynchburg, Virginia. It is now known that the cause of the derailment was  a broken rail, which was missed in two previous inspections.

Oil giant Valero wants to build a massive terminal for oil trains at its Benicia refinery. Union Pacific runs from Reno via Donner Pass, a dangerous route that, according to the Environmental Impact Report for Valero Crude by Rail Project, has only 3.5 percent of Class 4 or 5 track, the quality deemed by the U.S. Dept of Transportation necessary to support daily travel of extremely heavy unit trains made up of over 100 tank cars loaded with crude oil.

The City of Benicia is currently in the process of approving or rejecting the Valero Refinery’s proposed CBR project, which would permit Union Pacific to haul crude oil through Auburn.  If this project is approved, Auburn could see oil trains loaded with highly flammable oil from North Dakota running right through our town on their way to Benicia. I ask you to remember what happened in Lynchburg. That could happen here.

Concerned citizens of Benicia are asking for those of us along the rail lines to call or write the City of Benicia City Manager, Brad Kilger, 250 E.L. Street, Benicia CA 94510 or e-mail Planner Amy Million at amillion@ci.benicia.ca.us.   Please submit your comments by 5pm on Oct. 30.

Crude By Rail, Revised Draft EIR (RDEIR), Valero Crude By Rail

New comments on Valero’s RDEIR available online

October 13, 2015

The City of Benicia has been receiving a FLOOD of incoming letters commenting on the City’s Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report on Valero Crude by Rail.  The City is posting these comments on its website, and the Benicia Independent is also posting them as they arrive at Project Review.  So far, three new PDF documents have been posted:

REVISED DEIR (RDEIR) Public Comments (period closes on October 30, 2014)

  • Public Comments October 3-9, 2015
    The link will download a 20-page document from the City’s website, a 1.1MB download, including a very interesting letter from the City of Gridley, California (pp. 2-5 in the PDF).
  • Public Comments September 26-October 2, 2015
    The link will download a 297-page document from the City’s website, an 11MB download.  Most of this is letters generated by the ForestEthics online comment generator.   (See also the Center for Biological Diversity online letter generator.)  Such support from EVERYWHERE is amazing and welcome!  To find individual letters of support or opposition, just open the PDF and search on a name.
  • Public Comments August 31-September 25, 2015 – A 545-page PDF.  The link will download a document on the City’s website, a 20mb download.  The PDF consists of:
    • 2 agency requests for extension of the comment period
    • 6 personal letters opposing the RDEIR and Valero’s proposal
    • 2 personal letters supporting the RDEIR and Valero
    • 253 letters from individuals from all over the country, generated by an online submittal form and mostly alike, also opposing the RDEIR and Valero’s proposal and received by the City on 9/25/15
Air Quality, Benicia City Council, Benicia Industrial Park, Benicia Planning Commission, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fossil fuels, Global warming, Greenhouse gas emissions, Oil spill, Revised Draft EIR (RDEIR), Significant and unavoidable risks, Tank car design, Valero Crude By Rail

OPEN LETTER: Oppose Valero Crude By Rail

Letter received by email from the author, Lawrence (Larnie) Reid Fox

To the Benicia City Planning Commission and City Council:

By Larnie Fox, October 12, 2015

I’m writing to request that you oppose Valero’s Crude Oil by Rail project.

The Revised Draft EIR states that:

    • Potential train derailment would result in significant and unavoidable adverse effects to people and secondary effects to biological, cultural, and hydrological resources, and geology.
    • Impacts to air quality would be significant and unavoidable because the Project would contribute to an existing or projected air quality violation and result in a cumulatively considerable increase in ozone precursor emissions.
    • Impacts to greenhouse gas emissions would be significant and unavoidable because the Project would generate significant levels of GHG and conflict with plans adopted for reducing GHG emissions.

What more do you need to know?

There have been more crude-by-rail explosions and spills in the last two years than in the previous 40 years. The new crudes are demonstrably more hazardous than the crudes that have been processed in our community in the past, and have led to many horrendous accidents in other parts of North America. Accidents can and will happen.

The Revised Draft EIR states that Valero proposes to use non-jacketed Casualty Prevention Circular (CPC)-1232-compliant tank cars.

The National Transportation Safety Board has said that the CPC-1232 standard is only a minimal improvement over the older tank DOT-111s. NTSB officials say they are “not convinced that these modifications offer significant safety improvements.”

There is overwhelming and passionate opposition to the project here in Benicia. There is also strong opposition from hundreds of individuals who live up-rail and from all over our state, and also from government entities including the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and our state’s Attorney General.

If there is a spill or an explosion and fire, I for one, do not want my community to be culpable. We need to show the state and the world that we stand for safety and environmental responsibility, even if it cuts into corporate profits and tax revenues.

The bottom line is that fossil fuels are going away, sooner or later, and Benicia will need to adapt, sooner or later. We need to take a longer-term and wider-scope view of the issue. We may reap short-term local gains by approving this project, but the cost is unacceptably high. In doing so, we would be putting our Industrial Park at risk, and inconveniencing them with the long trains. This area should be the economic engine for the next 100 years. We would be ignoring the legitimate concerns of communities up-rail from us. We would be responsible for putting environmentally sensitive areas at risk. We would be contributing to global warming and thus sea level rise, which poses a clear threat to our community and the rest of the world as well. We would be contributing to decimation of the old-growth forests in Northern Canada.

It’s up to us to guard our own welfare, and also, as a City, to be responsible citizens of California, the USA and our fragile planet.

Sincerely,

Lawrence (Larnie) Reid Fox