Category Archives: Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)

Sorting Out Air Quality Regulations After Cap-And-Trade’s Renewal

Repost from Bay Area Monitor – Bay Area League of Women Voters

Sorting Out Air Quality Regulations After Cap-And-Trade’s Renewal

By Leslie Stewart, October-November edition
Communities for a Better Environment’s Andrés Soto (in red shirt) speaks at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board of directors meeting on September 20. A large number of stakeholders attended to participate in a lively discussion about emissions regulation. | Photo by Alec MacDonald.

Now that the dust is settling from the legislative tumult surrounding renewal of California’s cap-and-trade program, participants are taking stock of the changed landscape for air quality regulation, both statewide and regionally. Legislation passed this summer sets a more ambitious goal for greenhouse gas reductions through cap-and-trade, while also shifting some duties for regional air districts. Under the new laws, these local agencies will see a reduced role in greenhouse gas regulation, but an added responsibility for implementing a statewide community-focused air quality monitoring and enforcement program.

The cap-and-trade program is a complicated balancing act between protecting the environment — specifically by reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and retaining industries that contribute to the state’s economic base. As the limit on permitted greenhouse gas emissions decreases (the “cap”), businesses which exceed the limit must obtain allowances (the “trade”), either through state auctions or from other businesses which are under the cap and therefore have extra allowances. The state opted to give some allowances away for free, initially to ease adoption by industries and utilities, and now to reduce the financial burden on companies which may otherwise decide to relocate.

Passed in July, Assembly Bill 398 (E. Garcia) extended cap-and-trade to 2030 from the program’s original sunset year of 2020. This created more certainty for industry, which was increasingly reluctant to pay for allowances, fearing these might lose value if the program ended soon. The bill also raised the bar for the state’s Air Resources Board. The agency’s goal for 2020 has been to decrease greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels; AB 398 adds a target for 2030, requiring a 40 percent reduction below 1990 levels. Stanley Young, ARB’s director of communications, noted that “the cap has decreased by two to three percent over the previous years of the program, and will drop by four percent by 2020, but then will need to drop exponentially to achieve this goal.”

Additionally, it is now up to ARB, rather than regional air districts, to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from any source covered by cap-and-trade, whether in industry, agriculture, or elsewhere. Many environmental groups and agencies that were generally supportive of cap-and-trade renewal, including the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, opposed this aspect of AB 398. Following its passage, the Air District announced it expected to shelve a proposed regional cap on refinery emissions, Rule 12-16, which environmental groups had been working toward for five years.

“Victory snatched away at the last minute,” was Andrés Soto’s description of the regional air district restrictions in AB 398. Soto is a community organizer with Communities for a Better Environment, a strong proponent of Rule 12-16. However, his organization is refocusing. Soto noted that “local air districts can’t touch CO₂ reductions, but methane and other gases can still be regulated regionally.” CBE is planning a new campaign to pressure the Air District to cap non-CO₂ refinery emissions at current levels before permitting any new refinery infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, Tom Addison of the Air District’s Legislative Affairs division commented, “Given passage of AB 398 and its restrictions on local air districts, we are considering how best to coordinate with ARB on actions on greenhouse gases moving forward. Our climate problems are so large and pressing that it makes sense for everyone to work together to address them.”

Greenhouse gases are not the only emissions from industry, and often the attempts to curb them get intertwined with grassroots efforts to limit the local impact of other categories of air pollution. However, not everyone agrees with this approach, since greenhouse gases harm the environment on a global level, not a local one. As ARB’s Young asserted, “We have an equally ambitious goal to address toxic air contaminants and criteria air pollutants, but the system works better when you do that separately [from greenhouse gases].”

That separation was the rationale for AB 398’s companion bill, AB 617 (C. Garcia). The bill requires the state to set up a uniform databank, where data gathered from emission monitoring throughout California will be publicly available. The databank will inform a new ARB strategy to reduce toxic air contaminants and criteria air pollutants, including identifying the most environmentally-burdened communities and locations where additional monitoring is needed.

When the state identifies those sites, local air districts will be required to set up new monitoring there, and also create community-specific pollution reduction plans. Districts may also require individual facilities to set up monitoring at their fencelines. As Young pointed out, “there has been a technical revolution in air monitoring, so that viable, accurate, and consistent monitoring can be done at the community level.”

Under AB 617, ARB will coordinate all these efforts through the newly formed Community Air Protection Program. Its director, Karen Magliano, sees the new program as “fundamentally transforming community-based planning, by bringing in the communities themselves at all levels.” She explained that “we want to look at the problem at a granular level — implementation will be a shared responsibility.”

According to Addison, the Air District is concerned about some aspects of that shared responsibility, especially the financial ones. “We are very supportive of the general philosophy behind AB 617, and some pieces we’re enthusiastic about,” he noted. “For example, AB 617 increases the penalties for strict liability violations. However, there is no additional funding [for districts], and a host of new requirements.” Air District staff subsequently noted that a budget trailer bill signed into law on September 17 contains some AB 617 implementation funding, yet it is unclear whether that funding will be adequate.

Not all of the responsibilities in AB 617 are brand-new to the Air District. Some fenceline and community monitors — measures which will be required by AB 617 in any state-identified communities — are already in place around several Bay Area facilities, because of industry-community agreements or as compliance with the Air District’s Rule 12-15, passed in 2015. Addison observed that better coordination of data reporting on emissions sources is already happening as well. “More data is always helpful, but we want to have that without being forced to divert resources from other programs,” he explained.

Designing community emission reduction plans will be a new task for the Air District, and Addison is concerned that the tool is limited. However, he was quick to add, “We are committed to trying to improve public health and working to implement the bill. Cutting emissions for disproportionately impacted communities is something we have long aimed at.”

Bill Magavern, policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, is also focused on making the community plans work. “The community action plans rely a lot on implementation by air districts — it’s important that they yield strong measures to help the communities in the areas most impacted by pollution,” he observed. “The concern is not only identifying the problem, but moving quickly to implement solutions.”

Magavern added another area which may require community watchdogs. AB 617 mandates that regional air districts require facilities to use Best Available Retrofit Technology, starting with those which have gone longest since being permitted. “We need to be sure that districts are actually requiring that equipment be updated, and not just letting them use credits,” Magavern warned. Overall, however, he is “cautiously optimistic that AB 617 will yield significant improvements in air quality — but we need to be actively involved to be sure that actually happens.”

Leslie Stewart covers air quality and energy for the Monitor.

Forum on Cap and Trade: Video and Slides

Repost from the Sunflower Alliance

The Cap and Trade Scam: Video and Slides from the Forum

September 19, 2017, reporting on a forum sponsored by Sunflower Alliance and 350 Bay Area

Watch the video and check out the PowerPoints from our recent lively discussion of California climate policy. Sunflower Alliance and 350 Bay Area sponsored the Sept 17 forum, The Cap and Trade Scam, which included a treasure trove of information and a range of sometimes-conflicting opinions on our new state cap-and-trade legislation, cap-and-trade as a policy for greenhouse gas reduction, other policies that could work better, and a variety of next steps for the climate/environmental justice movement in California. The forum was  held at the California Nurses Association headquarters in Oakland.

Videographer Jay Wilson captured the whole thing on video and graciously made it available to us. The entire forum is on the 350 Bay Area Youtube channel:

The forum was 2 hours and 15 minutes long — here are direct links to each of the speakers:

Roger Lin, Center for Race, Poverty, and the Environment
Danny Cullenward, Stanford Center for Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences
Amy Vanderwarker, California Environmental Justice Alliance
RL Miller, Climate Hawks Vote and California Democratic Party Environmental Caucus
Janet Stromberg, 350 Bay Area
Parin Shah, Asian Pacific Environmental Network
RL Miller (2)
LaDonna Williams, Vallejo resident active in the campaign to stop the expansion of the Phillips 66 Marine Terminal

Two of the presenters showed PowerPoint slides, available here:

Janet Stromberg slide show

Danny Cullenward slide show

Letter: Bay Area Air Board needs to step up for cleaner air

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald

Where our mayor, supervisor stand

By Michelle Pellegrin, 08/04/16, 4:09 PM PDT

There are 24 people in the Bay Area with the power to regulate the air we breathe. Their decisions cause or reduce asthma, cancer and other illnesses that can and have resulted in death.

This regional board has so much power to affect peoples’ lives and deaths, yet most people haven’t even heard of this agency with the unwieldy name: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District — or BAAQMD.

The 24 members of this board — which includes Vallejo Mayor Osby Davis — have a mandate to protect public health.

The neighborhoods around the refineries have suffered severe health effects from emissions. The 2012 Chevron toxic explosion and fire in Richmond sent more than 15,000 people to the hospital, which is now closed. A broad coalition of Bay Area groups would like to see refinery emissions, which have continuously gone up for the past 20 years, capped and then methods found to reduce harmful emissions. The first step in this process is an Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

On Wednesday, July 20, after four long years and several refinery incidents, the board, in a room with standing room only, was to vote on this. What appeared as a simple slam dunk became a political football between clean air advocates and Big Oil.

Bay Area refineries have been preparing to process heavier dirtier crudes, which will increase emissions and their diseases. The wave of Crude By Rail (CBR) of proposed projects, such as the Valero Benicia CBR project, are designed to facilitate the importation of extreme crudes, such volatile oil from the Bakken fields and volatile heavy crude from the Canadian Tar Sands.

BAAQMD staff, in what can only be seen as another move to interminably delay implementing modern and necessary emission standards on Bay Area refineries, supported combining the simpler refinery emission cap EIR with a complex EIR on toxic chemical emissions for up to 900 businesses.

Bay Area refinery corridor communities and their allied cities want the EIRs to be conducted separately, as the EIR on refineries can be done much more quickly than the more complex toxic chemical EIR because it requires no infrastructure changes. They want answers and relief from the constant health problems they are suffering.

And here is where our mayor stepped in to show his stripes. Davis, just recently appointed to the board, gave a critical speech supporting combining the two EIRs. Who would have thought the BAAQMD’s newest member would have such sway with the board?

Anyone with respiratory health problems or cancer can give a big round of applause to our mayor and Solano County Supervisor Jim Spering, who made the motion to combine the two EIRs. We in Solano County have the dubious distinction of having the most anti-public health, pro-corporate members on the board.

Even the Contra Costa appointees where four of the five refineries are located weren’t as instrumental as the Solano reps in pushing for the delay of this most important EIR.

Luckily, other board members did uphold their duty to the public’s health and a compromise was reached. The EIRs will be combined but if they become bogged down then they will be separated out. In addition, and a very important one from the public’s point of view, there will be citizen oversight of the process.

The irony here is that this is a false dichotomy. Big Oil will keep functioning and we need them for those cars we drive. These companies provide jobs and add to our economies. But it is no longer legitimate to trade health for jobs. It is an outmoded model and has no place in deciding public policy. It is no longer acceptable for companies to dominate local economies and the policies of the people in those communities where they are located.

Big Oil has known for years that this is the direction things are moving. A 2014 article in the San Jose Mercury News notes the refineries are already working on improving their systems in anticipation of processing the dirtier and volatile oil from outside California.

As Tom Griffith, head of the Martinez Environmental Group back in 2014 stated, “The missed opportunity here is for the oil companies to refocus their sights on the future of renewable energy.”

We should be working together to improve public health. The corporate stranglehold on such important regional boards must end. Citizens need to be attend BAAQMD board meetings and provide input on upcoming board decisions for this to happen. The next meeting is Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 9:30 a.m. at the BAAQMD headquarters at 375 Beale St. San Francisco.

And here in Vallejo we need to do the same and be more engaged. We have seen the result of complicity between politicians and corporations that excluded public input: The absurd notion of putting a cement factory in a residential area with its disastrous public health consequences. Don’t let Mayor Davis and his cronies put our community in harm’s way. Say “no” to the Orcem/VMT cement plant and don’t vote in November for any candidate who supports it!

— Michelle Pellegrin/Vallejo

Valero’s secret output level – 65% of permitted output

By Roger Straw, August 5, 2016

A letter by Kathy Kerridge appeared in the print edition of today’s Benicia Herald. Kerridge clarified statements made many times in recent months regarding Valero’s recent product output as approximately 65% of the refinery’s capacity.

The refinery does not disclose its current operating output, claiming that it is a trade secret.  Kerridge discloses the source for the public knowledge on this.

First a little background: When Commissioner Steve Young questioned Valero executives at the Planning Commission hearing on Feb 8, the transcript has “(No audible response.)” See p. 184. And when Young asked Valero environmental engineer Don Cuffel about this at the Planning Commission on Feb 9, Cuffel’s response was clearly evasive – see page 49-50 of the transcript.

The significance, as Kerridge points out below, has everything to do with Valero’s ability to increase air pollution and even (if permitted) to expand its operations to overseas oil export, if the City were to approve Valero’s Crude by Rail proposal.

Kerridge’s letter follows.  (I have added live links to the sources. I have also excised references to Benicia’s whack-a-mole critic, whose repetitive nonsense is not worth repeating on these pages.)


Letter to the Editor, Benicia Herald, by Kathy Kerridge

HERE IS A SOURCE
August 5, 2016

Dear Editor,

In last Sunday’s paper and in other recent letters [a critic] has been quite upset over the claim that Valero is operating at 65% capacity. He has repeatedly attacked [candidate for City Council] Steve Young over this and most recently attacked me demanding my source for the fact that Valero is operating at less than full capacity. Well here is the source: a report done by Applied Developments Economics, Inc. for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

Here is a link to the report: Socio-Economic Analysis of Proposed Regulation 12, Rule 15: Petroleum Refining Emissions Tracking and Regulation 12, Rule 16: Petroleum Refining Emissions Limits and Risk Thresholds.  Look for Table 7 on page 15.

Applied Development Economics reported that Valero is refining 114,443 barrels of crude a day. Valero’s VIP permit in 2003 allowed for an annual average of 165,000 bpd, (with maximum daily permitted level set at 185,000 bpd.) Please see Valero’s permit for that. 114,444 divided by 165,000 equals 69%. Of course if you looked at the maximum daily capacity they are operating at 62% capacity. The average of the two is 65% just what Steve Young has been saying.

Why does this matter?

It matters because the Crude by Rail project will bring in heavy tar sands crude which emits much more reactive organic gases, more toxic air contaminates, benzene and heavy metal pollution. Bakken crude, which they also want to bring in could also result in more pollution. See the reports by Dr. Fox in response to the Crude by Rail DEIR filed 9-15-2014 and report by Greg Karras, senior scientist for CBE, filed 9-15-2014 with the city.

So if Valero operated at its permitted levels with more toxic crude we would see an increase in our local air pollution, particularly since there are no overall plant limits on these emissions at this time, and there may never be. This could cause real health impacts especially to students at Robert Semple school. The air district has been looking at this problem for several years and may never enact a numeric limit. Please see the Air District agendas for the last several years, proposed rule 12-16.

Let me add a few more words about accuracy. In a letter to the editor on July 5 [a critic] stated that Benicia’s opt out rate for Marin Clean Energy was “22% – three times higher than any other city.” He did not state a source. Given that in Benicia the opt out rate is 21% and the overall average for all cities opt out rate is 21%, according to Marin Clean Energy it appears that [the critic] has gotten his facts wrong. What else has he gotten wrong in his letters? I don’t have the time or energy to fact check every statement he makes, but I do look at the source.

Kathy Kerridge JD
Benicia