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

TODAY! – Ask City Council to protect Benicia’s health and safety at the Dec. 19 Council Meeting

A Message from the Benicia ISO Working Group:

The crucial City Council meeting on whether Benicia should consider an Industrial Safety Ordinance will take place on TODAY, Tuesday, Dec. 19 at 6 pm at the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 230 East L Street. It is vital that supporters of a strong ISO attend and voice our support. Valero is gearing up to oppose this and may bring personnel to the meeting to voice opposition.

By attending and offering comments, you can offer support for the proposal by Vice Mayor Terry Scott and Councilmember Kari Birdseye, to be voted on by the Council on Dec. 19, instructing City staff to look into the possibility of Benicia adopting an ISO.

In addition, please voice support for not just the Scott-Birdseye proposal but for a strong ISO. This has become all-the-more important because of a problematic Benicia City staff report that, perhaps unintentionally, repeatedly presents incomplete and potentially misleading information that paints Valero’s refinery in a favorable light compared to Contra Costa County refineries covered by ISOs. The report neglects to mention evidence and experience to the contrary.

For instance, the report lists accidents that have occurred only at Contra Costa refineries. Yet it makes no mention of the many instances of severe violations by Valero, including the 2022 revelation about its Benicia refinery’s over fifteen years of unreported toxic emissions, hundreds of times regulatory limits.

In fairness, however, the report briefly notes, “In the years following [the Contra Costa County ISO’s implementation], it is believed to have contributed to a decline in accidents and releases at refineries in Contra Costa.”

The point is that voices for a strong ISO can help counteract any misimpressions that staff report might leave to the contrary.

If at all possible, your showing up early can help ensure that supporters of a strong ISO are near the front of the audience. But even if you can’t make it by 6 pm, that will be ok as the discussion of this matter probably won’t start until close to 6:30 pm (or possibly even later if the Council does not move this priority item to early in the agenda).

Also, participation by Zoom is an option. You can find the link that explains how to access the meeting here: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/benicia/5f807fdd4c4cce692977198f6f31acd30.pdf. 

Thanks very much for considering all this and for any support you can show for making Benicia safer and healthier for our kids, our older adults and all of us.

See www.bisho.org for more information.

Ask City Council to protect Benicia’s health and safety at the Dec. 19 Council Meeting

A Message from the Benicia ISO Working Group:

The crucial City Council meeting on whether Benicia should consider an Industrial Safety Ordinance will take place on Tuesday, Dec. 19 at 6 pm at the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 230 East L Street, It is vital that supporters of a strong ISO attend and voice our support. Valero is gearing up to oppose this and may bring personnel to the meeting to voice opposition.

By attending and offering comments, you can offer support for the proposal by Vice Mayor Scott and Councilmember Birdseye, to be voted on by the Council on Dec. 19, instructing City staff to look into the possibility of Benicia adopting an ISO.

In addition, please voice support for not just the Scott-Birdseye proposal but for a strong ISO. This has become very important because of a highly problematic and highly unusual Benicia City staff report issued a few days ago. We will be in touch with more details in the next 24 hours.

If at all possible, your showing up early can help ensure that supporters of a strong ISO are near the front of the audience. But even if you can’t make it until later, that will be ok since other agenda items may take up some time.

Also, participation by Zoom is an option. You can find the link that explains how to access the meeting here: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/benicia/5f807fdd4c4cce692977198f6f31acd30.pdf. 

Thanks very much for considering all this and for any support you can show for making Benicia safer and healthier for our kids, our older adults and all of us.

See www.bisho.org for more information.

Will a year of industrial accidents change the landscape of East Bay’s ‘refinery row’?

[Note from BenIndy: This tidbit from the article below says a lot  – “According to the regional air quality district, the number of flaring events nearly doubled last year, the most since 2019. The trend has been increasing in the last five years. That rise has led some observers to question whether these century-old refineries have reached the end of their lifecycle.” And: “’If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that nothing is going to happen overnight,’ [Healthy Martinez member Heidi] Taylor said. ‘But I believe the cumulative pressure is going to bring about a new era, and I am here for it.’” Thanks, Heidi. We’re here for it too.]

At 12:42 a.m. what appears to be a flare up is occurring at the Martinez Refinery in Martinez, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023. | Jose Carlos Fajardo / Bay Area News Group.

An aging industry is angering locals and sparking multiple investigations

East Bay Express, by Will McCarthy, December 16, 2023

On Friday morning, Contra Costa County Public Health warned residents about a new flaring incident at the Martinez Refinery. The agency said that unidentified chemical odors in the air could be related to the event and that “eye, skin, nose or throat irritation may be possible for some people in the affected area.”

The public health advisory in Martinez came exactly one week after the air surrounding the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond took on the distinct smell of burning tires. Over a hundred local residents, disturbed by the noxious odor, reported it to the local air quality agency.

Both incidents, although by no means the most dramatic, were more mishaps in a long year of refinery accidents and violations in the East Bay industrial cluster that forms a sort of refinery row.

Refineries have long been part of the Bay Area’s economic and energy ecosystem. Many of them have existed for over a hundred years and still serve as a significant tax base for cities and a source of reliable union jobs. This is not the first year that refineries have flared, nor is it the first year there have been facility accidents.

In November, an employee received third-degree burns covering most of his body after a fire erupted at Marathon Petroleum’s refinery in Martinez, the second fire that month. A power outage at the Chevron refinery, also in November, caused an enormous plume of black smoke to billow out of the facility for hours. Over the course of 13 months, the Martinez Refining Co., owned by petroleum giant PBF Energy, scattered coke dust and spent catalyst containing heavy metals over the surrounding town, including a high-profile incident the day after Thanksgiving last year that brought a new level of attention to the refinery’s mishaps and another that came just hours before the local high school’s spring homecoming parade.

After an investigation of the odor on Dec. 8, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District determined Chevron’s bioreactor was to blame. The agency issued a public nuisance notice of violation to Chevron — its 35th violation of the year and second in two weeks.

As the region and the nation plot a clean-energy transition, some advocates are asking whether these high-profile incidents are the last gasps of a dying industry that will try to reap as many profits as possible before they are gone.

“Companies are willing to put not just the local communities but their own workers at risk for profit,” said Jacob Klein, organizing manager for the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Sierra Club. “Community safety and worker safety does not seem to be their priority.”

As a result of the most recent accidents, numerous agencies have started investigations into the refineries’ safety practices. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office, the EPA and even the FBI all have ongoing investigations. Residents of Martinez have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Martinez Refining Company for its chemical releases.

As the calendar moves toward January, Bay Area community advocates are determined not to repeat more of the same next year. Instead they aim to build on the activism that grew after the Thanksgiving incident to permanently transform the relationship between refineries and the community.

“With all of these mishaps affecting more and more people, more and more people are being educated and are educating themselves about these issues,” said Heidi Taylor, a member of Healthy Martinez, a local watchdog group that emerged in the aftermath of the spent catalyst release. “We haven’t seen solutions come to fruition, necessarily, but I do believe there is hope on the horizon.”

According to the regional air quality district, the number of flaring events nearly doubled last year, the most since 2019. The trend has been increasing in the last five years. That rise has led some observers to question whether these century-old refineries have reached the end of their lifecycle.

“The Bay Area’s dangerous, aging refineries are all roughly 125 years old,” said Shosana Welscher, an organizer with Sunflower Alliance and the Refinery Transitions Group. “It’s well over time to decommission them and remediate the contaminated land they occupy for safer, cleaner uses.”

In a statement, the Martinez refinery said that it continues to be committed to earning the right to operate in Martinez.

When asked to comment for this story, the Martinez Refinery Company issued a statement saying, “We have apologized to our neighbors for falling short of meeting that commitment. We have implemented corrective actions, continue to cooperate with all government agencies, and have enhanced our communications with our neighbors and public officials.”

A spokesperson for Chevron, meanwhile, said the air district often provides notices of violations in batches and are sometimes issued years after the actual occurrence. They noted that because of their modernization efforts and investments in new technologies, particulate matter emissions have fallen by 36% since 2018, and flaring events have fallen in the last two years.

Chevron places the highest priority on the protection of employees, communities, and the environment, and continually works to enhance the safety of our operations,” said Caitlin Powell, an external communications advisor for Chevron Richmond.

In a presentation to the Martinez City Council in October, refinery manager Daniel Ingram positioned the company as a crucial player in the California energy economy, one that manufactures 20% of the Bay Area’s gasoline supply and 40% of the region’s jet fuel. Although refineries are a significant contributor to air pollution in the Bay Area, they are not the highest — motor vehicles and wildfires both are larger contributors to overall pollution in the region, according to the air district.

But to some, the refineries across the region are emblematic of the country’s slow shift away from fossil fuels. That creates some cognitive dissonance, where California may chart a clean-energy future as refineries around the bay continue to refine oil for overseas markets.

“We could all end up driving Teslas and the refineries polluting more and blowing up more in our communities,” said Greg Karras, a consultant on refinery transitions. “That’s one possible future.”

Still, to community advocates, that is just one of many possible outcomes. Another future is one in which increased public scrutiny and public control prevents the types of accidents and releases that occurred this year.

“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that nothing is going to happen overnight,” Taylor said. “But I believe the cumulative pressure is going to bring about a new era, and I am here for it.”

We’re asking City Council to take the “second step” toward adopting an ISO in Benicia. Here’s how you can help

Marilyn Bardet, Benicia resident and community volunteer.
 By Marilyn Bardet, December 12, 2023
At the Dec 19th’s council meeting, the mayor and city council members will be making a watershed decision in the two-step agenda process begun in September, whether to move to direct staff to prepare a model industrial safety ordinance for Benicia [“ISO”] for future consideration. I am urging a unanimous approval of this momentous “second step.”

With the primary duty to protect the community’s health, safety, and sustainability, this council has the choice to gain for the city and public local oversight capacity with enforcement clout to help ensure trustworthy, accountable, operational and management performance at the refinery and at other similarly regulated industrial facilities deemed eligible for inclusion under an ISO.

The community has long deserved enhanced protections that an ISO would provide. Every day, the major polluter in our midst risks public health, safety and environmental quality of the air we breathe and the waters off our shores. Tragically, a 35-year old contract worker died on the job at Valero in November, 2021. Mr. Guitierrez’ death could have been avoided, as could have the 16-year unreported releases from the hydrogen venting unit of benzene and other toxic gases that far exceeded EPA’s public safety thresholds for human health. The Bay Area Air District only learned of the problem in 2019; neither the City or the public was informed of the chronic violations until 2022.

Given the number and seriousness of Valero’s regulatory violations cited by US-EPA and the Bay Area Air District since 2017, it’s a no-brainer that Benicia needs an ISO—one modeled on Contra Costa County’s and Richmond’s, which were established in 1999 and 2000 respectively. Updated several times since, their ISOs go beyond current applicable state regulations and programs, as ours would.

So, while the refinery continues to do business benefiting its parent Texas corporation, a local workforce and city coffers, the council must not ignore its greater responsibility to improve health and safety conditions for our community and downwind neighbors.
We need an ISO that will institute forward-looking best practices—ISO programs and protocols aimed to prevent accidents, reduce and eliminate toxic air emissions, and audit ISO compliance to improve the refinery’s safety culture and clean up the air.

Benicians formally proposed a draft ISO in 2018. Instead, Valero and the City entered into a voluntary contract, the City of Benicia-Valero Cooperation Agreement, which had limited purposes, inherent weaknesses, onerous termination clauses that advantaged Valero, and an expiration date. There was no role for the public. The Agreement could never carry the weight of authority of an ISO that would be part of our municipal code.

With respect to the city’s drastic budget deficit and the costs of an ISO’s on-going administration: those annual costs would be paid for by industries as is the case for Contra Costa County and Richmond. The initial costs incurred over the next months to develop the draft ordinance should and can be absorbed: our city attorney can petition the Air District and US-EPA to direct a sufficient portion of fines assigned to Valero to be directed back to the city to implement the ISO’s creation. Surely it would behoove regulators that the City of Benicia would, through an ISO, be assuming a proactive oversight role to help ensure regulatory compliance and enforcement, including for accurate, trustworthy air quality monitoring.

Finally, to draft the ordinance, city staff will need to consult outside engineering expertise, likely from Contra Costa County. In addition, staff should invite the public’s input and insights: a voluntary ISO Working Group has been meeting for almost a year, researching possible elements of a “B-ISO”. Creating a model ISO, with public input, would be a very positive sign of the City’s commitment to uphold community values and protections for our collective good into the future.

Marilyn Bardet
BCAMP board member
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
Valero CAP member
Community Sustainability Commission, ex officio member
BAAQMD Coalition
B-ISO Working Group
Sustainable Solano board member

There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who support the adoption of a Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO). To learn more about the effort and add your support, visit www.bisho.org.
If you support Benicia City Council voting in favor of taking the “second step” on the long road toward adopting an ISO in Benicia, consider sending a letter to them as outlined in Stephen Golub’s instructions from his post earlier today (the text that follows comes from that post). You can also support this effort by signing on to this community letter.

 

What You Can Do

By Stephen Golub, from his December 9, 2023 column, first published in the Benicia Herald

If you want to find out more about the need and potential for an ISO, or wish to indicate support for this initiative, please check out the website recently put together to promote it: www.bisho.org

As the site says, employing a suggested name for the proposed ISO:

“We are concerned citizens of Benicia who support the adoption of a Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO) that would help prevent accidents, allow us to receive more complete and timelier information, hold local industries accountable, and give our City a ‘seat at the table,’ as all other Bay Area Communities with refineries have done.”

You can also attend the December 19 City Council meeting, which will start at 6 pm in the Council chambers at City Hall. Or you can Zoom into the session, via a link you’ll find at the Agendas and Minutes page of the City’s website shortly before the session takes place, https://www.ci.benicia.ca.us/agendas

Or you can email the Council members, ccing the City Clerk, stating that you support an ISO for Benicia. It’s best if you send your comments by the Dec. 12 deadline for emails to be included in the public record attached to the Dec. 19 meeting. But an email at any time will be read and considered.

Their emails are:

The Dec. 19 meeting is the first but crucial step in helping to make our community safer,  and more secure for our kids, our older adults, our businesses, our employees and all of us. I hope that you’ll consider attending or emailing our representatives about the proposed ISO.