Aims to help protect citizens against potential fires, explosions, toxic emissions connected to Valero Refinery

By Thomas Gase, Vallejo Times Herald, March 31, 2025

Health will be the centerpiece of Tuesday night’s Benicia City Council meeting, set to feature a final vote on whether or not to adopt a draft of a safety ordinance.

The Industrial Safety Ordinance aims to help protect Benicians against potential fires, explosions and toxic emissions connected to the Valero Refinery and other facilities causing health concerns in the city for years.

Benicia is the only Bay Area refinery town to not yet have an Industrial Safety Ordinance. Community activists — including health and environmental advocates — have spent years calling for tighter regulations to protect citizens.

“Because this is the final up-or-down vote on the ISO, we are urging supporters to attend to show support, either in person or by Zoom,” said Terry Mollica, a member of Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance — a citizens group formed in 2023 to advocate for the passage of the ordinance. “This is our last, best chance to establish an ISO that will get Benicia a seat at the table to protect the health and safety of our kids, our seniors and everyone else in our wonderful city.”

The group has more than 250 supporters, with membership and website visits growing as more refinery incidents occur.

The Valero Refinery has been the site of a series of air pollution incidents, including the recent revelation that a hydrogen vent at the refinery had been leaking 2.7 tons of toxics into the air for 15 years. That discovery resulted in an historic $84 million fine imposed by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (an oversight agency) in 2024.

Inspectors reported that Valero management had known about the leaks for years, but failed to report them or take steps to mitigate the leak. The fine reportedly was the largest penalty ever assessed by the district.

Valero was one of four other refineries that in 2023 didn’t meet requirements as defined by BAAQMD and Rule 12-15. That rule — passed in 2016 — requires refineries to monitor and report fugitive gasses from their operating equipment, such as valves, compressors, and storage tanks. These emissions impact the health of the surrounding communities — the toxic gases released include noxious chemicals like the cancer-causing benzene.

The Benicia council voted in January 2023 to begin the process of developing a draft to ultimately be presented to the council for vote. Since that time, a council subcommittee, led by Council Members Terry Scott and Kari Birdseye and Fire Chief Josh Chadwick, has conducted multiple meetings with stakeholders, citizens, experts in industrial emissions, environmental groups, other Bay Area refinery cities and many others to gain feedback as to the best ISO for Benicia.

On March 4, City staff, led by Chadwick, presented the draft ordinance to the council and the public. After presentations by many community members, the council voted unanimously to move forward with the draft, calling for a second reading and final vote that will take place on Tuesday.

“Our citizens group is thrilled that the ordinance is close to becoming a reality,” said Mollica. “Along with local health and environmental advocates, we have spent years calling for tighter regulations to protect citizens from dangerous industrial emissions that impact air quality and the health of Benicians. We are finally near the finish line and are so grateful that the city council has supported this effort.”

The ordinance is on its third draft, which was constructed last month. This newest draft incorporates significant revisions from the prior versions, with the most notable being a detailed legal analysis determining that various aspects of the previous versions included requirements that state law makes the responsibility of the the Solano County Certified Unified Program Agency.

The meeting will be at Benicia City Hall, 230 East L Street, Benicia, beginning at 6 p.m.

BISHO.org

NO KIDDING! …

By Stephen Golub, Benicia resident and author, “Benicia and Beyond” column in the Benicia Herald, Mar 23, 2025

On Tuesday, April 1, at 6 pm, the Benicia City Council will meet at City Hall (250 East L Street) to discuss and conduct its presumably final, vital vote on the draft Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) that will help protect Benicians against potential fires, explosions and toxic emissions connected to the Valero Refinery and other facilities the ordinance will cover.

Because this is the final up-or-down vote on the ISO, it is important  to attend and show your support – preferably in person, but also by Zoom if necessary. For more background on this issue, plus a link to the City site where you can find the meeting agenda and Zoom link, please go to bisho.org, the site of the Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance citizens’ group.

The ISO, which simply gets Benicia a seat at the table in monitoring covered facilities’ operations, emissions, incidents and accidents, represents well over a year of very hard work by Council Members Kari Birdseye and Terry Scott, as well as Fire Chief Josh Chadwick and other City personnel. Much of their extensive effort has occurred in the face of little cooperation and at times hostile opposition by Valero or its allies, despite these officials’ attempts to constructively engage the Texas oil giant’s representatives.

Valero may yet again try to get people opposed to the ISO to show up and even pack the room (as it did earlier this month at a previous City Council meeting), so your attendance for this vital vote is extremely important.

At that last meeting, a number of local organizations spoke in appreciation of Valero’s financial support for their activities. While that is certainly their right to do so and I appreciate the good things they do, I must say that in my decades of work with and study of hundreds of nonprofits, I’ve never encountered a situation where such group spoke in favor of their financial benefactors at an unrelated public meeting. I hope they realize that a key reason many corporations provide such financial support is specifically to encourage political support when needed.

To be frank, I don’t know the exact time the discussion of the ISO will start. But if you show up by 5:30 pm, you will have a greater chance of getting seats in the Chambers, but there will be overflow space just in case.

Those inclined to speak in favor of the ISO or otherwise voice their concerns about why it is important should certainly  do so. If this meeting unfolds the same way as previous ones, there will be forms at the back of the Council Chambers for registering to speak. But even if you don’t fill out such a form, you’ll have an opportunity to voice your opinions.

This is our last, best chance to establish an ISO that will get Benicia a seat at the table to protect the health and safety of our kids, our seniors and everyone else in our wonderful city. It will enable us to have the same kind of ISO that every other refinery-hosting community in the Bay Area has.

As always, in criticizing Valero I’m by no means doubting the value of its current and former employees as friends and neighbors. They’re wonderful folks. But they’re not the same as the San Antonio-based corporation that has a lousy environmental track record (to the point of even being sued by the very conservative and oil industry-friendly Texas Attorney General) and that calls the shots on its Benicia refinery’s operations.

In other news, with a big hat tip to the invaluable Benicia Independent (an online news, opinion and advocacy resource well worth checking out and subscribing to), here are some other chances to participate in our democracy this week, as well as to help ensure its survival.

April 3 (and planned for every Thursday), 5-6:30 pm: Benicia Vigil for Democracy, City Park (First and Military). A gathering to show support for democracy.

April 5, 11 am – noon: Tesla Take Down Vallejo (Tesla Showroom, 1001 Admiral Callaghan Lane, Vallejo). A peaceful protest against Tesla’s owner, Elon Musk, for his work defunding and undermining US Government programs and institutions ranging from Social Security to the US Agency for International Development.

April 5. Hands off! National Day of (pro-democracy) Action. Demonstrations in various locations, including Sacramento, Berkeley, Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek.

April 5, 10 am – 6 pm: Fiestas Primavera, City Park (First and Military). A festival celebrating Spring and Latin American culture.

Finally and on a lighter note, in view of Trump’s interest in the U.S. acquiring the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, there’s a completely facetious site called denmarkification.com that seeks to raise $1 trillion (again, this is just a joke) for Denmark to buy California. Check out the reasons for that wonderful country to acquire our unique state!

Hat tips: Benicia Independent, BF 

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CHECK OUT STEPHEN GOLUB’S BLOG, A PROMISED LAND

BENICIA ISO TO BE VOTED ON APRIL 1

By the Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance
citizens group (BISHO)

Benicia, CA (March 28, 2025) – On Tuesday, April 1, Benicia City Council will meet to discuss and conduct its final vote on the draft Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) that will help protect Benicians against potential fires, explosions and toxic emissions connected to the Valero Refinery and other facilities. The meeting will be at Benicia City Hall, 230 East L Street, Benicia, beginning at 6 p.m.

“Because this is the final up-or-down vote on the ISO, we are urging supporters to attend to show support, either in person or by Zoom,” said Terry Mollica, a member of Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO), a citizens group formed in 2023 to advocate for the passage of a strong Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance.  “This is our last, best chance to establish an ISO that will get Benicia a seat at the table to protect the health and safety of our kids, our seniors and everyone else in our wonderful city.” BISHO has more than 250 supporters, with membership and website visits growing as more refinery incidents occur. Benicia is the only Bay Area refinery town without an ISO.

Benicia City Council voted in January 2023 to begin the process of developing a draft ISO to ultimately be presented to City Council for vote. Since that time, a City Council subcommittee, led by Council Members Terry Scott and Kari Birdseye and Fire Chief Josh Chadwick, have conducted multiple meetings with stakeholders, citizens, experts in industrial emissions, environmental groups, other Bay Area refinery cities and many others to gain feedback as to the best ISO for Benicia.

On March 4, City staff, led by Chief Chadwick, presented the draft ISO to Council and the public. After presentations by many community members, Valero and other industrial organizations to be affected by the ISO, Council voted unanimously to move forward with the draft, calling for a second reading and final vote.

“Our citizens group is thrilled that the ISO is close to becoming a reality,” said Mollica.  “Along with local health and environmental advocates, we have spent years calling for tighter regulations to protect citizens from dangerous industrial emissions that impact air quality and the health of Benicians. We are finally near the finish line and are so grateful that City Council has supported this effort.”

FORMER MAYOR BLASTS VALERO, BUSD, AND BENEFICIARIES OF DONATIONS AND GRANTS

BENICIA STRONG

By Elizabeth Patterson, Benicia Mayor 2007-2020, March 9, 2025

The Benicia Unified School District which represents the stewards of science education and protectors of young people is so worried that Texas based Valero may cut them off from the refinery donations that they testified at the City Council last Tuesday.  The BUSD administrators detailed the “generosity of Valero” implying that the proposed Industrial Safety Ordinance was a threat to the noted Valero donations.

So, did Valero tell BUSD that that is what would happen if the ISO was adopted by the City – cut donations and grants to BUSD – or why else would they testify?  A public member in the council chambers asked for a point of order (and was told that was not in order!) because the subject for public comment was the Industrial Safety Ordinance.  Yet, speaker after speaker including the Benicia Chamber of Commerce testified about donations, grants and the business benefits of Valero.  There was no acknowledgment of air pollution, safety concerns and public health protection.

And what does the ordinance do that is such a threat to Valero’s existence that the recipients of Valero’s generosity spoke for nearly two hours?

The introduced ISO ordinance establishes that the City of Benicia is entitled to any and all reports filed to federal, state and county regulatory entities.  In other words, a seat at the table.  No audit. No requests for more information.  Just provide the city the same information as the regulators.

The ordinance provides for a process of installing air monitors throughout the city in anticipation of the Bay Area Air District dedicating about $60 million of the $82 million from the largest fine assessed for air quality violations in California.  Against Valero.  Here in Benicia.

Other Industrial Safety Ordinance’s elements include a citizen’s oversight commission to provide opportunities for the public to learn about public health, air quality, meaning of actions taken by the regulators and direct access to city staff.  This is everything a community deserves – information, facts, transparency of what the regulators are doing or not doing and sharing among qualified commission members.

The commission is an opportunity to have ex officio members (An ex officio commission member typically holds expertise in a particular area that can be helpful to the commission in carrying out its duties).  The ISO explicitly provides for non-voting ex officio members.  This is modeled after the Benicia Community Sustainability Commission which has designated seats for Valero, Good Neighbor Steering Committee and BUSD.

Industrial Safety Ordinance supporters highlighted “incidents” over two decades to stress the need for involvement in understanding causes and corrective actions. They detailed air monitoring that is currently inadequately detecting toxic air pollution affecting Benicia businesses and residents.

Clearly the most egregious failure of Valero operations is the hydrogen vent at the refinery leaking 2.7 tons of toxics into the air for 15 years and never reported until the Bay Air District discovered the leaks.  That is the reason for the largest fine assessed for air pollution and refinery standards.

During the City Council meeting for the introduction of the final version of the ISO, a spokesperson effectively represented the ISO supporters, thereby saving the City Council from additional hours of testimony.  Because the supporters participated actively at the subcommittee stakeholder table throughout the sixteen months, they had made their interests and concern known throughout that period.

The opponents were given every opportunity to refine and improve the ISO.  The last-minute effort apparently orchestrated by Valero to torpedo the introduced ISO failed.  The City’s process shows that stakeholders should participate and discuss the necessity of ISO based on facts, not fear.

Time will tell if Valero punishes BUSD, youth sports, charitable organizations, the arts and the host of beneficiaries of donations and grants because the City Council unanimously agreed the city has a need for and deserves a seat at the table.  Bravo to the City Council: public health and safety first.  Benicia strong.

Elizabeth Patterson, Mayor 2007-2020