Contra Costa Hazardous Materials Program, issued April 1, 2024
The public has an opportunity to comment on the Incident Investigation/ Root Cause Analysis report (from a third-party consultant)associated with a spent catalyst release from the Martinez Refining Company (MRC) which occurred between November 24-25, 2022. The 45-day comment period is opening on April 4, 2024, and then closes on May 20, 2024. A public meeting will be held at the Contra Costa County Administration Building, Room 110A/B/C located at 1025 Escobar Street in Martinez on April 11, 2024, from 6:00PM to 8:00 PM.
To join via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/98874840760
or Dial: (669) 900-6833 Webinar ID: 988 7484 0760
MRC had a particulate matter release from their Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (CCU) on November 24-25, 2022. This release was estimated to have emitted 20-24 tons of fine particulate matter, called spent catalyst, into the surrounding community. TheCounty, working with an Oversight Committee, hired Scott Berger and Associates to perform the incident investigation. TheOversight Committee included members of the community, the City of Martinez, the City of Benicia, United Steel Workers, a refinery representative, and CCHHMP.
If you are interested and are available, attend the Public Meeting or submit comments on the report to Hazmat.Arpteam@cchealth.org or mail comments to the following address:
Contra Costa Health Hazardous Materials Programs
Attn: Michael Dossey
4585 Pacheco Blvd., Ste. 100
Martinez, CA 94553
More about Contra Costa’s search for accountability and transparency from refineries on BenIndy:
The saga of the repurposing of two of the refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area to manufacturing liquid biofuels from high deforestation risk commodities like soy took another anti-democratic twist this week. Local authorities sped through a hearing on January 16, 2024 on the revised environmental review of the massive Phillips 66 biofuel refinery project in the unincorporated community of Rodeo on the northern shores of the Bay, rushing to keep the $1 billion investment moving forward while taking measures to curtail public participation in the process.
On that day in early May 2022 the Contra Costa County Supervisors unanimously denied the appeals and wholeheartedly green lighted both of the biofuel refinery projects. Following those decisions by local elected officials, the Center for Biological Diversity, in partnership with Communities for a Better Environment, and with the legal and technical expertise of the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, filed parallel lawsuits challenging the simultaneous approval of the environmental review of both unprecedented refinery conversion projects. The court case on the Marathon/Neste joint venture at the Martinez refinery resulted in a partial decision exposing flaws with the environmental review, focusing singularly on the flawed odor management plan, an unsatisfactory result for climate justice advocates. That lawsuit has already been sent on to the state appeals court, and will be heard in the coming year.
The Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo has been getting lucrative incentives for making biofuels even though the environmental review of the project was found deficient by a judge. | Uncredited image from Biofuelwatch post.
However, in the case of the Phillips 66 biofuel refinery project, the same judge ruled that the original environmental review of the biofuels project was illegal and had failed to address serious questions of cumulative impacts, while embarking on the illegal tactic of piecemealing — the illegal breaking up of the entirety of a project into discrete pieces, thus averting the legally required review of the project as a whole.
Despite being presented with more evidence about the dangers of characterizing the conversion of the more than century old Phillips 66 Rodeo refinery to making biofuels as a climate solution, the county proceeded with great haste to finalize the revised environmental review during the holiday. Precisely four weeks after the close in early December 2023 of written public comment on the draft the county announced the January 16 public hearing to approve the final revised version.
The newest final version of the project review once again roundly dismissed all the evidence and information provided by community members and the organizations that engaged on the public comment. Despite the requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act to assess how new information can influence the veracity of the entirety of the environmental review, the county discarded new factual information provided in the public comment that in essence further substantiated the record of evidence that had resulted in the court of law ruling that the original environmental review was illegal in the first place.
Neither the Board of Supervisors nor County Staff expressed any sort of contrition nor leadership self reflection when faced with the fact that they had previously rubber stamped an environmental review that the court had later found deficient.
Kerry Guerin is an attorney with Communities for a Better Environment who attended the January 2024 hearing on the Phillips 66 project.. | Uncredited image from Biofuelwatch post.
Of the evidence presented to the county by community members regarding the safety concerns with the processing of feedstocks like soy was the existence of the most recent draft of what is known as a Flare Minimization Plan (FMP), presented by Phillips 66 on an annual basis for the Rodeo refinery to the local Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). The FMP is an annual requirement, the review of which is buried in the opaque processes of BAAQMD staff and not easily accessible to the public. The late 2023 version of the FMP for the Phillips 66 Rodeo refinery apparently still remains confidential. However, the 2022 ‘nonconfidential’ version of the FMP was shared with Biofuelwatch.
Remarkably, despite the fact that Phillips 66 has been making liquid biofuels at their Rodeo refinery since April 2021, more than a year before receiving final approval for their project from the County in May 2022, an anomaly that the court saw as being relevant to the illegal piecemealing of the environmental review of the project, their most recent ‘nonconfidential’ version of their Flare Minimization Plan from October 2022 does not even mention biofuels. As a matter of fact, scrutiny of the 2022 FMP document reveals absolutely no mention of the refinery conversion project at all.
In essence, Phillips 66 has received lucrative Low Carbon Fuel Standard credits from the California Air Resources Board for producing ‘renewable diesel’ from feedstocks like soy and canola with a hydrogen intensive ‘hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids’ hydro cracker technology at their Rodeo refinery, but the most recent publicly available version of the FMP for that same refinery regulated by the local air district BAAQMD does not even mention the words biofuels, renewable diesel, hydrotreated vegetable oils, HEFA, soy, canola, animal tallow or any of the terms that are directly associated with making these products. As far as the BAAQMD supervised Phillips 66 Rodeo Refinery Flare Minimization Plan goes the biofuel project apparently does not even exist.
Notably absent from the recent county supervisors hearing on the revised environmental review were any representatives from BAAQMD, neither to provide comment or to be available to answer questions from decision makers, once again raising questions about to what extent the local air district is fulfilling their responsibility to implement regulatory activities within the context of current and future operations.
This incongruence of biofuel production not even existing in a recent Phillips 66 FMP was brushed aside by county authorities, who also appeared completely unconcerned about the recent devastating fire at the Marathon-Neste biofuel refinery in Martinez. At the same time, the County was obligated in their documentation to recognize that there exist numerous ‘significant and unavoidable environmental impacts‘ from the project. Those impacts were dismissed because of the economic significance of the refinery project.
Tyson Bagley is the United Steelworkers Health and Safety Representative for the Phillips 66 Rodeo refinery who attended the January 2024 hearing and spoke in strong support of the Phillips 66 biofuels project. | Uncredited image from Biofuelwatch post.
Notably, and not surprisingly, labor organizations representing workers at the Phillips 66 refinery came out in strong force in support of approval of the project, celebrating the opportunity to keep the refinery operating into the foreseeable future to make ‘renewable’ fuels with ‘renewable’ feedstocks to provide the state with the ‘low carbon’ energy sources that are central to aspirations to achieve ‘decarbonization.’
Adding a particularly grotesque dynamic of inequity to the proceedings was the manner in which the local authorities conducted the review hearing.
After having spent two hours celebrating the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr in commemoration of the treasured annual federal holiday, the Board of Supervisors reconvened to hear the agenda item on the Phillips 66 biofuel refinery environmental review. Remarkably, after an abbreviated 15 minute staff presentation that reasserted the urgency of approving the project again, the chair of the Board stated that public comment would be restricted to 1 minute. Though the audience in attendance was predominantly labor and company representatives in Phillips 66 uniform, there were hoots of disbelief from advocates that instead of the traditional 3 minute time allowed for public comment at most public hearings, in this instance an individual speaker would get only one minute. That an individual public comment on an issue of such magnitude and technical complexity would be limited to 1 minute is unheard of with such a small audience.
That the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors would come out of a ceremony dedicated to elevating the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr to immediately open an agenda item on the permitting of a controversial polluting industrial facility owned and operated by a company worth ~$60 billion dollars, and with a long legacy of conflict with affected communities, and tell concerned community members that their time to address the board would be abbreviated in this manner was roundly seen as outrageous — to put it in polite terms.
Even county staff knew, after all they had done to ram the project through, that limiting public comment at the hearing was simply a ‘very bad look.’ The clear obstruction of the public right to meaningful participation that was manifested by the limitation on public comment at the hearing on the Phillips 66 biofuels project clearly accentuates the corporate impunity facilitated by the irregular and industry friendly governance of not only the biofuel refinery issue specifically but of the energy sector in the state more broadly.
It made no difference to the acquiescent and beholden to industry Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, who rapidly moved to approve the Phillips 66 project with a unanimous 5-0 vote.
Contact Gary Hughes (garyhughes.bfw@gmail.com), who is the Americas Program Coordinator with Biofuelwatch, with inquiries.
The Phillips 66 San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo. | Photo By Dreamyshade, Wikimedia Creative Commons.
Phillips 66 cannot begin operations at a new California biofuel refinery until Contra Costa County fixes flaws in an environmental analysis of the project.
MARTINEZ, Calif. (CN) — Phillips 66 must halt a plan to start operating a new biofuel refinery in Rodeo, California, after a San Francisco Bay Area judge said the county that approved it must fix legal issues with the project’s environmental report card.
Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Edward Weil ordered Phillips 66 to put on hold what would be one of the world’s largest biofuel refineries, to produce some 800 million gallons of biofuel products per year. The county must show that the project fully complies with environmental review requirements which he found had been violated when authorities first approved it.
Petitioners Communities for a Better Environment and the Center for Biological Diversity asked Weil to vacate his prior judgment and prohibit operations while the county works on the known legal flaws in its environmental analysis of the project. They said Weil’s prior judgment allowed the project’s land use permit to remain in place and failed to enjoin operations while the county proved its compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act — the state’s bedrock environmental protection and community right-to-know law.
The judge said in a tentative order that his prior judgment’s purpose was to allow for construction, not operations, while environmental legal issues are considered. He said that he must consider whether there is any conflict between the statement of decision and the judgment.
“There is, however, a potential conflict between the statement of decision and the judgment because the court allowed the land use permit to remain in place but did not specifically enjoin project operations,” Weil said. “Therefore, the court grants petitioners’ motion to vacate the judgment and to issue a new judgment that specifically enjoins project operations until further order of the court.”
Weil ruled from the bench Thursday to execute the tentative order as his official judgment.
Attorney Kurtis Keller, representing Contra Costa County, declined to comment on the ruling Thursday.
“Counties are required to evaluate, disclose and reduce the environmental harms of a project before approving it,” Kretzmann said. “Communities long suffering from refinery pollution have every right to demand maximum protections against toxic emissions and foul odors, and the county needs to secure them.”
The planned refinery is near the Marathon-Tesoro biofuel refinery in Martinez, which itself could eventually produce more than 700,000 gallons per year of biofuel products and become one of the largest biofuel refineries in California. The petitioners say that the two projects would require at least 82,000 truck trips, nearly 29,000 railcars and more than 760 ship and barge visits annually.
That increases pollution, traffic and the risk of spills and accidents from the projects, while generating and processing biofuels that would worsen existing impacts on communities nearby fossil fuel processing plants. The state considers people who live near the refineries to be “disadvantaged” because of their high exposure to pollution from existing industries. The proposed refineries would cement ongoing or increased air and odor pollution for these residents for decades, the petitioners say.
“This is a huge victory for nearby residents who’ve raised serious concerns about pollution that will come from this giant refinery,” said Shana Lazerow, legal director of Communities for a Better Environment. “Allowing this project to operate before the environmental review process is complete would’ve rigged the whole decision in favor of the refinery operator.”
Sara Evall, a student attorney at the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, said Thursday: “The county is obligated to reassess the project based on community members’ input and an unbiased record. Rights of the public to informed democratic decision-making come before Phillips 66’s bottom line.”
The judge’s prior order, which found that the county had violated the California Environmental Quality Act by approving the biofuel refinery without properly assessing major components or adopting mitigation for odor impacts on local communities, came down this past July.
Benicia Nextdoor, by Dr. Richard Fleming, September 8, 2021
Dr. Richard Fleming, Benicia
There are 9 counties in the Bay Area. In 7 counties, covid-19 cases per 100K are declining. In Contra Costa, the case rate has increased by 4%. In Solano, the case rate has increased by 41%. Our case rate is 59 per 100K. The next highest in the Bay Area is 35.
As far as covid-19 hospitalizations, 4 counties are flat or declining. Solano is among the 5 counties seeing hospitalizations increasing. We now have 30 people hospitalized per 100K. The next highest county is 27. Most Bay Area counties are much lower.
The mortality rate in Solano County is 32% higher than the next highest county.
As far as vaccinations, 53% of our population is fully vaccinated. The other 8 counties range between 65% and 76%.
It has been said by some that we are not like the other 8 Bay Area counties. I have to say I don’t understand that statement. As far as our covid-19 metrics, it is clearly true. But I feel Solano County should be able to counter this virus as well as our neighbors in the bay. There is no reason for us to concede that we are, for some reason, incapable of protecting ourselves as well as our peers to the south and the west.
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