Category Archives: Environmental review

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Environmental review, Public permitting, Revised Draft EIR (RDEIR), Significant and unavoidable risks, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Submit your comment: No oil trains in Benicia, no oil trains in California

Repost from ForestEthics
[Editor:  The link here will take you to ForestEthics’ excellent AND EASY sign-on page, where you can submit your thoughts, concerns and questions  to the City of Benicia.  This is critical NOW, as the Benicia Planning Commission considers whether to permit a new oil train facility in California.  – RS]

Submit your comment: No oil trains in Benicia, no oil trains in California

STOP Crude By Rail in Benicia California!

Right now is a critical moment in the fight to stop oil trains in California. Oil giant Valero wants to build a massive oil trains terminal at its Benicia refinery.

Act now to urge Benicia’s decision makers to reject Valero’s proposed oil train terminal.

Should Valero get its way, oil trains carrying explosive and toxic extreme crude will travel daily through Northern California – including right behind California’s state capitol building – en route to the Benicia refinery. The project’s environmental review even admits that impacts from “hazardous materials” will be “significant and unavoidable.” This risk is unacceptable.

Aside from the public health and safety dangers of oil trains, we know that this project is a disaster for the climate. Building a new oil train terminal now locks Benicia into decades of using some of the most carbon-intensive oil on the planet: Canadian tar sands and fracked North Dakota Bakken crude. At a time when wildfires are raging and the drought continues to worsen, our communities need to invest in safe, healthy, clean energy projects that build climate resilience.

Submit your comments now: No oil trains in Benicia, no oil trains in California.

In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to support grassroots organizing led by Benicians for a Safe & Healthy Community as we prepare for upcoming public hearings on Valero’s oil trains proposal. We hope you consider joining us by attending the Planning Commission hearing on September 29 or volunteering with the campaign.

Thanks for all you do,

Ethan Buckner
ForestEthics Extreme Oil Campaigner

Benicia Planning Commission, Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, Crude By Rail, Environmental Impacts, Environmental review, Public Health, Public Safety, Revised Draft EIR (RDEIR), Valero Crude By Rail

CALL TO ACTION: Public Comment on Revised DEIR for Valero Crude By Rail

Repost from Stop Crude By Rail Facebook Event (by Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, SafeBenicia.org)

HearingCALLTOACTION2015-09-29
Click on the image to go to the Facebook event page. Let them know if you plan to attend.

CALL TO ACTION: Public Comment on
Revised DEIR for Valero Crude By Rail
~ Planning Commission Hearing ~
Tuesday, September 29, at 5:30pm
Benicia City Council Chambers

The City of Benicia Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report (RDEIR) for a proposed crude-by-rail project. The proposed project would allow the Benicia Valero Refinery to receive up to 70,000 barrels per day of its crude by rail. The project involves installation of a new railcar unloading rack, rail track spurs, pumps, pipeline and other infrastructure at the refinery.

The environmental analysis conducted to date indicates that there would be significant and unavoidable impacts on air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, hazardous materials and biological resources.

Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community and many other governmental agencies, organizations, businesses and individuals have also determined that there are huge safety risks, not only for Benicia, but for all communities and the environment along the entire uprail line from the extraction point to it’s destination in Benicia.

Please join us to voice your concerns about the added environmental impacts and safety risks that this project will add, by attending the first hearing on the RDEIR.

If you have any questions on this hearing, please contact our spokesperson Andrés Soto by calling him at (707) 742-3597 or emailing us at info@safebenicia.org.

Benicia Planning Commission, Environmental review, Revised Draft EIR (RDEIR), Valero Crude By Rail

Special meetings set for comments on Valero Benicia Refinery’s proposed project

Repost from the Vacaville Reporter (Also appearing in the print edition of the Vallejo Times-Herald and the Benicia Herald.  Most likely a City of Benicia press release.)

Special meetings set for comments on Valero Benicia Refinery’s proposed project

By Times-Herald staff report, 09/23/15, 6:13 PM PDT

Benicia >> A series of special Planning Commission meetings is set next week to give the public a chance to comment on the redistributed Draft Environmental Impact Report, or RDEIR, on the proposed Valero Crude-By-Rail project.

The meetings are set at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday, and Oct. 1 and 8, at the Benicia City Council Chambers, 250 East L St.

The meetings will be held only as needed. If all public comment has been received, the item will be closed and the additional meeting, or meetings, will be cancelled, officials said.

The meetings will provide an opportunity for residents who are seeking to make verbal comments on the document that was released Aug. 31.

Comments on the RDEIR may also be submitted in writing, no later than 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16. Written comments should be submitted to amillion@ci.benicia.ca.us or Principal Planner Amy Million at the Community Development Department.

For further information about the RDEIR and the public hearing contact Million at 707-746-4280.

The report can be reviewed at the Benicia Public Library, 150 East L St.; the Community Development Department, 250 East L St.; or http://bit.ly/1lBeeTt.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Environmental review, Pacific Northwest, State regulation, Tar sands crude, West Coast refineries

Final decision on Tesoro’s Washington railport pushed to 2016

Repost from Reuters  

Final decision on Tesoro’s Washington railport pushed to 2016

By Kristen Hays, June 26, 2015

HOUSTON – The latest delay in a detailed government review of Tesoro Corp’s proposed $210 million railport project in Washington state means a final decision will not happen until 2016, according to a state council’s published schedule.

The 360,000 barrels-per-day project would be the biggest in the United States, moving domestic and Canadian crude via rail to Washington’s Port of Vancouver, where it would be loaded onto vessels to supply West Coast refineries – mainly in California.

The company had hoped to start it up by late 2014, and then pushed it to this year as the project undergoes a lengthy state review.

Several other oil-by-rail projects, largely in California, are stalled amid opposition after multiple crude train crashes and derailments since mid-2013.

Tesoro said the company was disappointed in “yet another delay” and remains committed to the project.

Chief Executive Greg Goff told analysts last month that the delay to 2016 was likely as the project undergoes what he called a “painfully slow” review process.

The projected cost also has more than doubled to $210 million from its original $100 million as Tesoro upgraded the design, including seismic dock improvements.

Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC)’s schedule, made public this week, says a draft environmental impact statement will be published in late November. The council had previously expected to release the draft report in late July.

State law then requires a month-long public comment period which can be lengthened.

EFSEC then will submit the final report to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has final say on whether it will be built. The new schedule, and the public comment session, pushes that submission to early 2016. Inslee will have up to two months to decide once he receives the report.

Most Washington refineries, including Tesoro’s 120,000 bpd plant in Anacortes, receive oil by rail. No major pipelines move oil west across the Rocky Mountains or the Cascades, so West Coast refineries turn to rail to tap North American crudes that cost less than imports.

(Reporting by Kristen Hays; Editing by Christian Plumb)