On Sept 5, Benicia’s City Council unanimously initiated the first step of a process to assess the need to graduate the current Memo of Understanding (MOU) with Valero Benicia Refinery to an ordinance.
This step, which asks staff review the MOU, underscores the importance of transition from an MOU to an ordinance that would provide additional local oversight to help ensure appropriate measures are in place to protect the health and safety of our community.
Timing of the request corresponds with early planning for the sunset of the current Valero MOU set to terminate in June 2025.
Vice Mayor Terry Scott and Council Member Kari Birdseye, the two councilmembers who introduced the issue, clearly believe the primary responsibility of our City Council and City Government is to safeguard the health, safety and well-being of our residents, businesses, and visitors.
It is also Council’s responsibility to ensure that industries, which operate within our jurisdiction, employ the best available technology to detect emissions and discharges and best practices. Community notifications of emergencies or failures to meet state and federal regulations are a priority as well.
This responsibility extends beyond traditional roles like policing, firefighting, safe water, and wastewater treatment. It encompasses ensuring the quality of the air we breathe.
The two-step request posed the question: Does the City of Benicia possess the most efficient and effective tools to regulate, monitor, and enforce air and toxic safety standards that impact our community? This includes real-time emission measurement, performance monitoring, transparency, air quality management and stronger communications.
Our defined ask in the two-step process is for staff to analyze current MOU’s performance metrics and evaluate whether additional regulation is needed. Additionally, we request that an analysis of key learnings of our current working communications, monitoring and cooperation agreement with Valero be included in this process.
It is our belief that the time has come to explore the best practices to manage air quality and emissions, amplify transparency and real-time communication, establish cutting-edge monitoring measures, prioritize public health, encourage environmental stewardship, cultivate community trust, and elevate measurement and trust standards.
Simply put, we can only manage what we monitor. We must adequately monitor our air quality near the refinery and throughout our community.
We look forward to working with city staff, community groups, businesses, and concerned citizens to create a model of local air and health regulations that better protects Benicia.
In Service,
Vice Mayor Scott and City Council Member Birdseye
There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who also 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.
This is your invitation to fight for the safety and health of all Benicians. Sign up to learn more about adopting an Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (ISHO) here in Benicia by filling out the form here: https://forms.gle/GAScUE4WtfrSwDSS8.
Did you know that from at least 2003 through 2022 Valero emitted cancer-causing benzene and other toxic gasses into Benicia’s air, typically hundreds of times higher than levels permitted by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, without informing the City or its citizens? This is just one of many documented, serious offenses and violations Valero has committed – including additional extensive, ongoing, decade-long violations we learned of just this month!
Did you know that the Valero facility is the only refinery in the Bay Area that is not governed by an industrial safety ordinance (ISO), a law that can protect a community’s health and safety?
Do you think we’ve waited long enough for Benicia to adopt an Industrial Safety & Health Ordinance (ISHO)?
A group of Benicians is working on these issues and is proposing legislation to strengthen local laws regarding health and safety. This group, the ISHO Working Group, supports the adoption of an ISHO by the City of Benicia with the aim of significantly improving health, safety, public notification, prevention of and response to future incidents.
On Tuesday, September 5, Benicia City Council unanimously approved of the “first step” in the process to consider adopting an ISHO. This first step essentially sets the matter on the agenda, and it is anticipated that the “second step” will occur sometime in December 2023, when staff recommends the next steps to be taken for adopting a future ordinance.
This is the second time we have had a second step for an Industrial Safety Ordinance, but Benicia City Council voted against it with a 3-2 vote in 2018.
Let’s not let that happen again!
If you watched the City Council meeting last Tuesday, you saw ISHO opponents already lobbying against the adoption of an ISHO. We anticipate that it will require a very strong effort on the part of the ISHO Working Group to get this over the finish line and we will need your support to get it done.
If you would like to learn more about the issues and our efforts to adopt an ISHO, just click the following link and fill out the form: https://forms.gle/GAScUE4WtfrSwDSS8. After that, you will receive regular notices and information about the program and how you can help.
Please share this invitation and link with friends and post it on social media, and please keep up the good work in recruiting more supporters. It will soon be time for us to speak truth to power and we need all of the support we can get!
Together, we can make a real difference for the safety and health of all Benicians.
A plume containing petroleum coke dusts wafts from a smokestack at Valero’s Benicia oil refinery on March 23. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)
State workplace regulators, the region’s local air quality district and Solano County health officials are trying to find out why a problem at Valero’s Benicia refinery suddenly worsened over the weekend, leading to a release of petroleum coke dust that prompted fire officials to urge those with respiratory problems to stay indoors.
The incident led to a partial shutdown at the facility and represents the worst malfunction at the plant since a power outage caused a major pollution incident in 2017.
The releases of elevated levels of particulate matter led several residents to complain of breathing problems and prompted Benicia’s mayor to call on Valero to pay the city back for its work dealing with the emergency. The partial refinery shutdown is also expected to lead to a spike in higher gasoline prices throughout the state.
Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said she’s gotten a flood of phone calls and emails from residents wanting to know why it took so long for Valero to suspend refinery operations.
“There’s a lack of understanding about how coke particulates could be continuously emitted throughout a couple of weeks,” Patterson said. “There’s not a lot of information that’s readily available to the public.”
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health began a probe into Valero on Monday, the day after the company began the gradual shutdown of a significant portion of the refinery, according to agency spokesman Frank Polizzi.
Cal/OSHA becomes the latest government agency to look into the breakdown of a key piece of equipment inside the refinery that went down two weeks ago. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District and Solano County officials have launched probes as well.
Refinery Problems Started Two Weeks Ago
On March 11, the facility’s flue gas scrubber began malfunctioning. That meant the facility’s smokestacks began belching a sooty plume of petroleum coke dust — minute carbon particles that are a byproduct of the oil refining process.
The initial problem prompted the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to issue eight notices of violation against Valero.
The air district and Solano County health officials said during the following days that the flue gas scrubber had been fixed and the coke dust releases were intermittent and gradually coming to an end.
But the black smoke returned on Saturday. On Sunday, fire officials detected high levels of fine particulate matter, known as PM10, around the refinery and issued a health advisory urging people with respiratory issues to stay indoors.
“What we were seeing was dark gray, almost black smoke coming from the flue gas scrubber unit,” Benicia Fire Chief Josh Chadwick said Monday.
PM10 is particulate matter 10 micrometers or less in diameter — larger than PM2.5 many became familiar with during last November’s Camp Fire, when smoke from the huge Butte County blaze prompted health advisories throughout much of Northern California.
Like PM2.5, the larger particulate matter is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
EPA spokeswoman Soledad Calvino said the agency would not comment on ongoing or potential investigations.
The agency has said that once inhaled, petroleum coke dust can affect the heart and lungs and cause serious health effects.
“The additional concern is that this is more toxic than the standard stuff you’d find in the atmosphere,” said Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at UC Davis. “It’s probably similar in toxicity to diesel exhaust, which is a known carcinogen because it’s sooty in nature.”
On Sunday morning the wind in the Benicia area was blowing east to west at about 6 to 12 mph, according to meteorologist Jan Null.
That meant the coke dust was being blown toward residential neighborhoods, said Chadwick.
“That was one of the big concerns I had,” Chadwick said. “We had a wind shift … that really turned it back toward the city.”
Several Residents Complain of Breathing Problems
Chadwick said the Benicia Fire Department received two 911 calls for respiratory complaints. One of the calls was for one person who was transported to John Muir Medical Center in Concord. The other was for two people who told paramedics who showed up they didn’t need to be hospitalized.
The wind on Sunday also sent the coke dust toward parts of Contra Costa County, according to air district spokesman Ralph Borrmann. The agency received several complaints from people in Benicia and a few in Rodeo, Borrmann said.
Fire crews have been conducting air readings since Sunday morning and the levels of particulate are back to normal, Chadwick said.
Air district officials are expected to release the results of their testing later this week.
It’s unclear why the flue gas scrubber began malfunctioning again.
Terry Schmidtbauer, Solano County’s assistant director of resource management, said his department’s investigation is focused on the scrubber unit, other refinery components that interact with the device and if refinery workers made a mistake in operating the unit.
It’s also uncertain how long it will take to shut down the affected parts of the refinery and how long that closure will last.
“I am not sure how long Valero intends to have the affected portion shut down,” Schmidtbauer said in an email.
Lillian Riojas, a Valero spokeswoman, did not answer questions about how long the shutdown should last.
On Sunday the company issued a statement about the refinery problem.
“There may be a visible plume and flaring as part of the shutdown,” Valero’s statement said.
Mayor Renews Call for More Refinery Regulations
Mayor Patterson has been calling for more regulation of Valero’s facility ever since the May 5, 2017, refinery incident — a push that so far has failed to result in action.
The City Council rejected her proposal to develop an industrial safety ordinance, similar to one in Contra Costa County, that provides more information to town officials about refinery problems.
The latest incident has prompted her to renew her call for action.
“We definitely need an industrial safety ordinance with the fees to cover the costs that it’s costing the city,” Patterson said. “When we are responding to these things, that means we’re not doing something else.”
Patterson said she planned to bring up the issue of compensation at a City Council session this Saturday.
A Bay Area environmental group critical of the oil industry and the agencies regulating it said the episode should raise concern about operations at other facilities.
“This is the latest sign that Bay Area refineries and our air quality officials can’t safely cope with current workloads, let alone the increased volume of oil processing planned by the industry,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an Oakland-based lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Chronicle Editorial Board, March 25, 2019 6:37 p.m.
FILE — In this July 12, 2017 file photo Valero Benicia Refinery in Benicia, Calif. Hundreds of bills await action by California lawmakers as the Legislature begins the last week of business this year. Among the issues include how to divvy up money from the cap-and-trade law, which puts a price on carbon emitted by polluters, including oil refineries like the Valero Benicia Refinery. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, file)
Benicia residents with respiratory ailments were warned to stay indoors for five hours Sunday because the Valero Refinery was filling the air with heavy smoke. The warning was lifted when Valero announced it was temporarily shutting down the refinery process.
Now the mayor has renewed her call to pass a Benicia industrial safety ordinance similar to the one that has guided refinery operations in Contra Costa County for decades. For the sake of clean air for all, the Benicia City Council should do so.
Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson first sought a city safety ordinance after a May 5, 2017, power outage sent flames roaring from the refinery’s stacks and spread pollution into the air, prompting shelter-in-place and evacuation orders for the community of 28,000. Within weeks of that event, Valero was fined by regional regulators, and two state agencies and Solano County adopted regulations modeled on the Contra Costa County ordinance.
The Benicia City Council, however, voted 3-2 to monitor implementation of the county’s new ordinance rather than adopt its own. Now Patterson is trying again.
She has suggested the council seek third-party review of the draft ordinance, which would require refinery reports be shared with Benicia, not just the state and county, and include a way to collect fees to cover the city’s costs of review.
While air quality is an ongoing community concern, the refinery’s latest problem began two weeks ago and so far has netted Valero seven violations from regulators. A third of Benicians have respiratory ailments — three times higher than the state average. For them, emissions are a health concern.
“There’s a saying,” Patterson said. “You either have a seat at the table or you’re on the menu.”
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