Category Archives: Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO)

Air Monitoring, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Contra Costa Health Services - Hazardous Materials Programs, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Solano County Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA)

Questionable community outreach by Air District for Industrial Safety Ordinance audits

From local emails…

FIRST ROUND OF EMAILS…

From: Roger Straw
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2018 9:45 AM
Subject: FW: [BAAQMD Coalition] Questionable community outreach for Industrial Safety Ordinance audits

This is amazing – read below, from bottom, up.  (Click on the image for larger display.)  And then come back and ask a couple of questions:

  1. Does Solano County have to report to the public like this now – even under current regulations?  Do they publish a notice like the one Nancy sent from Crockett?  Is this something that our newbie “CUPA” needs to be doing on our behalf?
  2. If/when we have an ISO, what assurances do we have the Hazardous Materials staff (Contra Costa OR Solano) would be any more attentive to Benicia citizens’ needs.  (Randy Sawyer should be embarrassed by this.)

I think the Working Group could be making a big deal out of this!  I think I’ll post about it on the BenIndy.

Roger

Begin forwarded message:

On Tue, Jul 3, 2018, 3:28 PM Nancy Rieser via BAAQMD Network wrote:

The Contra Costa Health Department considers a booth behind an elementary school two blocks away from a street fair in Crockett as a “public meeting..”   They reckon that the booth where they will be twiddling their fingers while the locals drink and dance a few blocks away will meet its obligation to hold a face-to-face public meeting.

Guess we are lucky.  Martinez gets its face-to-face at a Christmas tree farm in August on National Night Out.

I called the Health Department:  The gentleman who answered the phone said that apparently nobody cares enough to hear this kind of information and they won’t hold a meeting unless they can get a guaranteed audience of 25 people.  Neither will they mail notices to individual homes about their meeting to hustle the crowds.  “It is too expensive.”

LATER, VERY INTERESTING!

From: Ralph Dennis
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2018 12:26 PM
Subject: ISO related

I noticed in the Benicia Herald this morning two public notices for Risk Management Plans prepared by Solano County Department of Resource Management, one for Praxair and the other for Benicia’s Water Treatment Plant. These are part of the 5-year audit review process, I believe, the same reports referenced in the Contra Costa County notice you sent around the other day.

I figured there ought to be one for Valero, so I called the Solano County Department of Resource Management. Turns out the Valero plan was filed in Dec. 2017 and is still under review. The staffer I spoke with who is doing the review is suppose to call me about status. Interesting, I guess: no public meetings planned, copies of plans not available in our library (as in Contra Costa County). He seemed surprised at my question about public meetings, said he could check with management.

CCHMP public notice meetings July-Aug 2018
Air Monitoring, Benicia City Council, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Valero Benicia Refinery

Progressive Dems call for Industrial Safety Ordinance, Council votes NO

By Roger Straw

At the Progressive Democrats of Benicia membership meeting of June 18, PDB voted unanimously (with one abstention) to ask Benicia City Council to support the issuance of an Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) for the City of Benicia and approve Mayor Patterson’s request to direct City Staff to review a Draft ISO.  The PDB recommendation was that staff report findings back to the City Council no more than 90 days from June 19, 2018.

Acting PDB Chairperson Craig Snider drew up a resolution following our meeting expressing our concerns, and presented it at City Council the following evening, June 19.

After much discussion lasting until 1 AM, the City Council voted 3-2 to reject Mayor Patterson’s request and to wait and watch what Valero and regulatory agencies do based on recent new regional and state air monitoring regulations, and to engage Valero and regulatory agencies in discussions.

Two Council members qualified their rejection of the proposed ISO.  Council members Campbell and Schwartzman stated for the record that if Valero does not install certain Air-District-required “fenceline” air monitors within 6 months, they would vote to impose an industrial safety ordinance.  All five Council members also would like to see “community” air monitors.

Draft minutes detailing Council’s 6/19 decision read as follows:

On motion of Council Member Hughes, seconded by Council Member Schwartzman, Council approved Option #2 in the staff report, directing Staff to monitor Solano County’s implementation of Program Four, directing Staff to meet with Valero and the appropriate regulatory agencies to address the few gaps that exist between Contra Costa County’s ISO and Program #4, including more effective and frequent communications with the City, Valero, and the community, fence line monitors installed within 6 months (while that was going on, the community monitoring could be negotiated), an evacuation plan, and having a report back to the City Council the first meeting in November, on a roll call by the following vote:
Ayes: Campbell, Hughes, Schwartzman
Noes: Young, Patterson

For more, including video segments of the Council meeting, see benindy.wpengine.com/iso/.

Benicia City Attorney Heather McLaughlin, Benicia City Council, Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Public Comment

Video highlights – City Council votes NO on industrial safety, June 19, 2018

Video taken from the City of Benicia, edited and reposted by Constance Beutel on YouTube
[Editor: Scroll down for 5 videos on various portions of the Benicia City Council’s June 19, 2018 review of industrial safety.  Council took over 5½ hours that night – here’s a shorter way to stay informed on the ISO decision.  – RS]

1. Presentation to support Benicia Industrial Safety Ordinance Review
City of Benicia video, excerpt by Constance Beutel (32 min.)
On June 19, 2018 the Mayor and a Citizen Group presented a draft Industrial Safety Ordinance to Benicia City Council to recommend that they refer the ordinance to City Staff for expert review and comments. This video captures the presentation and rationale.

2. Citizen testimony to support Benicia Industrial Ordinance
City of Benicia video, excerpt by Constance Beutel (37 min.)
On June 19, 2018 the Mayor and a Citizen Group presented a draft Industrial Safety Ordinance to Benicia City Council to recommend that they refer the ordinance to City Staff for expert review and comments. Citizens who spoke in favor of the review of this ordinance are shown in this video.

3. Valero Opposition to a Benicia Industrial Safety Ordinance
City of Benicia video, excerpt by Constance Beutel (9½ min.)
On June 19, 2018 the Benicia City Council was asked to refer a citizen draft Industrial Safety Ordinance to City Staff for expert review and comment. Valero spokespersons urged Council not to approve this request for review.

4. Council discussion and vote on ISO for staff review
City of Benicia video, excerpt by Constance Beutel (52 min.)
On June 19, 2018 the Mayor and a Citizen Group presented a draft Industrial Safety Ordinance to Benicia City Council to recommend that they refer the ordinance to City Staff for expert review and comments. This video captures the Council discussion and vote to reject the proposal.

5. City approves individual as “organized group” (2½ min.)
Finally here’s a quirky – if not outright stupid – segment of the meeting (taken directly from the City website).  As Larnie Fox put it, “We saw an embarrassing moment” when a citizen claimed to be an organized opposition group.  When asked to define “organized opposition,” the Mayor deferred to City Attorney Heather McLaughlin, whose baffling response (below) allowed the person to speak out of turn as an “organization of one.”  He could have but thankfully didn’t carry on for a full 15 minutes.  It is widely assumed that the City will redefine “organized” support and opposition before this precedent is acted upon again.  – RS, editor

Alan Schwartzman, Benicia City Council, Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Mark Hughes, November election, Steve Young, Tom Campbell, Valero Benicia Refinery

Larnie Fox: We would simply like to know what is in the air

Submitted by the author…

Simple

By Larnie Fox, June 25, 2018

Larnie Fox, Benicia

As a citizen of Benicia who lives close to a refinery I, like many other Benicians, would simply like to know what is in the air that we breathe.

At the Benicia City Council meeting last Tuesday, 6/19/18, the Council missed an excellent opportunity to get us that information. Valero clearly does not want us to know what is in the air we breathe. Unfortunately Tom Campbell joined Mark Hughes and Alan Schwartzman in opposing the proposed Industrial Safety Ordinance. Tom did say that he would vote for such an ordinance in November “if Valero doesn’t act”. I have no doubt that Valero will “act”, but I doubt that it will act in such a way that gets us real-time, publicly accessible air-quality monitors in our neighborhoods. People in our community have been working to get such monitors for close to twenty years. Valero has consistently hampered efforts in that direction. These are the simple facts. It raises the simple question: why does Valero not want us to know what is in our air?

My wife and I are not part of the ISO Working Group, but we and scores of Benicians supporting an Industrial Safety Ordinance sat through the marathon Council meeting last Tuesday until the wee hours of the morning.

  • We heard a very detailed, commonsense, comprehensive proposal for an ISO that included both fence-line and community air monitors and a “seat at the table” that would give our representatives a voice and access to information about events at the refinery.
  • We heard requests from City Council members for Valero to provide more information about the May 5, 2017 flaring incident, which prompted shelter-in-place warnings in our schools and evacuations and sent residents to the hospital, and explain why such information had not already been provided.
  • We heard Valero stonewalling those requests to the obvious frustration of all five Council members.
  • We heard them talking about installing only fence-line (not community) monitors, and even being unwilling to say where those would be located. (We found out they would be on the side of their facility that would measure air moving away from Benicia.)
  • We saw an embarrassing moment when Robert Livesay, a frequent contributor to the Benicia Herald, claimed to be “an organized group” in order to speak out of turn and for an extended time – for an incoherent diatribe against community engagement on this issue – taking advantage of the courtesy the Council extends to actual organized groups like Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community and Valero Energy Partners. This was unfortunate as our local democracy flourishes only because of the civility and courtesy we show each other, even if we disagree on issues.
  • We also saw many well-informed members of our community ask our elected representatives for an ISO that would get us the information we need to be able to save lives should an accident worse than the May 5, 2017 event occur at Valero in the future.

This is not a simple issue. The ISO is multifaceted and complex. However, the simple fact remains that we deserve air-quality monitors in our neighborhoods and access to the information from those monitors in real time. The Council has again delayed this legitimate request. Let’s thank Mayor Patterson and Vice Mayor Steve Young for their leadership, and remember to hold the other three accountable in November.

Larnie Fox