Vallejo confirms delay in release of FEIR for Orcem/VMT project
By John Glidden, March 7, 2019 6:41 pm
The site of the Vallejo Marine Terminal/Orcem Americas project proposed for South Vallejo is shown. (Times-Herald file photo)
Vallejo officials confirmed earlier this week that the much anticipated release of the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the Orcem/VMT project has been delayed, perhaps indefinitely.
In a three-page letter sent to Vallejo Marine Terminal (VMT) representatives on Monday, city leaders wrote that since VMT failed to provide the necessary clarifying answers to several concerns posed by city staff, the decision was made to hold the document.
“Due to this lack of clarity, the city is pausing the release of the FEIR at this time. However, as soon as VMT lends the needed clarity to the issues discussed herein, the city stands ready to proceed,” according to the city’s letter.
City Hall told VMT in a Feb. 25 letter that the municipality was ready to release the lengthy document on March 1. However, in that communication along with Monday’s letter, the city said it couldn’t due to a lack of required signatures on an assignment and assumption agreement, declaring that William Gilmartin and Alan Varela have assumed all responsibilities of the business from the original VMT principal Blaise Fettig and former past project manager Matt Fettig.
VMT’s refusal to execute a reimbursement agreement to update the Environmental Justice Analysis (EJA), the company’s lack of payment to help fund completion of that analysis, its failure to provide answers to Vallejo’s data requests for the Barge Implementation Strategy and Fleet Management Plan, and the need for an accurate site map and ownership status of the property were also cited by the city as reasons it held onto the FEIR.
“The city’s concern is that several of the mitigation monitoring measures are dependent upon your funding and execution of various agreements,” officials added in Monday’s letter. “To the extent VMT is currently not providing funding and not executing agreements, these conditions which seemed reasonable when VMT/Orcem was providing funding and signing agreements are now less reasonable.
“Including them in the mitigation and monitoring plan when we do not believe that VMT will either fund them or sign the agreements necessary to put them in place is not reasonable,” the city added. “Thus many conditions, especially those reliant on employing persons as air quality monitors, are now in danger of being reclassified as being ‘not feasible.’”
Attorney Krista Kim, who represents Gilmartin and Varela, provided an official response. In a letter dated March 1, the same day as the deadline imposed by the city, Kim wrote to Shannon Eckmeyer requesting a brief extension of time.
Kim said she spoke by phone to Eckmeyer earlier in the day.
“I explained that both Alan (Varela) and Bill (Gilmartin) want to schedule a meeting with the City the week of March 11th to discuss a few important matters, as those discussions are very relevant to how VMT would respond to your Letter,” she wrote. “This request seemed to really upset you.”
Kim goes on to accuse Eckmeyer of making “threatening statements” against VMT and its ground lease.
“You rejected VMT’s request to extend the response deadline and indicated that if VMT did not respond in writing by March 8, 2019, the City would take the position that VMT has in fact abandoned its appeal,” Kim wrote. “You also threatened that if VMT did not withdraw its appeal in writing that VMT’s inaction would be tantamount to killing the project and further, that the City would take immediate action to challenge the validity of VMT’s ground lease.”
Kim said she was “taken aback” by the statements. However, the city had a different interpretation.
“We would not characterize Ms. Eckmeyer’s communications as threatening,” wrote city spokeswoman Lyan Pernala in an email to the Times-Herald. “The City’s position is as stated in the correspondence sent to VMT on March 4.”
Kim couldn’t be reached for comment regarding this article.
The two sides remain in a stalemate, as VMT asserts it has not abandoned its appeal. Meanwhile, city staff is expected to bring an update on the situation to the Vallejo City Council next Tuesday.
VMT is eyeing creation of a deep-water terminal on 31 acres at 790 and 800 Derr St. It submitted a joint application to the city with Orcem California, which is seeking to open a cement facility on the same site.
Planning commissioners voted in 2017 to reject the project. In response, Orcem/VMT filed an appeal seeking that the City Council overturn the Planning Commission decision. A divided council in mid-2017 directed staff to complete the FEIR so the council can make a decision on the appeal.
The project has caused consternation with a segment of the Vallejo community, which argues the project will pollute the immediate area and harm local residents. Both VMT and Orcem deny those allegations, while also stating that the project will provide jobs and tax revenue for the city.
Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald [Editor: Note the Orcem president’s insensitive response: “The threshold for approval is not zero new emissions in this community. That would restrict all development in Vallejo, whether it is a grocery store, church or a mill.” Really, comparing Orcem/VMT to a grocery store or a church? Shame! – R.S.]
BAAQMD issues letter of concern with Orcem project
By John Glidden, March 6, 2019 at 6:50 pm
The site of the Vallejo Marine Terminal/Orcem Americas project proposed for South Vallejo is shown. (Times-Herald file photo)
Officials with the regional air quality district issued a statement this week communicating their concerns with Orcem California’s plan to build a cement facility in south Vallejo.
In a two-page letter, obtained by this newspaper, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) said after reviewing the project’s Draft Final Environmental Impact Report (DFEIR) they concluded the Orcem project, if built, would increase air pollution.
“The project as proposed will increase air pollution in an already overburdened community and increase the health burden placed on the community from toxic air contaminants including diesel particulate matter, a known carcinogen,” BAAQMD officials wrote after reviewing the stationary sources proposed by Orcem.
BAAQMD officials further said Vallejo has been identified under two different district programs as a community which experiences high exposure to air pollution. The goals of both programs are to reduce the public’s exposure to local sources of air pollution, they wrote.
To mitigate “the potential increase in cancer risk from the stationary sources,” district officials said Orcem would need to install Best Available Control Technology for Toxics (TBACT).
The district said it has received a partial permit application from Orcem, while Vallejo Marine Terminal (VMT), which is eyeing creation of a deep-water terminal on the same site, has yet to submit an application to the district. Both projects would be located on 31 acres at 790 and 800 Derr St.
Officials also wrote that without the TBACT and application from VMT, the air district would not be able to provide a permit for the project.
Steve Bryan, president of Orcem California, claimed victory when asked on Wednesday about BAAQMD’s letter.
“We are pleased that our persistence in getting BAAQMD to write the long promised letter finally has paid off,” Bryan wrote in an email to the Times-Herald. “And even more pleased to see that after months of scrutiny and replicating our results, the BAAQMD staff found none of the flaws or deficiencies presented by the primary project opponents, Fresh Air Vallejo, or the Deputy Attorney General’s consultant.
“The results confirm that the Revised Operating Alternative (ROA) project we have proposed in the FEIR is very much improved and avoids significant impacts in air quality and health risks,” he added. “The findings are also consistent with earlier reviews from BAAQMD staff which we discovered completely dismissed Fresh Air Vallejo’s claims as far back as December 2017.”
Bryan also responded to a question regarding the air district’s claim that “the Project will increase air pollution in an already overburdened community.”
“The threshold for approval is not zero new emissions in this community,” Bryan wrote in the same email. “That would restrict all development in Vallejo, whether it is a grocery store, church or a mill. The issue is whether the increase is significant according to BAAQMD, state and federal standards. The analysis of our emissions, reviewed by the BAAQMD, say they are not.”
Peter Brooks, president of Fresh Air Vallejo, expressed puzzlement over Bryan’s comments regarding the air district’s letter.
“It is impossible to imagine how Orcem could read the BAAQMD letter and miss the point: The project as presented would not be permitted because of the increased pollution to an already overburdened community,” Brooks said. “Orcem should worry less about Fresh Air Vallejo and worry more about the people of south Vallejo who would certainly be harmed with its toxic cement factory. Fresh Air Vallejo is not the enemy. Asthma, cancer and injustice are the enemies.”
Attempts to reach the city for comment about BAAQMD’s letter were unsuccessful on Wednesday.
The city released the DFEIR for public review in early 2017 with City Hall prepared to release a Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) last week. However, communication issues between the city and VMT caused Vallejo not to release the document as scheduled — it’s not known at this point when the FEIR will be released.
When asked by this newspaper why the nearly two-year delay in providing a response on the DFEIR, Andrea Gordon, senior environmental planner with BAAQMD, and Ralph Borrmann, a spokesman for the air district, said the complex project required intensive review.
Borrmann provided a timeline to the Times-Herald on Wednesday indicating the district first reviewed the DFEIR in January 2018. The rest of the year was spent meeting with the city, its consultants and Orcem to discuss the draft report.
The Vallejo Planning Commission voted 6-1 in 2017 to reject the VMT/Orcem project, agreeing with City Hall that the project would have a negative effect on the neighborhood, that it would impact traffic around the area and the proposed project was inconsistent with the city’s waterfront development policy. The project also has a degrading visual appearance of the waterfront, City Hall said at the time.
City officials argued in 2017 that since a rejection was being recommended, a FEIR was not required.
Orcem and VMT appealed the Planning Commission decision, and in June 2017 when reviewing the appeal, a majority of the council directed City Hall to complete the impact report.
The project’s FEIR was expected to be released last year until leaders received a 13-page letter from Erin Ganahl, deputy attorney general for the State of California, writing that the project’s draft final environmental impact report (DFEIR), an Environmental Justice Analysis (EJA), and the Revised Air Analysis were misleading.
Repost from New York Magazine – Intelligencer [Editor: This incredibly thoughtful piece could’ve been stated in half as many words, and might’ve made the case in simpler plain English. But it is in fact profound! Be sure to read this – and stick with it to the final paragraph and last sentence where Levitz refers to the Green New Deal. “Aspirational” indeed! – R.S.]
Far-Right Climate Denial Is Scary. Far-Right Climate Acceptance Might Be Scarier.
By Eric Levitz, March 6, 2019, 9:00 a.m.
Warming’s coming. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
The reality of climate change has a well-known liberal bias.
Once you accept that the (so-called) free market’s price signals have guided humanity to the brink of destruction, laissez-faire conservatism becomes a filthy joke. And once you recognize that industrial policy in India could determine the fate of your grandchildren — just as the past century of industrial policy in the developed world has (literally) shifted the ground beneath Bangladesh’s feet — jingoistic nationalism becomes a childish indulgence. Global carbon emissions can’t be curbed without accepting more government intervention in national economies and more international oversight of nation-state governance. There’s plenty of room for debate about exactly what policies the science demands. But the data can’t be reconciled with any ideology that rejects humanity’s interdependence, or venerates individual accumulation over some conception of the collective good. And this is why the far right has had such a hard time believing what the scientists, wildfires, and floods have been telling them.
Or that’s the story we liberals have been telling ourselves, anyway. Lately, I’ve begun to wonder if this notion — that one can’t reconcile the scientific consensus on climate change with right-wing ideology — isn’t its own form of denial.
In his new book The Uninhabitable Earth, (New York’s own) David Wallace-Wells argues that one implication of contemporary climate science is that, in the not-too-distant future, there might not be enough food for everyone on the planet (unless those in the well-fed West accept a leaner diet):
Climates differ and plants vary, but the basic rule of thumb for staple cereal crops grown at optimal temperature is that for every degree of warming, yields decline by 10 percent. Some estimates run higher. Which means that if the planet is five degrees warmer at the end of the century, when projections suggest we may have as many as 50 percent more people to feed, we may also have 50 percent less grain to give them. Or even less, because yields actually decline faster the warmer things get. And proteins are worse: it takes eight pounds of grain to produce just a single pound of hamburger meat, butchered from a cow that spent its life warming the planet with methane burps.
To a progressive, the science summarized here clearly demonstrates that the Green New Deal (or a decarbonization program on a similar scale) is needed pronto, and that we must make our food systems less wasteful, our agricultural technologies more innovative, and the distribution of resources within countries — and between them — more equitable. But those are hardly the only political conclusions one might draw from Wallace-Wells’s grim prognosis.
For one thing, a central point of The Uninhabitable Earth is that humanity’s best-case scenario is now likely to be a two-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures. Which means it’s plausible that an increasing scarcity in humanity’s food supply is already inevitable. Technological advances could make that outcome less likely; but various agriculturally destructive feedback loops could make it more so.
Perhaps the widespread recognition of scarcity will be a boon to the left, underscoring the necessity of robust redistribution, vegetarianism, and social solidarity. But the right’s worldview is also — at least superficially —compatible with a world of unavoidable austerity. One reason pundits mock Donald Trump’s zero-sum conception of trade is that, in a context where real resource constraints place no hard limits on growth, China’s prosperity need not come at our expense. And yet one could plausibly interpret the scientific consensus on climate as saying that non-zero-sum conditions aren’t long for this Earth. Eventually, there won’t be enough grain to keep a chicken in every pot, or at least not enough to maintain America’s per-capita hamburger consumption, allow the Chinese middle-class to enjoy a rising standard of eating, and keep those in the most impoverished corners of the globe alive. Malthus may have been less wrong than he was hasty.
This is a distinctly pessimistic reading of our climatic reality. But it is a scientifically defensible perspective that’s been growing more defensible with each passing year. And while this dour version of climate realism is not inherently reactionary in its implications, its progressive implications are contingent on the premise that maximizing the living standards of the global one percent (a category that includes much of the American middle class) is less important than preventing millions in the developing world from dying from starvation. By contrast, if one insists that the U.S. government must put “America first,” then taking the most dire implications of climate science for granted makes Trump’s zero-sum, nationalist worldview appear more coherent, not less.
It is worth remembering that a pillar of Adolf Hitler’s rationalization of conquest and genocide was an assertion of ecological scarcity. “The annual increase of population in Germany amounts to almost 900,000 souls,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. “The difficulties of providing for this army of new citizens must grow from year to year and must finally lead to a catastrophe, unless ways and means are found which will forestall the danger of misery and hunger.” This premise informed the Nazi regime’s attempts to secure “living space” for the German people through both the extermination of the Jews, and the deliberate starvation of 30 million Eastern Europeans. Hitler’s genocidal Malthusianism was, of course, completely divorced from agricultural reality. The next fascistic tyrant’s may not be.
Regardless, the far right need not wait for future food shortages to cast climate science as a rationale for ultranationalism. Even in our present era of indefensibly ill-distributed abundance, one can credibly claim that the Third World’s growing affluence poses an existential threat to our own. After all, China’s share of global carbon emissions is twice that of the U.S. and rapidly rising. And while India’s carbon footprint is currently relatively small, it’s poised to explode in the coming decades, as the Earth’s second-most populous country continues to industrialize. If you accept the consensus projections for carbon emissions over the next half-century — but reject the idea that all human lives have inherent value (as, by all appearances, many of our current leaders do) — you can argue somewhat coherently that sustaining the American “way of life” requires keeping the Global South down. In fact, the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro made this very observation late last month.
I did: bombing China’s and India’s coal facilities. It would be far more effective and realistic than anything you’ve proposed thus far. So get on board, climate denier. I guess I’m the boss now. https://t.co/FpoKIPL5lE
To be sure, no amount of climate fatalism could render Shapiro’s sarcastic proposal coherent. In all circumstances, initiating a nuclear war creates more problems than it solves. But the world’s wealthiest nations may not need to drop bombs on India to stunt its development. It is quite possible that merely refusing to help that country cope with its metastasizing water crisis (which our carbon emissions helped create) will be enough to achieve that evil end.
None of this is to say that Trumpian nationalism is not, in the final analysis, an irrational response to climate change, even on its own terms. Making massive investments in renewable technology — and giving the innovations away to developing nations — seems far more likely to preserve the ecological basis of American prosperity than any attempt to suffocate industrialization in the Global South. Our species’s greatest asset has always been its singular capacity for large-scale cooperation on complex, novel problems. If there is way to sustain a decent civilization for another few centuries anywhere on Earth, I believe it will involve expanding our capacity for solidarity, not contracting it.
But climate models won’t make that argument for progressives. And raw data on carbon emissions certainly won’t tell American voters why they have a moral obligation to the people of the Maldives. It seems possible, however, that in the not-too-distant future, far-right demagogues will be telling us why we don’t. Today, the Trumpists deride those who insist that America can afford to take in more refugees — and pay out more foreign aid — as “globalists.” Tomorrow, they may call us “climate deniers.”
For now, much of the global far right does not believe in the dire effects of climate change. But there’s reason to think those effects are already making people believe in the far right. Some scholars argue that climate played a pivotal role in triggering the Syrian civil war — and thus, much of the migrant crisis that fueled the resurgence of right-wing nationalism in much of Europe. Even if that thesis is wrong, there is no question that climate change will condemn far more people to statelessness than events in Syria have. It isn’t hard to imagine how the climate migrants’ losses could become the nationalist right’s gains.
Hungarian president János Áder, an ally of far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, recently called for more aggressive efforts to combat climate change because worsening ecological conditions will “trigger migration.” Given the Orbán government’s fundamental opposition to mass immigration — and the ostensible popularity of such opposition within Hungary — Áder’s acceptance of the link between the climate and migratory pressures doesn’t just function as an argument for reducing carbon emissions. It also serves as one for empowering border enforcement hardliners. After all, if you accept the climate science, then this migration problem is only going to get worse — which means that only unsentimental nationalists can be trusted to protect our people from the huddled masses to come.
Beyond the issue of immigration, there is a significant amount of political science research positing a correlation between material abundance and liberal pluralism. Such research suggests that in circumstances of scarcity, people might naturally gravitate toward more conformist and authoritarian attitudes and social structures. A nasty, brutish, and hot world — routinely upended by massive storms and agricultural failures — may be one in which mass publics are less tolerant of social difference, and more eager to submit to a political leviathan.
All of this underscores the necessity of minimizing temperature rise. But it also suggests that revitalizing faith in liberal, universalist ideals is an indispensable component of “climate readiness.” In 2019, it is banal to say that the environmental movement’s primary challenge is political. By now, advocates are well aware that IPCC reports can’t force governments to mount an aggressive response to the crisis. But there is another, less appreciated dimension of difficulty: Persuading governments to mount an aggressive response to the crisis won’t force them to mount a just response. Some critics of the Green New Deal — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s inchoate plan for achieving fully renewable social democracy — have lambasted the proposal for wedding action on climate to an explicitly egalitarian moral and ideological vision.
They should consider the hazards of the alternative.
Tar Sands Free SF Bay – Town Hall meeting Thurs Mar 7 2019, Rodeo Hills Elementary
Feb 27, 2019
Tar Sands Free SF Bay – Town Hall meeting Thurs Mar 7 2019, 6-8:30pm, Rodeo Hills Elementary – CLICK FOR FULL SIZE DOWNLOADABLE POSTER
This coming Thursday, refinery corridor residents and allies are presenting a community forum on Phillips 66’s very dangerous plans to expand tar sands refining at its Rodeo facility.
Increased use of tar sands in the P66 crude slate means vastly increased tanker traffic in the Bay, an increased risk of spills, and increased assaults on community health and our worsening climate. This town hall is an opportunity to learn about the two linked P66 proposals—the first Environmental Impact Report drops soon—and what we can do to stop them.
Please come out to listen, learn, and offer support to impacted community residents.
Food and beverage provided!
Speakers:
Andres Soto, Communities for a Better Environment
Pennie Opal Plant [and or Alison Ehara Brown], Idle No More SF Bay
LaDonna Williams, All Positives Possible and Fresh Air Vallejo
Janice Kirsch, MD, 350 Bay Area
Janet Pygeorge, President, Rodeo Citizens Association
Greg Karris, Senior Scientist, Communities for a Better Environment
Rodeo Citizens Association, Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment, Fresh Air Vallejo, Sunflower Alliance, 350 Bay Area, Idle No More SF Bay, Communities for a Better Environment, and Stand.earth.
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