Marilyn Bardet, Benicia resident and community volunteer.
By Marilyn Bardet, December 12, 2023
At the Dec 19th’s council meeting, the mayor and city council members will be making a watershed decision in the two-step agenda process begun in September, whether to move to direct staff to prepare a model industrial safety ordinance for Benicia [“ISO”] for future consideration. I am urging a unanimous approval of this momentous “second step.”
With the primary duty to protect the community’s health, safety, and sustainability, this council has the choice to gain for the city and public local oversight capacity with enforcement clout to help ensure trustworthy, accountable, operational and management performance at the refinery and at other similarly regulated industrial facilities deemed eligible for inclusion under an ISO.
The community has long deserved enhanced protections that an ISO would provide. Every day, the major polluter in our midst risks public health, safety and environmental quality of the air we breathe and the waters off our shores. Tragically, a 35-year old contract worker died on the job at Valero in November, 2021. Mr. Guitierrez’ death could have been avoided, as could have the 16-year unreported releases from the hydrogen venting unit of benzene and other toxic gases that far exceeded EPA’s public safety thresholds for human health. The Bay Area Air District only learned of the problem in 2019; neither the City or the public was informed of the chronic violations until 2022.
Given the number and seriousness of Valero’s regulatory violations cited by US-EPA and the Bay Area Air District since 2017, it’s a no-brainer that Benicia needs an ISO—one modeled on Contra Costa County’s and Richmond’s, which were established in 1999 and 2000 respectively. Updated several times since, their ISOs go beyond current applicable state regulations and programs, as ours would.
So, while the refinery continues to do business benefiting its parent Texas corporation, a local workforce and city coffers, the council must not ignore its greater responsibility to improve health and safety conditions for our community and downwind neighbors.
We need an ISO that will institute forward-looking best practices—ISO programs and protocols aimed to prevent accidents, reduce and eliminate toxic air emissions, and audit ISO compliance to improve the refinery’s safety culture and clean up the air.
Benicians formally proposed a draft ISO in 2018. Instead, Valero and the City entered into a voluntary contract, the City of Benicia-Valero Cooperation Agreement, which had limited purposes, inherent weaknesses, onerous termination clauses that advantaged Valero, and an expiration date. There was no role for the public. The Agreement could never carry the weight of authority of an ISO that would be part of our municipal code.
With respect to the city’s drastic budget deficit and the costs of an ISO’s on-going administration: those annual costs would be paid for by industries as is the case for Contra Costa County and Richmond. The initial costs incurred over the next months to develop the draft ordinance should and can be absorbed: our city attorney can petition the Air District and US-EPA to direct a sufficient portion of fines assigned to Valero to be directed back to the city to implement the ISO’s creation. Surely it would behoove regulators that the City of Benicia would, through an ISO, be assuming a proactive oversight role to help ensure regulatory compliance and enforcement, including for accurate, trustworthy air quality monitoring.
Finally, to draft the ordinance, city staff will need to consult outside engineering expertise, likely from Contra Costa County. In addition, staff should invite the public’s input and insights: a voluntary ISO Working Group has been meeting for almost a year, researching possible elements of a “B-ISO”. Creating a model ISO, with public input, would be a very positive sign of the City’s commitment to uphold community values and protections for our collective good into the future.
Marilyn Bardet
BCAMP board member
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
Valero CAP member
Community Sustainability Commission, ex officio member
BAAQMD Coalition
B-ISO Working Group
Sustainable Solano board member
There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who 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.
If you support Benicia City Council voting in favor of taking the “second step” on the long road toward adopting an ISO in Benicia, consider sending a letter to them as outlined in Stephen Golub’s instructions from his post earlier today (the text that follows comes from that post). You can also support this effort by signing on to this community letter.
If you want to find out more about the need and potential for an ISO, or wish to indicate support for this initiative, please check out the website recently put together to promote it: www.bisho.org
As the site says, employing a suggested name for the proposed ISO:
“We are concerned citizens of Benicia who support the adoption of a Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO) that would help prevent accidents, allow us to receive more complete and timelier information, hold local industries accountable, and give our City a ‘seat at the table,’ as all other Bay Area Communities with refineries have done.”
You can also attend the December 19 City Council meeting, which will start at 6 pm in the Council chambers at City Hall. Or you can Zoom into the session, via a link you’ll find at the Agendas and Minutes page of the City’s website shortly before the session takes place, https://www.ci.benicia.ca.us/agendas
Or you can email the Council members, ccing the City Clerk, stating that you support an ISO for Benicia. It’s best if you send your comments by the Dec. 12 deadline for emails to be included in the public record attached to the Dec. 19 meeting. But an email at any time will be read and considered.
The Dec. 19 meeting is the first but crucial step in helping to make our community safer, and more secure for our kids, our older adults, our businesses, our employees and all of us. I hope that you’ll consider attending or emailing our representatives about the proposed ISO.
A Letter to the Editor by Vicki Dennis, December 11, 2023
Other writers before me have outlined the reasons why Benicia needs and deserves an Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance in place. I agree completely. For me, it is very simple and personal: I want to know that the air I am breathing in my own community is clean, safe and healthy, that the vegetables I pull from my garden are safe from toxic particles floating from the air, that I can open my windows and not worry about damaging my lungs.
Other Bay Area refinery cities have moved the needle in working with their local industry. They have in place a stronger Industrial Safety Ordinance that helps assure them that they are getting up-to-date information about emissions and air quality. In Benicia, we deserve the same respect from our refinery leaders.
I urge our City Council to vote yes to move to the second stage of putting in place a stronger and more effective way to provide us with greater transparency, better communication between Valero and the city, and assurances that Benicians know what we are breathing and that our air is indeed healthy. An Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance will go a long way toward accomplishing those goals.
Vicki Dennis
Benicia
There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who 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.
If you support Benicia City Council voting in favor of taking the “second step” on the long road toward adopting an ISO in Benicia, consider sending a letter to them as outlined in Stephen Golub’s instructions from his post earlier today (the text that follows comes from that post). You can also support this effort by signing on to this community letter.
If you want to find out more about the need and potential for an ISO, or wish to indicate support for this initiative, please check out the website recently put together to promote it: www.bisho.org
As the site says, employing a suggested name for the proposed ISO:
“We are concerned citizens of Benicia who support the adoption of a Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO) that would help prevent accidents, allow us to receive more complete and timelier information, hold local industries accountable, and give our City a ‘seat at the table,’ as all other Bay Area Communities with refineries have done.”
You can also attend the December 19 City Council meeting, which will start at 6 pm in the Council chambers at City Hall. Or you can Zoom into the session, via a link you’ll find at the Agendas and Minutes page of the City’s website shortly before the session takes place, https://www.ci.benicia.ca.us/agendas
Or you can email the Council members, ccing the City Clerk, stating that you support an ISO for Benicia. It’s best if you send your comments by the Dec. 12 deadline for emails to be included in the public record attached to the Dec. 19 meeting. But an email at any time will be read and considered.
The Dec. 19 meeting is the first but crucial step in helping to make our community safer, and more secure for our kids, our older adults, our businesses, our employees and all of us. I hope that you’ll consider attending or emailing our representatives about the proposed ISO.
On the Baykeeper article with drone video and photos of petcoke pollution at Port of Benicia
Marilyn Bardet
I first heard a report about the petroleum coke plume spreading on the Strait from Benicia’s port on KQED radio yesterday, and now the Vallejo Sun (online news source—see link above)) has run an article that includes a drone video of what appears to be a plume from a coke ship at the Valero dock. Clearly, this can’t be a “first” incident. Thanks to Roger Straw,’s catch, the Benicia Independent ran the story yesterday.
The revelation is no surprise to me, although I’ve never had a drone to capture from the air what I’ve witnessed with my own eyes and photographed from near the port. In 1995, I snapped a picture of a “dust cloud” wafting up into the air from petcoke being dumped into the open hull of a coke ship. That “cloud” had been visible to the naked eye on a misty grey day. I’d reported this to the Air District then, (with photos taken from old camera) and similarly, over the years, to no avail. Petcoke is unregulated by Fed-EPA. (see “why” below).
I also took photos in 2013-2014 of coke trains traveling from the refinery along Bayshore Rd, and I’ve collected petcoke off railroad ties that had sifted out from the hopper cars’ undercarriage (from which hinged flanges open up for dumping coke onto underground conveyor belt at the port, which is then trasferred to the petcoke silos. (see photos below). The coke can still be seen along the tracks–proof of how coke gets airborne from its transport from trains to silos to ships’ hulls.
Petcoke is a dangerous particulate (PM 10 and PM 2.5) that settles on the water and all around the lower Arsenal area in the vicinity of the arts community and Arsenal Historic District. Tiniest invisible particles blow around, becoming part of the carbon grit that settles on cars, window sills, etc. etc.
As most of you know, I’ve railed for years, since 1995, about how petroleum coke is a serious airborne pollutant in our local environment. In 1995, Koch Carbon Industries (subsidiary of Koch Industries) came to Benicia proposing to build a mega-industrial 24/7 petcoke storage and shipping terminal operation that was to serve all five Bay Area refineries including Exxon Benicia (now Valero). That project would have been disastrous for Benicia, creating a massive “toxic coke dump” at our port, with all the cumulative consequences to public health and the environment. We, the public, fought the project fiercely and forced Koch Industries to abandon their proposed “Coke Domes” project. But they went up river and built a smaller coke terminal in Pittsburg instead— speaking of environmental injustice).
If you read no further, the announcement yesterday underscores my point, made over many years and currently, that residential development in the lower Arsenal should not be allowed, because doing so would deliberately create an environmental injustice: the area is inherently industrial and dangerous and polluted by the various specific operations of Valero and Amports. Check it out! Active crude oil pipelines run from the refinery behind our historic Officers’ Row and Clocktower to the Valero tanker dock, (located just east of the Clocktower); petroleum coke is is transferred from the refinery two or three times per week by train along Bayshore Rd to Valero’s petcoke shipping dock (immediately adjacent to Amports’ car import dock); diesel exhaust contributes toxic gases to the air from ships’ engines running while in port and on the Strait. To my knowledge, the cumulative amount of pollution produced everyday in the vicinity of the port has not been calculated.
Petcoke collected from train tracks along Bayshore Road in Benicia (Marilyn Bardet, Oct 9, 2013)
For those of you not sure about how petcoke is produced and why it’s dangerous to human health: Petroleum coke is the name given to the residue left in the hydrocracker processing unit during the refining of crude oil’s distillates. This residue is an oily, black crumbly carbon substance that must be scraped out of the hydrocracker everyday, and transfered to a “coker” for more processing. to create what’s called “petcoke”. The heavier (dirtier) crude oil refined, the more coke residue is created. The coker unit at Valero transforms the coal-like rocks into a fluffed up powdery-fine granular particulate which is marketed as a product, sold mainly to Asia as a cheap fuel for use in place of more expensive coal in steel furnaces and for other domestic uses. With few exceptions, petcoke cannot be used as a fuel in the US.
Burning petcoke as a fuel contributes to global warming, every bit as much as burning coal or any other fossil fuel. It is also hugely dangerous to human health when inhaled. The coke particulates contain heavy metals, depending on the source of crude oil being refined on any given day. Nickel is a carcinogen when inhaled. PM2.5 particulates of petcoke lodge in the lungs and send other toxic gas molecules—which have piggy-backed onto airborne petcoke particulates—into the bloodstream, thus cumulatively affecting circulatory, heart and lung functions from chronic, daily, low-level exposures breathing airborne petcoke. Of course, petcoke ending up in the water on a regular basis can be ingested by fish and waterfowl and other organisms, contaminating the Strait. Much more investigation of this issue is urgently needed!
Petcoke plume in Carquinez Strait, Benicia. Photo by San Francisco Baykeeper
The sad, unethical fact is that long ago the oil industry lobbied Fed-EPA to exempt petcoke from regulation as a toxic waste, arguing that petcoke becomes a marketable “finished product” when further processed, and therefore belongs in the same category that includes gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and all other liquid distillates produced by refineries. As more and more heavy crude is being refined in California, our refineries will be producing much more petcoke for export as fuel for burning….
To date, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) responds to residents’ complaints about petcoke only if it is visible as an opaque dust cloud when backlit in the air! (This was told to me by BAAQMD staff member).
I hope this helps everyone understand why petcoke is a human health and environmental danger, and why we should NOT be allowing residential development in the lower Arsenal Historic District, for all the enviro reasons cited above. Period!
Please share with your friends!
On the side of public health and safety, social and environmental justice,
From: Marilyn Bardet Subject: About Solano ALERT notice: Valero’s Scrubber releasing toxic particulate matter–pet coke Date: March 24, 2019 at 8:16:22 AM PDT
Good morning all,
I just received both a phone call and email from Solano ALERT at 6:59 a.m. regarding the ongoing problem at the refinery that’s resulting in continuous release of PM from the Scrubber, (main stack). I see emails circulating now among Benicians— and so you’ve all probably rec’d the advisory by now to “stay indoors, with doors and windows sealed, if you have asthma or other respiratory condition”. The advisory declares that they’ve tested the pet coke emissions and did not find (dangerous levels) of heavy metals. (Which is not to say there are no heavy metals being dispersed over the last ten days).
My concern: This problem has been happening since at least March 13th, when I first saw the plume, having been alerted by a friend who had called to report its smokey color. That day, following her phone call, I drove along Park Road and Industrial Way (east of the refinery’s processing block) to see it for myself and take pictures.
The release of dark smoke from the Scrubber signals an “up stream” on-going problem with the coker unit. My question: is the coker still operating or has it been shut down? If it’s not operating, when was the unit shut down?
Yesterday, I was driving over the Benicia Bridge toward town and saw the plume and again noticed the smokey color, so went directly to Industrial Way to take pictures. I made a 1 minute video, holding my camera outside my car window to get it. This meant that I could see and smell the smoke— a very dirty, nasty smell. Anyone working in the Industrial Park yesterday downwind of the Scrubber would have been greatly exposed. I could smell the gases inside my car when I rolled up the window.
You’ll notice that in the still shots from yesterday, the plume rises, drifts and falls. . . the wind was light, the molecules heavy!
I can’t send the video via email, because the file is too large, but Constance will be able to circulate it.
I want to know about the test for heavy metals and which ones they did find and in what concentrations. Was there any nickel found? Nickel is a known carcinogen when inhaled.
All it would take would be a shift in the wind to bring the PM into our neighborhoods.
— Marilyn
The following pictures I took on March 13th, between 11:33 a.m. and 11:35 a.m (click to enlarge):
Other writers before me have outlined the reasons why Benicia needs and deserves an Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance in place. I agree completely. For me, it is very simple and personal: I want to know that the air I am breathing in my own community is clean, safe and healthy, that the vegetables I pull from my garden are safe from toxic particles floating from the air, that I can open my windows and not worry about damaging my lungs.
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