Category Archives: Solano County CA

Air pollution, Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, Contra Costa County, Flaring, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Pacific Gas & Electric (PGE), Solano County CA, Solano County Environmental Health Division, Valero Benicia Refinery

Solano County report on Valero near-catastrophic incident on May 5, 2017

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald and the East Bay Times
[Editor: Note that the Solano County analysis and report was not sent to City of Benicia elected officials nor released to the public.  The existence of the report came by way of a contact for information by KQED News.  See also: KQED: Solano County Probe Finds No Violations in Valero Refinery Outage.   For details, download the Solano County Incident Report.  – RS]

Second regulator finds Valero committed no violations in May 5 flaring

By Katy St. Clair, 10/24/17, 5:19 PM PDT 
(Chris Riley/Times-Herald)The city of Benicia was given a shelter in place alert and areas south of the Valero Refinery were evacuated after a power outage caused a flare up sending plumes of black smoke across Interstate 680.
The city of Benicia was given a shelter in place alert and areas south of the Valero Refinery were evacuated after a power outage caused a flare up sending plumes of black smoke across Interstate 680. | (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)

A second agency has ruled that Valero Oil Co. did not violate any regulations in connection with the May 5 power outage that sent plumes of toxic gas into the air as the result of emergency flaring.

The Solano County Environmental Health Division could not find any safety or regulatory deficiencies on the part of Valero, according to Terry Schmidtbauer, assistant director of resource management.

“We looked at their processes — did they have safety plans in place, were they handling the chemicals properly? Did they report their emissions, did they have the proper plans in place to minimize the releases?” Schmidtbauer said.

Schmidtbauer’s team found that Valero had followed all protocol, though he said that his agency is still getting new information and that new regulations that went into effect on Oct. 1 will need to be taken into consideration when it examines Valero’s process going forward.

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) conducted its own probe in May and also didn’t issue any violations.

The event occurred after PG&E shut down two main power feeds to the refinery, which initiated emergency flaring and ended up pumping more than 80,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide into the air. Valero is suing PG&E in excess of $75 million for the power outage, which the power company admits to causing.

Critics of Valero say that the oil refinery should have had sufficient, independent backup power to cover such emergencies, though there are no state or federal regulations that require it to do so.

Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson responded to the county’s ruling by saying that just because Valero didn’t violate any regulations doesn’t mean that what happened wasn’t dangerous and preventable.

Valero wasn’t required to have backup power beyond PG&E and therefore could not be found to be violating any laws when all power was cut off.

“Lack of violations does not mean that we are safe,” Patterson said. “The next step is to have an incident review of what could be improved.”

Patterson has been pushing for Benicia to spearhead an Industrial Safety Ordinance patterned after one created in Contra Costa County that has some of the most stringent oversight in the United States, according to the county’s Health Services division. Contra Costa’s I.S.O. offers another set of eyes beyond regulators that requires refineries to be evaluated for safety and other concerns and then make changes if necessary. These changes and recommendations can vary from plant to plant, according to Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, whose district includes the Chevron refinery in Richmond that was the site of a major fire in 2012.

This year, the Governor’s Interagency Working Group on Refinery Safety adopted the Contra Costa model for its “best practices” dictate for refineries across the state. It went into effect Oct. 1.

Though this new oversight expands the Industrial Safety Ordinance statewide in order to strengthen health and safety issues around refineries, Patterson still wants to explore creating an ordinance in Solano County.

“We need an I.S.O. so that we provide the public’s right to know in an effective and transparent way and that we can have the expertise to assess the status of these programs,” she said in an email.

Although rules, procedures and regulations may be put into place, it is important to have local, expert oversight ensuring that they are all followed, she said. It would also be easier to share information with the community.

“This (would not) give us regulatory authority over the state but could go beyond the state in certain categories mostly dealing with noticing, reporting, investigations, inspections and public right to know,” she said.

Patterson likened it to how water pollution is overseen.

“While the feds and state set standards, and the regional water boards issue permits and violations, the local government has ordinances that apply the standards and collect the fees to ensure those standards are met,” she said.

Patterson is organizing a meeting for mid-November with Gioia, Cal/OSHA and other entities to conduct an incident review of the flaring in May, discuss a possible I.S.O. here, and figure out how closely the new Oct. 1 statewide guidelines mirror those in Contra Costa County.

Air pollution, Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, Flaring, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Pacific Gas & Electric (PGE), Solano County CA, Solano County Environmental Health Division, US Environmental Protection Agency, Valero Benicia Refinery

KQED: Solano County Probe Finds No Violations in Valero Refinery Outage

Repost from KQED News, San Francisco
[Editor: For details, download the Solano County Incident Report.  – RS]

Solano County Probe Finds No Violations in Valero Refinery Outage

By Ted Goldberg, October 23, 2017

An 18-minute power outage on May 5, 2017, at the Valero refinery in Benicia led to a prolonged episode of flaring during which 74,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide was released into the air.This post was updated 10/24/17 at 6 a.m. to include comments from a PG&E representative.

The Valero oil company did not violate state regulations in connection with the massive power outage that led to the release of tens of thousands of pounds of toxic gas from its Benicia refinery this spring, Solano County environmental health investigators have concluded.

The Solano County Environmental Health Division quietly completed its initial probe of the outage in late August. It reviewed the circumstances surrounding the shutdown, the resulting flares that sent flames and black smoke into the sky and two refinery unit malfunctions that took place over the following week.

“We did not find any deficiencies or issue any violations,” said Terry Schmidtbauer, the department’s assistant director, in an interview.

That means that two of the three government probes into the shutdown — tied to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. lines — have led to no penalties.

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) inspected the refinery shortly after the incident, closed its investigation the same month and decided not to issue any violations.

The lack of punitive action outraged Benicia’s mayor and environmentalists.

“No violations of existing rules does not mean we are safe,” Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said in an email. “Sleeping on inadequate protection does not make us safer — doing nothing to correct these deficiencies does not extinguish the risk.”

Patterson has been calling for the City Council to develop regulations that would give Benicia more oversight of the refinery, a proposal Valero opposes.

“This report raises disturbing questions about how unprepared Bay Area refineries and PG&E are for electrical outages that can lead to dangerous air pollution,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Regulators seem reluctant to hold anyone truly accountable for this massive release of pollutants, but what else will prevent something like this from happening again?” Golden-Krasner said. “It’s a systemic failure to protect the air we breathe, and it shows why we need to move away from dirty fossil fuels.”

The energy giant expressed optimism about the state of the investigations into the outage and reiterated its blame of the entire episode on PG&E, which it has sued, seeking at least $75 million in damages and lost revenue.

“We are pleased that Cal/OSHA concluded there were no violations by Valero arising from the May 5 PG&E power outage nor has Solano County issued any violations to date,” said Lillian Riojas, a company spokeswoman, in a statement.

“PG&E caused this outage and significant damages. Valero, like others, is waiting on answers from PG&E, which are still not forthcoming,” Riojas said.

PG&E hired Exponent, a third party engineering firm, to conduct a view of the outage. A utility spokeswoman said Tuesday that Exponent’s report on the incident has been completed and sent to the California Public Utilities Commission.

“The safety of our customers, employees and the general public is always our top priority,” said PG&E’s Deanna Contreras in an email. “We continue to partner with Valero and the City of Benicia to prevent similar power disruptions,” Contreras said.

Another agency, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, issued several notices of violation due to the flaring in the days after the outage. Its investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The refinery has two power sources, both operated by PG&E. When the utility put both of those sources offline on May 5, it caused an “immediate and full shutdown of the facility,” the Solano County report states.

Valero also has a cogeneration plant, but it does not provide enough power to fully supply the facility. County investigators point out that the plant must maintain a line to PG&E’s power circuit to remain online.

That’s a problem, according to Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, who read the county’s report and  specializes in oil and gas production.

“The on-site emergency power supply could have been robust enough to allow for an orderly shutdown,” Smith said.

The outage led to pressure inside the refinery that had to be relieved by the use of its flaring system. But, the loss of power shut the facility’s steam boilers and cooling tower down. That meant the flaring did not operate normally, which led to flames and black smoke shooting out of the refinery, according to the report.

“Their system got overwhelmed,” Schmidtbauer said.

Firefighters were brought in. “The dump stack ignited and was extinguished during the first hour of the incident,” the report said.

The city’s fire department imposed shelter-in-place and evacuation orders for parts of the city. At least a dozen people sought medical treatment for breathing difficulties.

Three days after the initial outage, the refinery underwent another malfunction as it slowly restarted the facility, causing more flaring, this one lasting more than five hours.

Valero initially thought the May 8 problem was tied to the wrong refinery unit, according to county investigators. It turned out the malfunction was connected to its Coker unit, which makes gasoline through the use of high temperatures.

A week later the same unit malfunctioned, leading to yet another round of flaring. This time, it covered cars near MRC Global, a company on Bayshore Road close to the refinery, with an “oil-based” substance.

That second problem was caused by trapped moisture in the piping system as a result of the unit being shut down because of the initial outage.

“The refinery could have done a better job of minimizing subsequent releases that occurred during the restart,” Smith said.

The outage led to an increase in the state’s gasoline prices, hurt the company’s bottom line and damaged one of the refinery’s flares.

Recently it has prompted extra scrutiny from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into the power issues at the Benicia facility.

The refinery released more than 80,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide on the day of the outage and in the weeks afterward.

Schmidtbauer says Valero is still working on its root-cause analysis of the incident. Once that’s completed, the county may end up issuing recommendations to Valero to avoid another similar shutdown.

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Contra Costa County, Crude By Rail, Emissions caps, Environmental review, Refinery emissions, Solano County CA, Take Action, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery

Letter: Bay Area Air Board needs to step up for cleaner air

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald

Where our mayor, supervisor stand

By Michelle Pellegrin, 08/04/16, 4:09 PM PDT

There are 24 people in the Bay Area with the power to regulate the air we breathe. Their decisions cause or reduce asthma, cancer and other illnesses that can and have resulted in death.

This regional board has so much power to affect peoples’ lives and deaths, yet most people haven’t even heard of this agency with the unwieldy name: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District — or BAAQMD.

The 24 members of this board — which includes Vallejo Mayor Osby Davis — have a mandate to protect public health.

The neighborhoods around the refineries have suffered severe health effects from emissions. The 2012 Chevron toxic explosion and fire in Richmond sent more than 15,000 people to the hospital, which is now closed. A broad coalition of Bay Area groups would like to see refinery emissions, which have continuously gone up for the past 20 years, capped and then methods found to reduce harmful emissions. The first step in this process is an Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

On Wednesday, July 20, after four long years and several refinery incidents, the board, in a room with standing room only, was to vote on this. What appeared as a simple slam dunk became a political football between clean air advocates and Big Oil.

Bay Area refineries have been preparing to process heavier dirtier crudes, which will increase emissions and their diseases. The wave of Crude By Rail (CBR) of proposed projects, such as the Valero Benicia CBR project, are designed to facilitate the importation of extreme crudes, such volatile oil from the Bakken fields and volatile heavy crude from the Canadian Tar Sands.

BAAQMD staff, in what can only be seen as another move to interminably delay implementing modern and necessary emission standards on Bay Area refineries, supported combining the simpler refinery emission cap EIR with a complex EIR on toxic chemical emissions for up to 900 businesses.

Bay Area refinery corridor communities and their allied cities want the EIRs to be conducted separately, as the EIR on refineries can be done much more quickly than the more complex toxic chemical EIR because it requires no infrastructure changes. They want answers and relief from the constant health problems they are suffering.

And here is where our mayor stepped in to show his stripes. Davis, just recently appointed to the board, gave a critical speech supporting combining the two EIRs. Who would have thought the BAAQMD’s newest member would have such sway with the board?

Anyone with respiratory health problems or cancer can give a big round of applause to our mayor and Solano County Supervisor Jim Spering, who made the motion to combine the two EIRs. We in Solano County have the dubious distinction of having the most anti-public health, pro-corporate members on the board.

Even the Contra Costa appointees where four of the five refineries are located weren’t as instrumental as the Solano reps in pushing for the delay of this most important EIR.

Luckily, other board members did uphold their duty to the public’s health and a compromise was reached. The EIRs will be combined but if they become bogged down then they will be separated out. In addition, and a very important one from the public’s point of view, there will be citizen oversight of the process.

The irony here is that this is a false dichotomy. Big Oil will keep functioning and we need them for those cars we drive. These companies provide jobs and add to our economies. But it is no longer legitimate to trade health for jobs. It is an outmoded model and has no place in deciding public policy. It is no longer acceptable for companies to dominate local economies and the policies of the people in those communities where they are located.

Big Oil has known for years that this is the direction things are moving. A 2014 article in the San Jose Mercury News notes the refineries are already working on improving their systems in anticipation of processing the dirtier and volatile oil from outside California.

As Tom Griffith, head of the Martinez Environmental Group back in 2014 stated, “The missed opportunity here is for the oil companies to refocus their sights on the future of renewable energy.”

We should be working together to improve public health. The corporate stranglehold on such important regional boards must end. Citizens need to be attend BAAQMD board meetings and provide input on upcoming board decisions for this to happen. The next meeting is Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 9:30 a.m. at the BAAQMD headquarters at 375 Beale St. San Francisco.

And here in Vallejo we need to do the same and be more engaged. We have seen the result of complicity between politicians and corporations that excluded public input: The absurd notion of putting a cement factory in a residential area with its disastrous public health consequences. Don’t let Mayor Davis and his cronies put our community in harm’s way. Say “no” to the Orcem/VMT cement plant and don’t vote in November for any candidate who supports it!

— Michelle Pellegrin/Vallejo
Crude By Rail, Local Regulation, Solano County CA, Uprail communities, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Candidates for Solano County supervisor weigh in on Valero crude-by-rail

Repost from the Fairfield Daily Republic
[Editor: Cheers to Supervisor candidates Mike Ioakimedes, Monica Brown and Denis Honeychurch for openly and directly stating opposition to crude by rail. The news article below fails to make clear that Mike Ioakimedes opposes Valero’s proposal and others like it.  Mike is the only Benicia voice in the race and points out the crucial importance of local control over health and safety issues. (See Mike’s Facebook page for more on his CBR position.)  The Benicia Independent ENDORSES Mike Ioakimedes for Solano County Supervisor.  – RS]

Candidates for county supervisor add voices to crude-by-rail plan

By Todd R. Hansen, May 15, 2016

FAIRFIELD — Candidates for the 2nd District Board of Supervisors office are split on the Valero proposal to ship crude-by-rail to its Benicia refinery, while the two 5th District candidates line up with at least conditional support.

The candidates were responding to a question sent by the Daily Republic: “What is your position on the Valero crude-by-rail proposal at its Benicia facility, and why? Also, what role do you believe the Solano County Board of Supervisors should be taking on this matter?”

Incumbent 5th District Skip Thomson said he would back transporting crude oil by rail if all possible safety measures, including the use of retrofitted train cars, are put in place. He said the economic necessity is clear.

He also said the county supervisors must take an active role of lobbying federal officials to make sure the precautions are implemented.

“Again, as a Board of Supervisors member, I must continue to engage our federal representatives to impress upon the U.S. Department of Transportation the importance of the new technology and the need to protect our citizens,” Thomson said.

Michael Reagan, a former 5th District supervisor, said many of the necessary safety measures are in place, that Valero has made promises to adhere to more-stringent safety standards than currently required and that there are economic and environmental benefits to transporting by train rather than ship.

“There is no realistic scenario that eliminates the rail movement of hazardous materials through our communities, which developed around the rail lines. The Valero-Benicia Refinery has long received and shipped petroleum products via this existing rail spur. These include shipments of highly volatile propane and butane produced at the refinery. Other refineries in the Bay Area do so as well,” Reagan said.

“Moving these products, and many other hazardous materials, by rail is efficient, safe and regulated, exclusively, by the federal government, for good public policy reasons.”

Michael Coan, a candidate for the 2nd District seat, also supports the proposal, while Monica Brown and Denis Honeychurch are adamantly opposed. Tamer Totah said his concerns over community safety are stronger than his support of Valero’s business needs.

Mike Ioakimedes, a former Benicia councilman, said the real issue for him is local control over the decision, and said it is a critical question that extends to issues other than Valero alone.

“My position on this question is that we must retain local control in fulfilling our primary responsibility of protecting the health and safety of our citizens and residents,” Ioakimedes said.

“Finally, local control over dangerous cargo transported through our county is not only a critical county issue, it is something that also needs to be addressed at the state level. The Board of Supervisors should have a very active role in protecting local authority over local issues,” he said.

Honeychurch touched on that issue as well.

“I oppose crude-by-rail unless and until public safety issues are completely solved. This matter is in the jurisdiction of the city of Benicia, which has, on a split vote chosen to delay a decision until another agency weighs in on the issue,” he said.

“The role of the Board of Supervisors is advisory only at this point. . . . Most importantly, the county must be prepared for a disaster should one or more of the tanker rail cars explode,” Honeychurch said.

Brown leaves little doubt about her opposition. She said the proposal is just far too dangerous.

“The benefits of this crude-by-rail do not outweigh the numerous significant and unavoidable impacts on up-rail communities’ air quality and hazards. These cities include Roseville, Sacramento, West Sacramento, Davis, Dixon, Vacaville, Fairfield and Suisun City,” Brown said.

“Oil train derailment and explosion have increased dramatically in recent years – including the July 2013 oil train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Canada, that killed 47 people,” Brown said. “The role of any government is to serve and protect its citizens. I see my job on the board as opposing this project because its impact has the potential to hurt many citizens and harm the environment in Solano County.”

Totah likewise expressed concerns about safety.

“I know Benicia has an active (Community Emergency Response Team). I would love to see what their protocol on an oil or chemical spill would be,” said Totah, adding the CERT he is part of specifically avoids such disasters as oil spills. “I am a strong supporter of oil by waterways. I want to be cautious that our cities, neighborhood and environment are safe and enjoyable to all, including businesses.”

Coan backs the plan and cites economic reasons for his decision.

“I support crude-by-rail,” Coan said. “It will help Valero maintain and create the kind of good-paying, local jobs with good benefits that we desperately need in Benicia and here in the county of Solano. Valero’s continued success and vitality affects this county as a whole.”

“In addition to being a major income source of the Benicia’s general fund, Valero employs the majority of its workers from all of Solano County. Most of its workers live in the city of Vacaville. Valero is a source of employment that goes beyond Valero employees in that they hire outside contractors to perform work at the plant all the time,” Coan said.

He added that federal and other safety requirements are in place.

“Crude-by-rail has become a necessity for Valero to be competitive in the California marketplace given all the restrictions that have been put in place,” he said.

The 2nd District includes Benicia, approximately half of Vallejo in the southern section, and the Cordelia, Cordelia Villages and Green Valley areas in and near Fairfield. The 5th District includes a portion of the eastern section of Suisun City, the northern section of Fairfield, a portion of the eastern part of Vacaville, the Elmira area and Rio Vista.