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.”
After Weeks of Issues, Valero’s Benicia Refinery to Temporarily Shut Down
By Ted Goldberg, Michelle Wiley, Mar 24, 2019 11:30 a.m.Problems began at the refinery on March 11 when a malfunction involving one of the refinery’s units led to the release of petroleum coke dust. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)
The Valero refinery is performing a controlled shutdown to “improve conditions and minimize risk,” according to a statement from Benicia city officials. The shutdown could last multiple days and result in visible flaring.
Earlier Sunday, city officials issued an advisory notice for residents with respiratory issues to stay inside after a two-week-old problem at the Valero refinery worsened.
But now that the refinery is shutting down, city officials and Solano County health officer Bela Matyas says the air quality is safe for residents.
Valero Advisory Update – 10:30 a.m.
Benicia Fire Department continues to monitor air quality. Readings show that levels have significantly improved and are currently in the safe range. #ValeroScrubberIncident
Those problems eased after a few days but continued intermittently, air district officials said.
On Saturday several Benicia residents posted comments on the social media site, Nextdoor, expressing concerns about what appeared to be more black smoke coming from Valero’s stacks.
On Sunday, the particulate matter in the air increased.
This just got more serious. The @CityofBenicia has issued an advisory for all residents with respiratory issues to go inside because of the problems at @ValeroEnergy. ‘The concentration of particulate matter has become significantly higher over the past day.’ @KQEDnewshttps://t.co/cdDjTcV5x1
“The concentration of particulate matter has become significantly higher over the past day. The emissions contain coke, a by-product of the refining process that is made up primarily of carbon particles,” the city’s statement says.
Benicia officials said testing of the coke dust released so far did not show heavy metals at harmful levels but warned that breathing in air from the releases could worsen underlying respiratory conditions like asthma.
“Inspectors are on scene working with the facility and with Solano County and making a determination if additional violations will be coming,” said Lisa Fasano, a spokeswoman with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
The Air District also deployed a monitoring van to drive throughout Benicia to “gather ground level emissions data.”
Most of the time, you cannot see dirty air – for example you can’t see particulates. We know that particulates increase the age-specific mortality risk, particularly from cardiovascular causes. In fact, epidemiological studies suggest public health officials are underestimating the effect of acute pollution exposure on mortality and health outcomes. Other health Issues include those created by oxides of nitrogen, which affect respiratory conditions causing inflammation of the airways – this is often seen as asthma in children and adults.
Every once in a while, we can actually see dirty air such as the May 5, 2017 near catastrophic power loss at Valero and several days and weeks of black smoke. Each type of air pollution has major public health effects.
According to a California State University study in 2008 and subsequent studies by researchers on the cost of air pollution, dirty air in 2008 dollars cost California $28 billion. Some have noted that It may be tempting to think California can’t afford to clean up, but, in fact, dirty air is like a $28 billion lead balloon on our economy. Imagine what could be done if that $28 billion was being spent productively.
The Cal State study applies to Benicia in many ways because it studied two regions with very similar traffic, heavy-duty diesel truck and marine exhaust combined with refineries like those along the Strait including Valero that dominate our region, adding tons of pollutants to the air we breathe every day.
The cost of air pollution in dollars is directly related to premature death, hospitalizations and respiratory symptoms, limiting a person’s normal daily activity and increasing school absences and loss of workday. The $28 billion cost in 2008 reflects the impact these health problems have on the economy. Inflation and little progress on reducing air pollution suggests the costs are much higher now.
Making sense of air monitoring goes hand in hand with public health data. We don’t have this information. Each year, the life- and health-threatening levels of pollution cause the following adverse health effects for the two air basins studied by CSU:
* Premature deaths among those age 30 and older: 3,812
* Premature deaths in infants: 13
* New cases of adult onset chronic bronchitis: 1,950
* Days of reduced activity in adults: 3,517,720
* Hospital admissions: 2,760
* Asthma attacks: 141,370
* Days of school absence: 1,259,840
* Cases of acute bronchitis in children: 16,110
* Lost days of work: 466,880
* Days of respiratory symptoms in children: 2,078,300
* Emergency room visits: 2,800
The same report showed statistics on hospital admissions due to asthma: Benicia 81.08 per 10,000 compared to California at 70.55. Rates for emergency room visits for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and mortality from chronic lower respiratory disease (CLRD) were similarly higher in Benicia than statewide. Air pollution and asthma are contributing factors to these lung diseases. We need to know what exactly is in our air. Air monitoring for Benicia makes sense.
In Parts 2 and 3, we will take a look at air monitoring in Benicia and the good reasons for Benicia to adopt an Industrial Safety Ordinance.
Second regulator finds Valero committed no violations in May 5 flaring
By Katy St. Clair, 10/24/17, 5:19 PM PDT
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.
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