Category Archives: Stephen Golub

Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia CA, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Stephen Golub, Valero Benicia Refinery

It Takes a Village…and a Scott…and a Birdseye

Valero’s Benicia Refinery. | Pat Toth-Smith.
Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

By Stephen Golub, first published in the Benicia Herald on December 24, 2023

Benicia got an early gift from Vice Mayor Terry Scott, Councilwoman Kari Birdseye and the rest of the City Council Tuesday night, December 19, when the Council unanimously voted to move ahead on putting together an industrial safety ordinance (ISO) that will help protect our kids, our older citizens and all of us against the risks of toxic emissions and potential fires/explosions. The decision capped months of patient, arduous work by Scott and Birdseye, who sought to address the views of all concerned parties along the way, resulting in their proposal that triggered the vote.

To be clear, the vote was to start a process, rather than to approve an ISO itself. But after an ISO is drafted and then presumably adopted next year, it will help us stay informed about accidents, incidents, violations, maintenance issues and other developments at Valero (and potentially other major industrial facilities in Benicia) that could affect our safety and health. It could enable Benicia to take preventive and enforcement action when necessary.

This contrasts with our current situation under a voluntary cooperation agreement with Valero, which provides for very limited information for and no enforcement by Benicia. For example, the refinery poured toxic emissions hundreds of times the legal limits into our air for well over a decade, until at least 2019. Even after the Bay Area Air Quality Management District learned of those emissions, that regional regulatory body failed to inform us about them for nearly another three years. We only found out in 2022.

Rather than being left out of the mix, Benicia needs a true seat at the table in order to get such information and take action. An ISO provides such a seat. The cooperation agreement and other current arrangements clearly don’t.

In the spirit of the holidays, I won’t delve into the substance of the debate any further. But I will emphasize that nothing about the ISO, or the effort to adopt it, is directed against the many fine Benician friends and neighbors who work at Valero or who are retirees from its facilities. Quite the contrary: The goal is to bolster safety and health for all of them as well as for the community as a whole.

Smoke from the Valero Benicia refinery during a 2017 incident. | Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

In fact, the hope is also that Valero’s leadership sees this is an opportunity to work with the City to provide its legitimate input. It would be a shame if the corporation walked away from such cooperation. Especially in view of Benicia’s budget problems and their implications for public safety, we need to pull together at this point rather than pull apart. Prompting bad national publicity, spurring divisions locally and other counterproductive fallout will do no good. Far better to act as a good neighbor.

Scott spearheaded the Council deliberations on Tuesday by highlighting how Benicia could construct a model industrial safety ordinance, learning from the experience of the other Bay Area refinery communities, all of which already have ISOs – which, by the way, fees on affected facilities pay for, rather than residents doing so.

Birdseye stood stalwart in repeatedly and successfully pressing for a vote even when there apparently was some temporary hesitancy or lack of clarity about how to proceed.

Thanks to Mayor Steve Young and Councilmembers Tom Campbell and Trevor Macenski, the motion was approved unanimously. And a bit of history was made: Reflecting community sentiment expressed at the meeting and elsewhere, as well as relevant research and experience, the Council decided that it wanted an ISO. If the resulting ordinance is true to that sentiment, research and experience, the ISO will be a strong one.

Thus, the devil will be in the details of what the eventual ordinance entails – something to be decided in the coming months under the direction of a subcommittee led by Scott and Birdseye. But this was a crucial first step.

So big kudos to Scott and Birdseye in particular for making this happen and making history for Benicia. And to the Mayor and other Councilmembers for backing an ISO. Thanks, too, to Fire Chief Josh Chadwick and other hardworking Benicia City staff members for the work they have done and will put into making all this a reality.

Last but not least, let’s also acknowledge the contributions of many other members of this wonderful village we call Benicia. Namely, the many Benicians who spoke, wrote letters and otherwise advocated for an ISO – spurred in part by the Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO) alliance. To join the more than 150 supporters of this effort, or simply to find out more about this matter, please check out the group’s website at www.BISHO.org.

And have safe, healthy and happy holidays!

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Join the BISHO movement

There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who also 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.

Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia CA, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Stephen Golub, Valero Benicia Refinery

Before Dec. 19, Join the Movement to Hold Valero Accountable and Keep Benicians Safe and Healthy

A Crucial Dec. 19 City Council Meeting on an ISO to Protect Ourselves Against Valero’s Toxic Emissions and Potential Explosions

Smoke from the Valero Benicia refinery during a 2017 incident. | Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

By Stephen Golub, first published in the Benicia Herald on December 9, 2023

A Seat at the Table 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

Benicia is the only refinery town in the Bay Area that lacks an industrial safety ordinance (ISO), which could play a crucial role in protecting the safety and health of our kids, our older adults and all of us. On Dec. 19, the City Council will consider a proposal to instruct staff to examine whether the City should adopt such an ordinance.

Unlike the current, voluntary cooperation agreement between Benicia and Valero, an ISO would have real teeth in ensuring that we get timely information about leaks, accidents, violations and ongoing health-and-safety-threatening problems at the Texas-based corporation’s refinery (and potentially at other large corporate facilities here).

An ISO would enable us to learn about these kinds of developments when they occur. It could help prevent such threats in the future, rather than letting them fester for years – with all the increased risks of explosions, fires and poisoned air that come with them. (The cost would be covered by the affected facilities, not your tax dollars. Some estimates put it at several hundred thousand dollars per year. Regardless of the final figure, it would be a drop in the bucket for Texas-based Valero, whose profits were $11.6 billion in 2022.)

More specifically, an ISO would help prevent the kinds of catastrophic fires and explosions that have wreaked havoc on other communities and the many years of toxic, potentially carcinogenic Valero emissions – hundreds of times the legal limits – that have fouled Benicia’s air.

Right now, by and large, we only learn about such dangers at the discretion of Texas-based Valero or various large government agencies whose main focus isn’t Benicia. All too often, we learn little or nothing about these dangerous developments until months or years after they have occurred.

An ISO would give Benicia a seat at the table. 

Potentially Catastrophic, Deadly and Toxic Dangers

In planning this column, I originally thought that I could simply list and summarize articles that document the violations, incidents and dangers that the refinery could pose for the community. But if I tried to do  so, the compilation could well exceed what I have time to write or you have time to read. So here are just a few such items:

“Regulators are seeking an abatement order against the Valero refinery in Benicia to stop what it calls ongoing violations, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said Thursday. The air district wants to require Valero to install pollution control equipment on eight pressure relief devices (PRDs), which are safety measures used to prevent extreme overpressures that the district says could ‘cause catastrophic equipment failure.’” NBC Bay Area, Aug. 11, 2023

“The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) announced Thursday it has cited the Valero refinery in Benicia and three contractors for violations that led to the death of a worker there last November and is proposing a total of $1.75 million in fines…The oil giant, which reported earnings of $114 billion in 2021, was cited four times for either knowingly violating the law or not taking reasonable steps to address a known hazard.” NBC Bay Area, May 24, 2022

“Oil refining giant Valero must pay a $1.2 million penalty for major flaring incidents at its Benicia facility that spewed dark plumes of pollutants into neighborhoods, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced…’Failure to properly manage hazardous materials can pose serious risks to our California communities,’ [EPA regional administrator Martha] Guzman said…Benicia Mayor Steve Young said the city wasn’t notified by the EPA about its investigation or the findings.” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 2023.

“Officials in Benicia and Solano County want to know why Valero’s oil refinery there was able to release excessive levels of hazardous chemicals for more than 15 years before regional air regulators discovered the emissions — and why those regulators failed for another three years to alert local communities to the potential danger…The emissions consisted of a variety of “precursor organic compounds,” or POCs, including [carcinogenic] benzene and other toxic chemicals…The district’s investigation found that from December 2015 through December 2018, POC emissions averaged 5,200 pounds a day — nearly 350 times the daily limit.” KQED, Feb. 24, 2022

What You Can Do

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.

Their emails are:

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.

There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who also 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’s safety and health, consider sending a letter to Benicia City Council as outlined above or signing on to this community letter.

Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: This Thanksgiving, Let’s Be Thankful for What We Don’t Have

By Stephen Golub, November 23, 2023, previously published in the Benicia Herald

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Each Thanksgiving, and whenever I need to remind myself to feel thankful, my mind turns to an interview I conducted in a Southeast Asian refugee camp decades ago…

Back in 1985, fresh out of law school, I was dispatched by a U.S. human rights group to document and write a report about a torrent of abuses against 370,000 Cambodians who had escaped across the border of their war-torn homeland to find precarious shelter in refugee camps in Thailand. Most had languished there since fleeing the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

The savagery threatening the refugees took appalling forms: unspeakable brutality by Thai soldiers assigned to protect them, by rampaging gangs of Cambodian bandits and by Cambodian resistance militias battling the Vietnamese occupation, ostensibly on their behalf; deadly shelling of the camps by Vietnamese artillery based just a few miles away, in Cambodia; and brutal repression in the few camps controlled by the remnants of the fanatical Khmer Rouge regime, which had once ruled their country in a reign of terror. 

Every day for over two weeks, I spent dawn to dusk interviewing as many victims as my (non-refugee) Cambodian interpreter/guide could find. At the end of the trip, in Bangkok, I met with a Thai general who dismissed his troops’ cruelty with the glib observation that “boys will be boys.”

That chat was a doozy. But an interview with a particular refugee stood out far more. The memory has both haunted and moved me over the years…

Darkness was descending on the largest refugee camp, Nong Samet, when a furious, feisty, elderly woman rushed up to my interpreter and me. She’d heard that we were seeking victims to interview. We met with her and her 15-year-old granddaughter in a bamboo hut. The first thing that caught my eye was the circular scar, a healed bullet wound, spanning the girl’s wrist.

Getting shot was not the most recent attack that she had suffered, however. Just a month before my visit, a Thai soldier had viciously assaulted the girl, apparently as punishment for her sneaking to a banned edge of the camp to get water. She described the crime through a sea of tears. The crippled wrist, crushed spirit and brutalized body seemed to encapsulate the terrors visited upon her people. 

Many months later, colleagues and press coverage informed me that my resulting report, along with other types of pressure, helped spark Thai government action to better protect the refugees. But the abuses did not come to an absolute end until 1993, when a peace treaty finally led to the Vietnamese army’s withdrawal from Cambodia, the camps’ closure and the refugees’ repatriation.

Why in the world am I recounting this story, from so long ago, on the cusp of Thursday’s happy holiday? 

Each Thanksgiving, we break bread with friends and family. We toast with those loved ones. We’re thankful for what we have, as well we should be. 

But we might also pause to be thankful for what we don’t have. 

By and large, in America and other privileged nations, we don’t have our lives filled by wars, starvation, devastation and repression that plague many parts of the globe. Most of us don’t have the hunger and poverty that mar the lives of millions of fellow Americans.

While giving thanks, perhaps we can pledge to take whatever small steps we can toward the cures for such ills, at home or abroad.

My point here, however, is not just about suffering. It’s also about the incredible human spirit, strength and courage that enable people to survive horrific situations and to help each other despite the dangers and deprivation they face.

I have no idea what became of the specific refugees I interviewed in Nong Samet and the other camps back in 1985. But I do know that the remarkable resilience of the Cambodians there enabled most of them to endure, so as to eventually return home safely or resettle here in America. 

With all of this in mind, this Thursday, I’ll reflect on a post-it note I wrote years ago. I still have it stuck to the corner of my laptop screen. 

I glance at the note almost every day. I particularly value it when I’m feeling less than thankful and need a reminder about my own blessed lot in life. 

The note reads, “The Girl at Nong Samet.”

So here’s a toast to whatever you do to remain thankful throughout the year. And Happy Thanksgiving. 

MORE POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB:

Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia CA, Benicia City Council Member Kari Birdseye, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Stephen Golub, Valero Benicia Refinery, Vice-Mayor Terry Scott

For Our Kids, Our Older Adults and All of Us: A Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance

Smoke from the Valero Benicia refinery during a 2017 incident. | Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

By Stephen Golub, first published in the Benicia Herald on November 10, 2023

At 4 a.m. on June 21, 2019, a series of massive fires and explosions at a Philadelphia refinery sent both large amounts of toxic chemicals and huge chunks of debris into the air. One 19-ton fragment landed across the Schuylkill River, 2,000 feet away.

The cause of all this? According to the  U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, a corroded ruptured pipe. Apparently, it had been poorly maintained.

The Philadelphia debacle is but one of many refinery and similar disasters that have occurred across the country in recent years. Many of us recall the Chevron fire in Richmond, just over a decade ago.

And just this week, a chemical plant explosion in east Texas triggered large fires, a shelter-in-place order for a five-mile radius around the facility and, even after that order was lifted, official caution “that residents should still avoid spending unnecessary time outdoors, and young children or people with respiratory illnesses and other health issues should stay inside.”

Against this backdrop, and in view of ongoing toxic pollution hazards presented by the presence of Texas-based Valero’s Benicia refinery, a proposal by Vice Mayor Terry Scott and City Council Member Kari Birdseye comes as a breath of fresh air. In a June 10 letter published in the Benicia Herald and through other outlets, the two describe reasons for Benicia adopting a new law that would make our wonderful city safer and healthier for our kids, our older adults and all of us.

Among other things, the ordinance would improve the monitoring of the refinery’s operations and the flow of information from Valero when documented or apparent emissions and violations occur. In these and other regards, it would improve on the rather toothless Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that the City currently has with the giant Texas corporation. It would similarly improve on the MOU’s associated community advisory  panel that rarely meets publicly, that most of us have never heard of and, most importantly, that Valero substantially controls.

Now, does Valero’s track record indicate that Benicia needs a strong ordinance rather than the weak MOU?

Consider what a top official of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) said about the fact that for well over a decade the refinery released into Benicia’s air 138 tons of toxic contaminants hundreds of times the legal limits without informing BAAQMD, the City or any of us – something we only learned of last year:

 “We have a situation here where you’ve got a facility who’s [sic] taking samples of emissions from this vent to control and verify refinery processes. They’re doing that from 2003 onwards. And they knew or should have known that those emissions should have been reported. It’s that simple…”

Or consider these realities:

Despite the Memorandum of Understanding, we did not learn of other serious, longstanding Valero violations, which triggered a federal Environmental Protection Agency investigation, until the EPA announced major fines earlier this year.

Despite the MOU, Valero has committed hundreds of other violations over the past several years.

Despite the MOU, Valero did not report or adequately address the 2022 event in which approximately 200 Benicia households were impacted by an oily, airborne residue that fell onto yards, children’s play equipment, solar panels and other neighborhood facilities.

Despite the MOU, earlier this month air monitoring devices in the vicinity of the refinery detected the presence of the dangerous neurotoxin hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the air, quite possibly emanating from the facility, even as Benicians reported smelling something like rotten eggs – the odor of H2S – in several parts of town.

In addition, let’s be realistic about where the ultimate responsibility for the Benicia refinery’s safety, health and other decisions rests: at the company’s Texas headquarters. Its track record compares unfavorably even with other petrochemical corporations, as indicated by a leading Texas environmental activist’s assessment and a lawsuit filed against the corporation by the Texas Attorney General (normally an ally of the oil industry) over a Valero Texas refinery’s continuing “poor operational, maintenance and design practices.” That same refinery’s 2017 fire poured nearly a million pounds of potentially dangerous pollutants into the air, “including carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds,” according to Valero’s own estimates.

Finally, consider the fact that the Valero facility is the only refinery in the North Bay that is not governed by an industrial safety ordinance (ISO).

None of this is to criticize the hard work and efforts of our fine Fire Department, which does its best to monitor actual and potential Valero hazards under the MOU, despite financial and technical constraints. As always, we should all appreciate its service. But we need more than that.

Also, I’m sure we value the jobs, economic impact and other benefits that the company brings to the area, as well as the wonderful current and former Valero employees who are our friends and neighbors. But if Valero itself wants to be a good neighbor, it needs to cooperate with the City as we move on from the MOU, which expires in 2025. In fact, one great feature of the Scott-Birdseye proposal is that it aims for a cooperative, consultative process.

So what’s next? As per the proposal, at its December 19 meeting the Council will vote on whether to instruct city government staff to examine what the next steps are, including a possible ordinance.

To be clear: This will not be a vote on an ordinance itself; it merely authorizes careful examination of options, in cooperation with Valero, the broader business community and of course all of us.

To read the Scott-Birdseye letter or show support for this initiative, please go to https://www.bisho.org/. You could also weigh in by emailing the Council members with your thoughts. You can access their emails by going to this page at the City website.

In addition, you could attend the December 19 Council meeting, whether in person or via Zoom. The link for the latter will be shared by the City Manager (whom you also should feel free to contact about this) down the line.

This process is well worth getting involved with. The safety, health and lives we save could be our own.

There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who also 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.