Benicia is being asked to make a huge decision regarding our health and safety by approving Valero’s Crude by Rail project, which would bring 100 carloads of crude oil into Benicia each day.
This crude could be the same that has been involved in explosive derailments all over the United States and Canada, including one incident that caused the death of 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. It could also be from the Canadian tar sands, which has proved impossible to clean up in a spill.
Our planning commission wisely determined that an Environmental Impact Report be done to evaluate this project. It is now our turn to weigh in on this important document. That seems a bit daunting since most of us have never heard of or read an environmental impact report. Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community will be holding a workshop on how the average person can read at comment on this report. The workshop runs on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Benicia Library.
This project has enormous implications for our city, county and state. You have the opportunity to shape the decision.
Kathy Kerridge Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community
In the next few days, there will be THREE opportunities to learn more about how to read and respond to a Draft EIR (Environmental Impact Report).
Workshop on How to Respond to Valero’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), This Saturday, June 28, 1-4pm, Benicia Public Library– Sponsored byBenicians For a Safe and Healthy Community. Learn about the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the procedures governing review of Valero’s proposal, including how you can comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). Instruction, brainstorming, and organizing our responses. Refreshments included! Bring a friend.
Next Monday, 6/30, 5:30pm, Ironworkers Hall, 3120 Bayshore Road, Benicia, sponsored by Valero.
Also on Monday, 6/30, 7pm, City Hall Council Chambers, 250 East L Street, Benicia, sponsored by City of Benicia staff at the request of the Benicia Planning Commission.
NOTE: If you can’t make one of these workshops, you are still encouraged to make your views known. Commenting on the DEIR can be as hard or easy as you make it. If you have something to say to the City of Benicia now, please send an email today. Send your comments to:
Amy Million, Principal Planner, Community Development Department, by email: amillion@ci.benicia.ca.us. AND
Brad Kilger, City Manager, by email: bkilger@ci.benicia.ca.us Amy and Brad may also be contacted by delivery to 250 East L Street, Benicia, CA 94510, or by Fax: (707) 747-1637.
Benicia Planning Commissioners, send via email to Amy Million, requesting her to forward on to Planning Commissioners.
Bakken crude oil trains have exploded at least 8 times since the first a year ago in Canada. Please plan an action during July 6-13, 2014 to protest the continued endangerment of our communities by the oil by rail industry.
Please repost far and wide.
Are explosive Bakken crude oil trains coming through your town? / Actions you can take now!
July 6, 2014 marks the one year anniversary of the first major oil train explosion in Canada which took the lives of 47 people. The week of July 6-13, 2014 is an international week of action to mark this anniversary and make sure these folk’s lives were not lost in vain. Your actions should not be limited to this one week as we are dealing with an entrenched oil and rail industry and don’t settle for anything less than the a complete ban on any oil shipped by DOT 111 and DOT 111a cars.
We have come up with tactics here in Vancouver, Washington to take this from a defensive to an offensive fight against the oil by rail industry. Please consider using these tactics as they are and will be effective. If you begin using this tactics please contact us so we can help document your work. If you need tech support contact us.
Take care, matt landon with Vancouver Action Network vancouveractionnetwork.blogspot.com
Oil trains are bad because they have blown up at least 8 times in the last year killing innocent railside residents and polluting the environment. As the US and Canada have increased their oil extraction and production–and as resistance to oil pipelines becomes more effective–the use of trains to transport oil has skyrocketed, leaving communities vulnerable to explosions, oil spills, and unmonitored oil train air emissions. We must take action now to stop this trend!
Call to Action— Nationwide protests and formation of an International Oil Train Activists movement
This is a call for activists to join in creating an International Oil Train Activists movement and to help organize mass non-violent protests across the North American continent against explosive oil trains.
We have three nationwide protest actions.
1) First contact your state Emergency Management Agency and fill out a public records request for information which the railroads have provided to the EMA’s in relation to DOT Emergency Order DOT-OST-2014-0067 and which was due by June 7, 2014.
Please print the above form and fill in the following information including your name, date, email and signature and return to the WA state EMA or your state EMA.
We have filed an information request here in Washington state and the EMA informed us that the railroad would likely seek a court injunction against our request. This is GREAT because it means that the railroad is spending between several hundred and several thousand dollars to keep one person from one group from getting this information! Let’s see how many people we can get to request this information and how much money we can cost the railroads. We plan to request this information in 49 US states.
2) Since the railroads won’t release their oil train information we can just generate the information ourselves. You can start a 100% Oil Train Watch in your city, town, or neighborhood by using Twitter on a computer or smart phone. If you see a 100% oil train Tweet the time, location, direction of train travel, and your state’s abbreviation in the hashtag such as #waoiltrainwatch for Washington state or #tnoiltrainwatch for Tennessee. By watching and recording these trains we can be a warning siren for first responders, elected officials and the general public with real time information. We can also use this information to provide a check on the info the railroads provide to the state EMAs, and on possible total oil train volume violations of air quality permits of current export facilities.
To view our Train Watching activities go to vancouveractionnetwork.blogspot.com
3) The Department of Transportation and Federal Railroad Administration are the two agencies that regulate Hazardous Materials shipping via railroads. We demand that they immediately issue an Emergency Order halting the hauling of any type of crude oil in the outdated and unsafe DOT 111 and DOT 111a railcars. By organizing a protest in your own city or state you will be joining in the growing movement to bring a halt to these explosive oil trains before the next city is vaporized, life is lost, or environment spoiled.
The Department of Transportation has the authority to deem the DOT 111 and DOT 111a railcar fleet unsafe for hauling explosive crude oil yet they have been dragging their feet on taking real action. We demand they take immediate action. Each state has multiple regional DOT offices and we need protests at each one.
Federal Railroad Administration regional offices — http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0244
Headquarters Washington DC Region 1 Cambridge, MA Region 2 Crum Lynne, PA Region 3 Atlanta, GA Region 4 Chicago, IL Region 5 Fort Worth, TX Region 6 Kansas City, MO Region 7 Sacramento, CA Region 8 Vancouver, WA
4) Consider attending the Washington Oil Train Summit August 22-23, 2014 at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. More info at http://washingtonoiltrainsummit.blogspot.com This summit will mainly be focused on solidifying the WA Oil Train Activists actions but we are inviting representatives from other groups to attend as well so that we can grow the International movement.
Thanks Matt Landon with Vancouver Action Network vancouveractionnetwork.blogspot.com
Crude-oil trains through Davis: It’s time for action
By Lynne Nittler | June 08, 2014
Tank cars carrying crude oil roll through downtown Davis as paradegoers gather on Picnic Day in April. Richard McAdam/Courtesy photo
I’m proud of our city. The Davis City Council took on crude-by-rail transport through our community, just as I have seen it tackle other difficult issues — with the willingness to look beneath the surface, find out what is important and then figure out what to do.
I’m sure the council members would have preferred shrugging off the crude-by-rail problem, leaving it for the federal government to handle, but we citizens pressed them, and to their credit, they became regional leaders.
The problem: The issue isn’t abstract for Davis. If two proposals are approved down-rail from us, we soon could be seeing 180 tank cars coming right through our town every day, carrying the highly volatile North Dakota Bakken crude oil in the older, unsafe DOT111 cars.
A proposed rail terminal at the Benicia Valero refinery would bring 70,000 barrels a day, which equals a train of 100 cars, and a proposed rail spur at the Phillips 66 Santa Maria refinery in San Luis Obispo County would bring another 80 cars per day through Davis on the Capitol Corridor route.
When a group of local citizens approached the Davis Natural Resources Commission in January with our concerns, we found a receptive audience. Those concerns are numerous: unsafe tank cars prone to rupture, uninspected rails, the nature of volatile crude oil and dirty tar sands, oil train exclusion from the right-to-know laws, substantially increased numbers of serious oil train accidents and spills, and skyrocketing projections for the number of oil trains entering California.
The commission elevated the citizen recommendations to the City Council.
City goals: The council listened, and noted that Spokane, Bellingham and Seattle, Washington, and, more recently, Berkeley and Richmond, had all passed resolutions protesting crude-by-rail transport through their cities. They assigned staff to prepare a report and later adopted broad goals including to:
* Actively participate in regional planning activities;
* Assure top-quality fire, police, emergency and other services to promote the health, safety and well-being of all residents and neighborhoods; and
* Create and maintain an environment that promotes safety and well-being.
Based on these goals, on Earth Day, April 22, the Davis City Council took a strong stand and adopted Resolution 14 opposing transportation of crude oil through the city of Davis and adjacent habitat, thus including the Yolo Causeway with its trestle tracks. It is well worth reading the whole document, posted at www.yolanoclimateaction.org or at www.cityofdavis.org under the City Council agenda for April 22. Other cities and counties in our region have requested copies of the Davis resolution as they prepare their own.
Leading the region: Meanwhile, Mike Webb, the staff member assigned to research crude-by-rail, along with City Attorney Harriet Steiner, contacted neighboring jurisdictions of Sacramento, West Sacramento, Dixon and Yolo and Solano counties to alert them also to the dangers. Together, our staff convinced the Sacramento Area Council of Governments to hold a meeting on oil trains on April 17, and that group put the item on the agenda for the next full SACOG meeting.
The jurisdictions divided up the various tasks, mostly focused on public safety, but also on siding storage and getting more information/assistance from Union Pacific, the California Public Utilities Commission and even the refineries. The SACOG representatives who attended the Capital-to-Capital meetings in Washington, D.C., last month took our regional concerns directly to our California elected officials, Reps. Doris Matsui and John Garamendi.
Additionally, our city is pursuing with Union Pacific a high-sensitivity rail situation in Davis where there is a curve and also crossover switches, both requiring an unusual —and dangerous — slower speed of 10 mph.
Comments: The next step is an opportunity for cities and organizations to study the draft environmental impact report for the Valero Project, which will be released Tuesday for public review. Written comments are admitted to the record, and the report authors must respond to each comment, although similar comments may be grouped together. Those who respond have 45 days, probably extended to 60 to 90 days, to submit written comments.
The city of Davis isn’t waiting for the EIR release; it is already planning its comments and inviting neighboring jurisdictions to join them. SACOG members are working together now. We citizens can be grateful that our city is speaking up on behalf of our safety.
The city manager of Lynchburg, Virginia, did not even know that trains of Bakken oil were passing through his town. On April 30, 17 cars derailed and the ensuing flames shot up eight stories high while three cars leaked 25,000 gallons of crude into the James River, a source of drinking water. Fortunately, Davis is taking proactive steps to avert such accidents.
A number of environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Earth Justice, Oil Change International and others will be weighing in on the draft EIR as well, with sharply focused comments on safety, health, water and air contamination, and whatever other weaknesses or unmitigated concerns they find in the EIR.
Time for action! Democracy is, above all, about each of us voicing our concerns. Under the California Environmental Quality Act, the draft EIR provides every individual affected by a decision with a chance to be heard. Every comment letter becomes a part of the EIR document and receives a response in the final EIR.
Therefore, we have serious work to do to become informed about the impact of unit trains of crude oil passing through Davis and to read all or significant parts of the draft EIR document. The time we invest in expressing particular concerns could make a difference in terms of mitigations granted or possibly influence whether the Benicia Planning Commission, and ultimately the Benicia City Council, vote for or against the Valero rail project.
There is a helpful resources document posted for those who wish to read up on crude-by-rail transport at www.yolanoclimateaction.org
Yolano Climate Action will host a workshop on how to respond to a draft EIR, including an instructional PowerPoint presentation by Mike Webb plus tips and discussion on commentary topics for the Valero project DEIR, on Wednesday, June 18, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Davis Community Church Fellowship Hall, 421 D St.
Looking ahead: The draft EIR for the Santa Maria rail spur project is expected to be released in July, offering a second chance to use newly honed skills!
— Lynne Nittler is a Davis resident and environmental activist.
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