Category Archives: Valero Benicia Refinery

Benicia to move forward with regulation of Valero refinery

The Valero Benicia refinery | Scott Morris / Vallejo Sun.

Residents felt that state and regional regulatory agencies had not followed through on enforcement.

Vallejo Sun, by Ryan Gellar, December 20, 2023

BENICIA – The Benicia City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to begin a community engagement process to create stronger regulations of the Valero refinery and other industries in the city through an industrial safety ordinance.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the council chambers were filled with community members who expressed concerns about deficiencies in Valero’s fence line monitoring, accident reporting and the company’s dismissal of community input.

Many felt that state and regional regulatory agencies have allowed delays in monitoring programs and had not followed through on key avenues of enforcement. Mistrust was also fueled by a revelation in 2022 that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District had discovered that Valero illegally released toxic emissions for 16 years but the agency failed to notify Benicia residents until three years after the discovery.

In 2018, the city council considered adopting an ordinance to regulate the refinery similar to legislation in Contra Costa County and Richmond, but instead formed a cooperative agreement with Valero which is set to expire in 2025. After four years of the cooperative agreement, residents said that it has not provided sufficient oversight of industrial practices in the city.

Mayor Steve Young encouraged residents to define the areas where the current agreement falls short to indicate a direction for provisions that could be included in an ordinance.

Benicia resident Terry Mollica, who was involved in the drafting 2018 ordinance proposal and spoke on behalf of the Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance working group, said that the deficiencies are too numerous to list at the meeting. But he highlighted a key issue that the working group found to be particularly problematic.“It has absolutely no enforcement mechanism,” Mollica said. “In fact it includes a provision that allows Valero to unilaterally terminate the entire cooperative agreement at any time if it thinks it is being over-regulated.”

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TODAY! – Ask City Council to protect Benicia’s health and safety at the Dec. 19 Council Meeting

A Message from the Benicia ISO Working Group:

The crucial City Council meeting on whether Benicia should consider an Industrial Safety Ordinance will take place on TODAY, Tuesday, Dec. 19 at 6 pm at the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 230 East L Street. It is vital that supporters of a strong ISO attend and voice our support. Valero is gearing up to oppose this and may bring personnel to the meeting to voice opposition.

By attending and offering comments, you can offer support for the proposal by Vice Mayor Terry Scott and Councilmember Kari Birdseye, to be voted on by the Council on Dec. 19, instructing City staff to look into the possibility of Benicia adopting an ISO.

In addition, please voice support for not just the Scott-Birdseye proposal but for a strong ISO. This has become all-the-more important because of a problematic Benicia City staff report that, perhaps unintentionally, repeatedly presents incomplete and potentially misleading information that paints Valero’s refinery in a favorable light compared to Contra Costa County refineries covered by ISOs. The report neglects to mention evidence and experience to the contrary.

For instance, the report lists accidents that have occurred only at Contra Costa refineries. Yet it makes no mention of the many instances of severe violations by Valero, including the 2022 revelation about its Benicia refinery’s over fifteen years of unreported toxic emissions, hundreds of times regulatory limits.

In fairness, however, the report briefly notes, “In the years following [the Contra Costa County ISO’s implementation], it is believed to have contributed to a decline in accidents and releases at refineries in Contra Costa.”

The point is that voices for a strong ISO can help counteract any misimpressions that staff report might leave to the contrary.

If at all possible, your showing up early can help ensure that supporters of a strong ISO are near the front of the audience. But even if you can’t make it by 6 pm, that will be ok as the discussion of this matter probably won’t start until close to 6:30 pm (or possibly even later if the Council does not move this priority item to early in the agenda).

Also, participation by Zoom is an option. You can find the link that explains how to access the meeting here: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/benicia/5f807fdd4c4cce692977198f6f31acd30.pdf. 

Thanks very much for considering all this and for any support you can show for making Benicia safer and healthier for our kids, our older adults and all of us.

See www.bisho.org for more information.

Ask City Council to protect Benicia’s health and safety at the Dec. 19 Council Meeting

A Message from the Benicia ISO Working Group:

The crucial City Council meeting on whether Benicia should consider an Industrial Safety Ordinance will take place on Tuesday, Dec. 19 at 6 pm at the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 230 East L Street, It is vital that supporters of a strong ISO attend and voice our support. Valero is gearing up to oppose this and may bring personnel to the meeting to voice opposition.

By attending and offering comments, you can offer support for the proposal by Vice Mayor Scott and Councilmember Birdseye, to be voted on by the Council on Dec. 19, instructing City staff to look into the possibility of Benicia adopting an ISO.

In addition, please voice support for not just the Scott-Birdseye proposal but for a strong ISO. This has become very important because of a highly problematic and highly unusual Benicia City staff report issued a few days ago. We will be in touch with more details in the next 24 hours.

If at all possible, your showing up early can help ensure that supporters of a strong ISO are near the front of the audience. But even if you can’t make it until later, that will be ok since other agenda items may take up some time.

Also, participation by Zoom is an option. You can find the link that explains how to access the meeting here: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/benicia/5f807fdd4c4cce692977198f6f31acd30.pdf. 

Thanks very much for considering all this and for any support you can show for making Benicia safer and healthier for our kids, our older adults and all of us.

See www.bisho.org for more information.

We’re asking City Council to take the “second step” toward adopting an ISO in Benicia. Here’s how you can help

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.

 

What You Can Do

By Stephen Golub, from his December 9, 2023 column, first published in the Benicia Herald

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.