Category Archives: Valero Crude By Rail

Benicia Planning Commission, Crude By Rail, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Benicia Planning Commission resolution to deny Valero permit

By Roger Straw, February 18, 2016

City of Benicia releases Planning Commission resolution: NO to Valero Crude by Rail

At 10:45am today, the City of Benicia sent an email notification and posted the highly anticipated resolution of the Planning Commission with negotiated wording to deny certification of the EIR and to deny a use permit for Valero’s Crude By Rail project.

After the Commission’s unanimous Feb. 11 vote to deny certification and the permit last week, the Commissioners noted that their position was in stark contrast to that of City staff, and insisted that the usual procedure of staff writing the resolution would not be adequate.  The Commission appointed Chair Don Dean to work with staff on the wording.

In comments before the vote last week, each Commissioner laid out their primary concerns and issues.  In my opinion, the resolution does a good job of summarizing their concerns and issues, and fairly represents the solid opposition of the Commission.

For instance, after the lengthy WHEREAS section, the resolution states, “Section 15270 of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines, CEQA does not apply to projects that a public agency disapproves, but the Planning Commission determined it was necessary to provide findings per CEQA Sections 15090 and 15091, and to deny certification of the EIR and identified the following deficiencies in the EIR.”

This is followed by 14 findings, beginning with “The EIR does not express the independent judgment of the City as required by CEQA” and followed by a strong critique of city staff’s interpretation of preemption.

Findings 3 and 4 add a critique of the intermingling of Valero’s and the City’s needs and objectives.

The remainder of the findings specify ways in which the EIR failed to adequately identify, analyze and/or lay out appropriate mitigations for significant and unavoidable environmental impacts.

The document goes on with a resolution to deny the project based on a single finding:  “That the proposed location of the conditional use and the proposed conditions under which it would be operated or maintained would not be consistent with the General Plan as it would be detrimental to the public health, safety, or welfare of persons residing or working in or adjacent to the neighborhood of the use, or to the general welfare of the city, as well as uprail communities.”

I find the brevity and singularity of this finding somewhat surprising, and yet perfectly aimed at the heart of the proposal and solidly grounded in what many refer to as the Constitution of our city, our “General Plan.”

The document concludes, “…the finding cannot be made for the Project due to the potential significant on- and off-site impacts associated with the project and the associated rail operations, the need for further evaluation of the environmental impacts, the economic purposes of the project and the conflicting interpretations of preemption.”

Here on the Benicia Independent you can download a searchable-text version of the Resolution:  RESOLUTION NO. 16- 1 (PC) – A RESOLUTION OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF BENICIA DENYING CERTIFICATION OF THE EIR AND DENYING A USE PERMIT FOR THE VALERO CRUDE BY RAIL PROJECT AT 3400 EAST SECOND STREET (12PLN00063)

The City’s original can be found here.

Benicia Planning Commission, Crude By Rail, Public permitting, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), Sacramento CA, San Luis Obispo County, Santa Maria Refinery, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Sacramento Bee Editorial: Oil train safety gets an important boost from area Planning Commissions

Repost from the Sacramento Bee

Oil train safety gets an important boost

By the Editorial Board, February 16, 2016 6:05 AM

HIGHLIGHTS
• Sacramento-area officials say the risks of transporting oil should be weighed in refinery plans
• The planning commission in Benicia and planners in San Luis Obispo County have rejected refinery proposals
• If officials want to approve plans, they must justify why public safety is outweighed

Workers tend to the scene of a oil train derailment in Watertown, Wis., last Nov. 9. Communities across California and the country are concerned about the safety of trains carrying oil.
Workers tend to the scene of a oil train derailment in Watertown, Wis., last Nov. 9. Communities across California and the country are concerned about the safety of trains carrying oil. John Hart Associated Press

Officials in the Sacramento region have every right to raise safety concerns about oil trains rumbling through. Now they have key allies in their cause.

Last week, the city of Benicia’s planning commission unanimously rejected a plan by Valero Refining Co. to take deliveries twice a day from 50-tanker trains that would roll through Roseville, downtown Sacramento, West Sacramento and downtown Davis on their way to Benicia. As The Bee’s Tony Bizjak reports, planners in San Luis Obispo County have also recommended against a plan by Phillips 66 for about 150 trains a year to bring oil to its refinery.

While local residents and environmental groups objected, some Benicia planning commissioners said they also heard Sacramento-area residents and officials loud and clear. “I don’t want to be the planning commissioner in the one city that said ‘screw you’ to up-rail cities,” Commissioner Susan Cohen Grossman said.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments, representing six counties and 22 cities, had argued that Benicia’s environmental review was inadequate because it didn’t look at how to protect cities along the route. That analysis concluded the trains could create a “potentially significant” hazard to the public from oil spills and fires, but only once every few decades.

Yet, as Don Saylor, a Yolo County supervisor and a former SACOG chairman, points out, depending where a derailment happened, heavily populated neighborhoods could be in the blast zone.

He told The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board Tuesday that the best solution is for the oil to be stabilized at the source in the oil fields of North Dakota and elsewhere, and then transported in state-of-the-art rail cars. That, of course, would cut into oil and rail industry profits, and government regulators aren’t there yet.

Indeed, they have been trying to catch up to the boom in domestic oil production and rail transport. After more than two years of debate, the U.S. Department of Transportation last May issued new rules under which the oldest tank cars must be replaced by 2018 with thicker-shelled ones, and cars built since 2011 must be retrofitted or replaced by 2020.

Valero, which wants to build a rail spur and unloading station at its refinery, is expected to appeal to the Benicia City Council. The planning commission in San Luis Obispo is scheduled to vote in late March or April.

Officials could still overturn the recommendations and approve these trains. But at least now, they must justify why safety concerns are outweighed.

Benicia City Council, Benicia Planning Commission, Crude By Rail, Fairfield CA, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Fairfield Daily Republic: Valero faces deadline for filing appeal to Benicia council

Repost from the Fairfield Daily Republic

Valero faces deadline for filing appeal to Benicia council

By Kevin W. Green, February 17, 2016
The Valero refinery is shown in Benicia. The company has until Feb. 29 to appeal a decision by the Benicia Planning Commission to deny its crude by rail plan. (Steve Reczkowski/Daily Republic file)

FAIRFIELD — Valero faces a Feb. 29 deadline for filing an appeal after having its crude-by-rail project derailed last week by the Benicia Planning Commission.

The commission voted unanimously Thursday to deny the controversial project after holding a public hearing last week that involved meetings over four consecutive days.

Valero has until the end of the month to decide if it wants to appeal the decision to the Benicia City Council, according to Amy Million, principal planner. City staff had recommended approval of the project.

The company has not indicated what it will do.

“We are disappointed that the Planning Commission did not agree with the staff recommendation to certify the project EIR and approve the use permit,” Valero said in a prepared statement after the commission vote.

“At this point we will evaluate our options for appeal with our management,” the statement said.

The project, which was before the city for three years, would have allowed Valero to transport crude oil to its Benicia refinery on two 50-car freight trains daily on Union Pacific tracks that traverse Solano County – passing through Fairfield, Suisun City and Dixon.

The rail shipments would have replaced up to 70,000 barrels per day of crude oil currently transported to the refinery by ship, according to the plan. The Valero refinery would have continued to also receive crude by pipeline, the plan said.

The project sparked plenty of reaction, with much of the concern focused on a need for increased safety and possible mitigation measures.

The city received 20 letters from government agencies with substantive comments on the draft environmental document, 11 letters from organizations, four letters from planning commissioners and 135 letters from individuals, according to the final report. In addition, comments were received orally at three Planning Commission meetings.

Of the approximately 1,800 substantive comments received on the draft environmental document, about 550 discussed hazards, 260 focused on air quality and greenhouse gas emissions, 80 dealt with transportation, 60 discussed biological resources, 50 focused on hydrology and geology, and 40 discussed noise, the report said.

Benicia Planning Commission, Crude By Rail, Davis CA, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Daily crude oil through Davis… Averted for now

Repost from the Davis Vanguard
[Editor:  See also the February 16 follow up in the Vanguard by Elizabeth Lasensky, Phillips 66 and Valero – A Tale of Two Oil Train Projects.  – RS]

Daily crude oil through Davis… Averted for now

By Lynne Nittler and Jean Jackman, February 14, 2016
Protesters of Oil Trains in Benicia / Courtesy Photo
Protesters of Oil Trains in Benicia / Courtesy Photo

It has been an exhausting and dramatic week for Davis activists and those from Sacramento and other cities uprail from the proposed Valero Refinery expansion in Benicia.

Ten of us have traveled from Davis in two carpools to testify on the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project.   We have participated actively in the stages of a complicated public review process that began in 2013. Now a final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) came up for a last public hearing before the Benicia Planning Commission.

A city of Davis official and a representative of the 7 regional Air Quality Management Districts also spoke.

We’ve been here before, and we were met with grateful hugs from our friends in Benicia, though we came to protect our own vulnerable city as much as theirs.

The Valero Refinery wants to bring two 50-car trains through Davis daily carrying highly volatile crude oil from North Dakota and other places. That would be 1.5 million gallons daily. It all hinges on whether or not Valero can get a permit to build a rail loading station.

Fortunately, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) gave our region legal standing, and our governmental agencies and individuals used it fully with letters when the draft EIR failed to include any mention of uprail impacts. The CEQA process protects people and the environment! Without it, the uprail communities like Davis would have had no voice at all. We will defend it fiercely from those who would weaken or dismiss this legal recourse.

The Revised DEIR recognized 11 “Significant and unavoidable Impacts” uprail but dismissed them all as “impacts without mitigations” by claiming “federal preemption” of the railroads.

For the third time, our Davis Council and Yolo County Supervisors sent letters and urged the Planning Commission not to certify the Final DEIR. The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) which represents 22 cities and 6 counties sent a letter severely critical of the FDEIR, calling for the Benicia Planning Commission to “provide full and adequate responses to our comment letters,” and “to fully evaluate all measures to mitigate the significant environmental impacts that this Project will inevitably have on our communities and our residents.”

The sticky big issue is the interpretation of federal preemption. The contract attorney for Benicia insisted that it is illegal to raise objections to anything regarding the trains because that is all governed by the feds. The Benicia staff and the contract attorney recommended allowing the refinery to go forward.

Last week, the San Luis Obispo staff demonstrated a different take on the federal preemption issue. They recommended denying an expansion of the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery stating that the benefits were outweighed by safety concerns. Their Planning Commission is now opposing the project.

Fortunately, among those who testified were two lawyers from Sierra Club, two speakers for the Stanford Law School representing Center for Biological Diversity and two attorneys from Adams Broadwell Attorneys on behalf of SAFER California. All six of them put forward strong cases that the FDEIR does not meet CEQA, cannot be certified, and that the Benicia staff interpretation of federal preemption is not correct.

A Washington Post article was titled “Trains are carrying — and spilling —a record amount of oil.” It stated that “more than 141 unintentional releases were reported from railroad tankers in 2014…a nearly six-fold increase over the average of 25 spills per year during the period from 1975 to 2012 according to records of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Record.”  Neighbors who witnessed 14 tanker cars derailed and exploded near Mount Carbon W.V. likened the fireball to a scene from the apocalypse.  We are all familiar with the grizzly Canadian Lac-Mégantic wreck that wiped out the downtown near the Maine border and killed 47 people.

Public comment ended at 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday night. The Planning Commissioners listened politely and attentively to five-minute public comments by over 70 people, often personal, sometimes brilliant, and all but 6 opposed. They also allowed visual power points such as the one put together by Davis resident Elizabeth Lasensky which showed oil cars rolling past hordes of people at Picnic Day, tank cars traveling over the Sacramento River (a drinking water source for many communities), and the path of oil cars through downtown and next to the Mondavi Center. In Sacramento, 13,000 children attend 17 schools in the blast area—the area vulnerable to an accident. Our California State Capitol is also in the blast zone.

 After four nights of deliberation, the Benicia Planning Commission unanimously chose not to certify the FDEIR and denied a project permit. It is likely that Valero will appeal the commission’s decision to the Benicia City Council. For detailed reporting see benindy.wpengine.com.  Read our testimony at yolanoclimateaction.org.

We activists let out a big sigh of relief…for now. And feel immense gratitude to the public service, endurance and respect demonstrated by the volunteer Benicia Planning Commission.