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
Repost from Market News Call [Editor: Market News call is “a daily market news monitor providing insight, briefs earnings and market news.” I find it interesting and somewhat encouraging that investors are highly interested in Valero’s Crude By Rail Draft EIR. – RS]
Just In: Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE:VLO)
By Michael Aragon • June 25, 2014
Valero Energy Corporation(NYSE:VLO)’s plan to unload as many as 70,000 barrels of oil a day from trains at its Benicia refinery will increase emissions across California in a “significant and unavoidable” way, a city report shows.
Valero has applied to build a rail-offloading rack at the plant northeast of San Francisco that would take oil from as many as 100 tanker cars a day. The San Antonio-based company delayed the project’s completion by a year to early 2015 as it awaits approval from the city.
“Project-related trains would generate locomotive emissions in the Bay Area Basin, the Sacramento Basin, and other locations in North America,” the city of Benicia said in an environmental assessment posted on its website today. “The city has no jurisdiction to impose any emission controls on the tanker car locomotives; therefore, there is no feasible mitigation available to reduce this significant impact to a less-than-significant level.”
Valero is proposing the rail spur as record volumes of oil are extracted from North American shale formations that the U.S. West Coast has little pipeline access to. California’s refiners are already bringing in the biggest-ever volumes of oil by rail as they seek to displace shrinking supplies of crude within the state and from Alaska.
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.
This Is Where Deadly Crude Oil Trains May Be Rolling Through California
By Ken Broder, June 20, 2014
(graphic: Natural Resources Defense Council)
Although this country’s oil boom has been accompanied by an explosion of dangerous crude-carrying trains―literally and figuratively―a much-anticipated environmental impact report (Summary pdf) says the spill threat from Valero Refining Company’s proposal to run 100 tanker cars a day through Roseville and Sacramento to its Benicia refinery is negligible.
The draft EIR, written by Environmental Science Associates of San Francisco for the city of Benicia and released on Tuesday, singled out air pollution, “significant and unavoidable,” as the sole danger among 11 “environmental resource or issue areas.”
The next day, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released seven maps detailing the rail routes through the “Crude Oil Train Derailment Risk Zones in California,” which stretches from the Bay Area to the Central/San Joaquin Valley and encompasses 4 million people.
The NRDC’s assessment of risk was markedly different than in the EIR. Noting that “California has seen a dramatic increase of crude by rail, from 45,000 barrels in 2009 to six million barrels in 2013” without any new safety measures or emergency response put in place, the NRDC report said the aging “soda cans on wheels” are not built to handle the particularly volatile crude being fracked out of the ground in America’s rejuvenated oil fields like those in North Dakota, and shipped to refiners.
Tracks would run within half a mile of 135,000 people in Sacramento and 25,000 people in Davis.
The NRDC wants old tanker cars removed from service, lower speeds for trains, rerouting through less-sensitive areas, disclosure of what kind of crude is being carried, more visible emergency preparedness, fees on shippers to pay for emergency response, high-risk designations for oil-trains and more comprehensive risk assessments.
The EIR was a bit more upbeat.
It concluded that oil spills between Roseville and Benicia would occur about once every 111 years. The project would have no impact on agriculture and forestry resources or mineral resources. It would also have less-than-significant impacts on aesthetics, population and housing, public services, recreation and utilities and service systems.
In other words, the assumption is there won’t be anything like the tragic accident in July 2013 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, where 72 tank cars of crude oil exploded, killing 47 people and destroying much of the town’s core. As Russell Gold and Betsy Morris explained in the Wall Street Journal, “Each tank car of crude holds the energy equivalent of 2 million sticks of dynamite or the fuel in a wide body jetliner.”
The Sacramento Bee said the risk assessment’s author, Christopher Barken, previously worked for the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s leading advocacy group in Washington, and does research supported by the railroad association.
Barken’s website at the University of Illinois, where he is a professor and executive director of the Railroad Engineering Program, says, “Our strong relationship with the rail industry means our research has an impact.”
In describing the twice-a-day snaking of 50-car trains through heavily populated areas, the report offered far more information than has generally been made available by rail companies to state and local governments, as well as disaster first-responders. But the EIR did acknowledge Benicia would not reveal seven Valero “trade secrets” (pdf) at the oil company’s request.
That “confidential business information” included the specific crude Valero would be shipping in by rail and the properties of crude it refined now or in the past. That lack of information would be complicating factors in accurately assessing pollution and risk.
California, like states and localities across the nation, are scrambling just to get a handle on how much crude-by-rail is coursing through their jurisdictions, much less assessing what regulations and safety measures need to be put in place. They are working blind.
A study by Politico analyzed 400 oil-train incidents nationally since 1971 and found a dramatic escalation the past five years. Property damage from 70 accidents through mid-May this year is already $10 million, triple the year before.
“It has become abundantly clear that there are a whole slew of freight rail safety measures that, while for many years have been moving through the gears of bureaucracy, must now be approved and implemented in haste,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said.
They must. Because the trains are already rolling and Valero would like to get its California project finished by the end of the year. America is waiting.
