Benicia deserves better
Benicia is the only Bay Area refinery town that does not have the community protection of an Industrial Safety Ordinance, or ISO.
In 1999, the city of Richmond and Contra Costa County adopted their interlocking ISOs. The Richmond ordinance mirrors the Contra Costa ISO, and Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials Division is responsible for enforcement and reporting.
Their experience with repeated refinery and associated hydrogen plant polluting events caused the elected leaders to respond to pressure from the disproportionally impacted communities in Richmond, Rodeo and Martinez for greater protection and information about polluting incidents.
How did Benicia miss out?
Since the adoption of the ISO, there have continued to be dangerous and deadly incidents at these Bay Area refineries, albeit at reduced rates, due to the ISO. Fortunately, the Richmond/Contra Costa ISO allows for corrective provisions that have improved refinery function and provided impacted communities with timely investigative information.
Under the ISOs, a 72-hour post incident report is available to the public. Monthly reports, or more frequently if necessary, follow that report and are publicly posted. To date, neither the Benicia City Council nor the people of Benicia have received any official reports on the nearly monthlong Valero flaring disaster this past May.
Based on the success of the Richmond/Contra Costa ISO, the California legislature adopted some of the process safety management portions of the ISO and made them state law, going into effect in October.
Unfortunately, the legislature did not adopt all elements of the ISOs. Benicia’s ability to receive information, publish the results of investigations to the public and to require Valero to take corrective action simply does not exist. Can we wait for the legislature to strengthen the state law?
While Valero and PG&E point the finger at each other over who is at fault for the Valero flaring disaster in May, Benicia remains in the dark. We know Valero was given permits to construct an adequate backup generator system but only one co-generator was built and the permit for the other was allowed to expire after several extensions, probably because of Valero’s bureaucrats in Texas.
Do we Benicians think we can count on Texas oil men to put our health and safety ahead of their profits? The lesson we learned from the successful battle to stop Valero’s dangerous Crude-By-Rail Project is the company seems to stop at nothing to ensure their profits – even at the expense of Benicians.
Benicia deserves better!
Andres Soto,
Benicia
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You hit the nail on the head when you said Texan oilmen don’t care about Benicia.
So true! I’ve worked with alot of these guys.
They brag about Texas, hate California, then take the money they make here back to Texas.
Thanks, Andrés, for this excellent summary of the need for an ISO here in Benicia. We expect the issue will soon come before Benicia’s leaders sometime this year, so everyone should be in touch with City Council members and City staff to encourage adoption of a LOCAL Benicia Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) based on the Contra Costa and Richmond models. Emails for City Council are here: http://www.ci.benicia.ca.us/citycouncil. City staff contacts are here: http://www.ci.benicia.ca.us/index.asp?SEC=1E90A2E9-7B88-45DB-BB07-FC75F1852856&Type=B_BASIC
Do you heat your home? Do you drive a car? Why do you hate the processes that allow you to do so? An ISO is stupid. BAAQMD is sufficient. If you just want a seat at the table where you can moan about excrement, suggest you put a table into your outhouse. Speaking of stupid, how did it happen that a little town of 30K people like Benicia is split into TWO congressional districts. Talk about gerrymandering.
You are correct Thom. Loved your comment. An ISO is an industrial safety ordinance run by the Solano County and we also have a state regulated ISO.. Safety is the key word. BAAQMD is what it says it is. Bay area air. All we hear about is the quality of the air. The real move behind all the pro ISO is to drive up the cost to the refinery until they just pack up and leave. It does appear what has happened in Contra Costa County did not help because of their own so called ISO, etc. Foolish idea driven by the Solano County and Benicia Socialist Progressives. You know that group that only wants Socialist Progressive elected to Non-Partisan offices. No Republicans welcome in a non-partisan election. Like the Benicia City Council..
With every layer of bureaucracy additional costs are added to our gas, energy, and food costs. There are already several layers of regulatory bodies over seeing the refinery. You want to add another? Why? So Benicia can spend another several million dollars every year? Where will we get the money? More taxes? Higher rates? The city already had a bleak future fiscal situation and you want to add to the nightmare?
Give it up. Valero is regulated. There is lots of oversight. Mistakes will happen and bureaucracy can’t prevent it.
I don’t really agree that Benicians are being left in the dark about the shutdown and subsequent burn off in May.
https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/10/23/solano-county-probe-finds-no-violations-in-valero-refinery-outage/
OSHA is pretty reputable when it comes to safety violations. It’s not as though nobody has undergone inspection of the refinery post-incident. The sudden concern for an ISO doesn’t hold much water when it seems very unlikely that having an ISO would have changed anything back in May.
I agree with you BB. Thank you.