Making our city safer
Valero needs to be a better neighbor. This would include opening the lines of communication with the surrounding community and the officials of the City of Benicia.
As Andres Soto wrote in a recent letter to the editor, it’s been over a year since Valero’s massive month long flaring debacle of May 2017. Valero still hasn’t provided any public reports with an objective root cause analysis nor any corrective actions that Valero should implement.
During that incident, the community had to get our information from the media. The media reported that Valero released of a year’s worth of toxic chemicals into our air over a two week period.
The citizens of Benicia have a right to know what steps Valero has taken to mitigate any further incidents like this. A good neighbor would provide answers to the community it’s part of.
We need to quit waiting for them to step up to the plate and become a good neighbor. Our city council should implement an Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) that would fill that communication gap as a step toward making our city a safer place to live.
Rick Beeson,
Benicia
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I disagree. The first step is for the Mayor and her group to recognize VALERO as a “GOOD NEIGHBOR”. The next step is to understand all the bay area reporting on air quality. Is an ISO the correct next step if you are only looking for air quality? Just what does the BAAQM do? Does any pro ISO know what they do? Are there air monitors in place at present? Do you know? There is a lot more to this than just talk about an ISO. There are four refinery’s just across the straits. Has anything those refinery’s, cities or the County of Contra Costa done to prevent any kind of air quality issue and fully report to the residence you would agree with. Those refinery’s have been in Contra Costa County for over 100 hundred years. I want clear air, health, water and anything that could give all of us a better quality of life. Do you want the refinery’s to leave the area? It is about time you folks just came out and said exactly what you want. Own up to your motives. Then we might get somewhere.
I guess you weren’t paying attention….Valero was denied a permit to increase their cogeneration capability…consequently when PG&E had an outage, Valero had to do an emergency shutdown which includes lots of nast;y things including emitting a plume. Regulators are directly to blame (your liberal idiot government). Don’t blame the refinery for something the idiot government could have prevented if they could see the nose on their face. Murphy’s Law exists and any government that assumes that no bad things will happen to change a steady state condition is just being stupid. Sure, I know that I’m better educated than most in engineering….but sheesh, if you can read you should have figured out what happened by now.
You are correct.
Vote NO on RM3.