Six months after the Benicia City Council last discussed a local Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), a panel was held Tuesday at the Benicia Public Library to go over Contra Costa County’s ISO and make a push for something similar in Benicia.

In May, the Valero Benicia Refinery underwent an emergency shutdown as Pacific Gas & Electric was undergoing maintenance on the power lines. When the power was restored, a plume of black smoke was released from the refinery, prompting an evacuation of the Industrial Park and shelters in place being established at two nearby elementary schools.

Soon after this incident, Mayor Elizabeth Patterson introduced a request to agendize an ISO discussion for a future City Council meeting. The request was approved 4-1, with the one “no” vote coming from Mark Hughes who felt it was too soon to have such a discussion but noted he may support it later on. The matter has not been on any council agendas since.

To help make the case for a Benicia ISO, several local groups hosted a town hall panel at the library featuring representatives from state and Contra Costa County agencies to go over the details of that county’s ISO, which was adopted in 1998 and has been suggested as a model for Benicia’s ISO. The panel consisted of Clyde Trombettas, the statewide manager and policy adviser for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA); Dr. Gina Solomon, the deputy secretary for science and health for the California Environmental Protection Agency; Randy Sawyer, the chief environmental health and hazardous materials officer for Contra Costa’s Health Services Department; and John Gioia, a member of Contra Costa’s Board of Supervisors.
Moderator Andres Soto, a member of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, said representatives from Solano County were invited but they declined.

Sawyer went over the history of Contra Costa’s ISO, which was enacted following a series of incidents at the county’s refineries and chemical facilities in the ‘90s. These included a sulfur trioxide release from a chemical plant in 1993 which inspired a community alert system, a catacarb release from the Phillips 66 Refinery— then called the Unocal Refinery— in 1994, a hydrocracker explosion at the Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery—then called the Tosco Refinery— where a worker was killed in 1997, a flash fire at the same refinery’s crude unit in 1999 where four people were killed and an explosion and fire at the Chevron Refinery that same year.

“When the Industrial Safety Ordinance came into play, we were having these types of incidents on an ongoing basis,” Sawyer said.

The county crafted its ISO in 1998, and the city of Richmond— home of the Chevron Refinery— wrote its own ordinance based on the Contra Costa ISO. Sawyer said changes were made in 2006 and 2014, the latter two years after a fire at the Chevron Refinery.

“Those (changes) were to address recommendations from the Chemical Safety Board,” he said.

Gioia said the county’s refineries had become safer and chemical releases had gone down since the establishment of the ISO. Incidents have still occurred, but Gioia said the county has worked to make improvements to the ordinance as they happen.

“This is a changing field,” he said. “We’re always gonna learn new stuff, best practices are gonna change and we wanna be on top of that and remain the best, strongest ordinance because it keeps the community safe, it keeps the workers safe and ultimately the refineries in Contra Costa know if they have less accidents, that’s better for them.”

After the panelists answered questions, Soto then asked questions that attendees had written down on cards beforehand. One question concerned new state regulations adopted on Oct. 1 that aimed to strengthen workplace and environmental safety at all of California’s refineries which took inspiration from Contra Costa’s ISO. The question asked how a local ordinance would improve safety beyond state regulations. Gioia said it would depend on who would implement the regulations.

“Whoever is implementing this at whatever level, you want them to be well-resourced, as expert as the folks working at the refinery and transparent,” he said.

Sawyer also said Contra Costa’s ISO had more requirements for public interaction and opportunities to hear the community’s concerns.

Another question asked if the community would have gotten more information had the new state regulations had been in place before May 5. Solomon felt regulations might not have prevented the incident since it was a power outage, but residents would have gotten a full report and root cause analysis with community engagement.

“That’s still something that could be done voluntarily, but it’s not required since the incident occurred prior to when the regs came into effect,” she said.

Another question asked if refineries were required to have emergency backup generators. Trombettas said they are not necessarily required, but if the backup generators are built, they have to be maintained. He also said that refineries are expanding.

“That cogen plant that was built in 2002, come 2017 may not be able to handle a power loss,” he said. “That’s something we would expect a refinery to look at as part of the process hazard analysis.”

Trombettas also said the Phillips 66 Refinery once had a cogeneration plant that sold power back to PG&E but no longer do that because the facility has grown.

In the midst of the discussion, Gioia felt it was important for everyone to come together after an incident to improve safety.

“It’s important to think about what you can do going forward that makes a facility that is safe compared to many refineries across the country,” he said. “There needs to be this important dialogue with each other, and I think that’s going to achieve the greatest amount of safety in the community.”