Benicia to move forward with regulation of Valero refinery

BENICIA – The Benicia City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to begin a community engagement process to create stronger regulations of the Valero refinery and other industries in the city through an industrial safety ordinance.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the council chambers were filled with community members who expressed concerns about deficiencies in Valero’s fence line monitoring, accident reporting and the company’s dismissal of community input. 

Many felt that state and regional regulatory agencies have allowed delays in monitoring programs and had not followed through on key avenues of enforcement. Mistrust was also fueled by a revelation in 2022 that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District had discovered that Valero illegally released toxic emissions for 16 years but the agency failed to notify Benicia residents until three years after the discovery.  

In 2018, the city council considered adopting an ordinance to regulate the refinery similar to legislation in Contra Costa County and Richmond, but instead formed a cooperative agreement with Valero which is set to expire in 2025. After four years of the cooperative agreement, residents said that it has not provided sufficient oversight of industrial practices in the city.

Mayor Steve Young encouraged residents to define the areas where the current agreement falls short to indicate a direction for provisions that could be included in an ordinance.

Benicia resident Terry Mollica, who was involved in the drafting 2018 ordinance proposal and spoke on behalf of the Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance working group, said that the deficiencies are too numerous to list at the meeting. But he highlighted a key issue that the working group found to be particularly problematic. 

 “It has absolutely no enforcement mechanism,” Mollica said. “In fact it includes a provision that allows Valero to unilaterally terminate the entire cooperative agreement at any time if it thinks it is being over-regulated.”

Councilmember Kari Birdseye, who co-sponsored the proposal to develop a new industrial safety ordinance along with Councilmember Terry Scott, said that refinery officials told her if the city decides to pursue an ordinance rather than an agreement the company would not participate in the process.

At the meeting, vice-president and general manager of the Benicia refinery Josh Tulino said that Valero is already regulated by several state and federal agencies and duplicating those efforts would only burden city staff. He said that provisions in the cooperative agreement are working and he urged the council to form another agreement instead of passing an ordinance. 

“What problem are we trying to solve?” Tulino said. “I have yet to hear a solid answer to that question.”

But residents insisted that regulatory gaps in the agreement have led to several problems, including the refinery’s poor monitoring of hydrogen sulfide which has a rotten egg odor detectable at very low concentrations and the company’s limited response to resident reports of smells or questions about incidents.

George Lee, a resident of the east side of Benicia, said that his son’s elementary school was evacuated due to a pollution incident at Valero’s asphalt plant and neither state agencies nor the company could provide residents with an explanation of what caused the mystery odor. He said that lack of oversight creates a sacrifice zone in the areas near industrial facilities where there is a higher concentration of people of color.

Several residents said that they lack confidence in the Air District’s ability to address regulatory needs that are specific to Benicia. Some residents expressed disappointment with the slow progress that the air district has made on regulatory projects like holding Valero accountable for repairs to malfunctioning portions of its fence line monitoring system.

Greg Nudd, deputy director of science and policy for the Air District, said that the agency is working on getting Valero’s fence line monitoring system functioning properly.

Councilmember Tom Campbell asked Nudd why the agency did not notify the city of Benicia sooner about the 16 years of illegal emissions that the agency discovered.

Nudd said that one of the benefits of an ordinance would be that the city could define which violations rise to the level that the city should be notified. “But,” he added “I agree that this was something that was significant enough that the city should have been informed earlier.”

Birdseye pointed out that in the past year the region has seen a number of emissions incidents and she asked if the agency is sufficiently staffed to handle the higher frequency in which these events have been occurring.  

“It is very unusual to have this level of incidents with the refineries that we are seeing right now,” Nudd said. “That’s one of the things that we want to work with our board of directors on is making sure that we have the appropriate level of resources to deal with the level of effort that is required right now.”

Nudd said that the agency has worked closely with Contra Costa county to create an ordinance that allows complimentary roles between the county and the Air District and they would partner with Benicia in the same manner.