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Last night, at the end of a nearly eight-hour Council meeting, I joined with four other City Council members to approve a permit for the Chevron Modernization project on a 5-0-2 vote with two members abstaining. This concludes the City Council phase of a more than three year permit application process.
For me, getting there was as hard and frustrating as any political process I have ever worked on. What we did was neither a sellout nor a triumph, but I am satisfied with the outcome.
At the risk of boredom, some perspective and context is important.
In 2008, I voted with a City Council minority to oppose certification of the EIR for what was then called the Chevron Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project. I found the EIR to be flawed and the permit conditions too lax. Both Chevron and the City chose expediency over propriety, which turned out to be big mistake.
For details, See:
· Richmond Could Face Lawsuit in Approval of Chevron Retrofit Plan, July 18, 2008
· Readers Respond to City Council Sellout, July 17, 2008
· City Council Replay Schedule on KCRT-28 and Media Coverage, July 17, 2008
· The Fix Is In - Viramontes Five Sell Richmond Down the River, July 17, 2008
· Chevron Proposed Community Benefits Agreement, July 16, 2008
· Chevron Appeal - A Report From The Front, July 16, 2008
· Poll Indicates Widespread Suspicion of Chevron Project Approval, July 14, 2008
· Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your (Political) Engines, July 14, 2008
· Chevron Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project Agenda Report for July 15, 2008 City Council Appeal Hearing, July 11, 2008
· Prepping for the Chevron Appeal Hearing, July 10, 2008
· Council Members Defend Secret Chevron Consultant, July 9, 2008
The five council members who voted in 2008 for the project (Bates, Lopez, Marquez, Sandhu and Viramontes) were dubbed the “Chevron Five,” and all were eventually turned out of office except Bates.
The 2008 City Council approval was immediately appealed in a CEQA lawsuit by a coalition of environmental groups led by Citizens for a Better Environment (CBE).
Chevron spent the next two years defending the CEQA lawsuit, only to finally lose in an Appellant Court decision in April of 2010. The Court confirmed that the EIR was inadequate. Construction on the project had already been halted by Court order, but now it was completely dead in the water. (Appeals Court Rejects Chevron Appeal, April 28, 2010)
The remainder of 2010 saw various unsuccessful mediations between Chevron and the appellant plaintiffs facilitated by state officials, including the governor and attorney general. By the end of 2010, Chevron appears have given up, and talk of closing the refinery or seeking a legislative CEQA waiver was circulating.
The project, however, had potential advantages for the City of Richmond. If appropriately designed and constructed, it could make the refinery more energy efficient, safer and cleaner. It would create 1,000 construction jobs, a big deal in the ongoing recession, and produce a bump in property tax revenue for the City.
Beginning in January 2011, City Council members made it clear to Chevron that they did not oppose the project but simply wanted it implemented properly.
On January 29, 2011, I wrote:
Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Vice-mayor Tom Butt and Council member Jeff Ritterman along with City Manager Bill Lindsay have been meeting with Chevron executive this week to convey their commitment to push diligently toward a new permit based on an amended or supplemental EIR that repairs those elements found lacking or defective by the Court. No one on the City Council ever opposed this project on principle, but the Council split in 2008 over the adequacy of the EIR and mitigations to impacts, some of which it turned out were not identified or misidentified.
In March of 2011, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution encouraging Chevron to resubmit an application for a permit, but this time to get it right.
On March 5, 2011, the Contra Costa Times wrote:
Chevron's stalled plan to retrofit its Richmond refinery could be revived, more than a year after a bitter legal battle with environmentalists brought construction to a standstill.
City leaders are encouraging the oil company to apply for a new permit or an amended one this year to jump-start the project. The opponents wanted guarantees that pollution won't soar, but no one wanted the project to die, officials said.
"Cleaning up old refinery equipment, providing jobs and making the refinery more efficient and safer has been a common goal all along," Vice Mayor Tom Butt said. "There's really been no change in the ultimate objective."
The City Council last week unanimously approved a resolution encouraging Chevron to resubmit its plan, with Councilman Nat Bates absent. City Manager Bill Lindsay is expected to meet with Chevron to develop a permit process and timeline.
Repeated attempts to reach a settlement with a mediator -- and with state lawmakers nudging for progress -- failed to break the impasse before. Yet, city officials still think a project is possible.
A 2009 court ruling laid out where the project's environmental impact report erred, providing a road map for how to proceed, said Butt, who proposed the council resolution.
The parties were close to a settlement before, so a compromise is not out of the question, officials said. The landscape has also changed. The lawsuit is over; the environmentalists have won. The City Council has changed, with two new council members added. Last year, the city and Chevron ended a long tax dispute and averted an election battle over rival tax measures by negotiating a deal that provides the city $114 million over 15 years.
"We were able to reach common ground with taxes, maybe we can go ahead and do that again here," Councilman Jeff Ritterman said.
See also:
On May 24, 2011, Chevron filed an application for a similar but smaller project, and both the City and Chevron were overoptimistic the application could be processed within the year or shortly thereafter.
Ultimately, it took over three more years, largely because of Chevron’s shift of priorities to repair the 2012 fire damage but also due to delays Chevron acknowledged were in their shop.
The technical scrutiny that the application and EIR preparation received was unprecedented. The entire process cost millions, all paid for by Chevron, but accomplished by City staff and expert consultants to the City. The City’s technical consultants were the best in their fields, and the process included a level of transparency and community involvement probably unique in CEQA history, certainly for a refinery project.
The 2102 fire and subsequent investigations and penalties raised new issues about plant safety and the management culture of safety that were rolled into the EIR process and received extreme scrutiny.
As the process neared completion with release of the draft EIR in April of this year, technical experts from both non-profit organizations and government agencies weighed in on it, and as a result, it was substantially revised to include even more rigorous analysis with added conditions and mitigations. The California attorney general gave it a huge boost by recommending Alternative 11, which reduced net greenhouse gas generation to zero.
The Richmond Planning Commission raised the bar even higher by not only adopting Alternative 11 but also adding additional conditions largely requested by CBE.
Meanwhile, Chevron was conducting discussions with various councilmembers about the Environmental and Community Investment Agreement. Chevron had originally offered a $30 million package, and there was another $30 million of greenhouse gas mitigations in the proposed Conditional Use Permit.
With Alternative 11, the need for greenhouse gas mitigation as a permit condition went away, and the money was moved into the Environmental and Community Investment Agreement, making a total of $60 million. But that wasn’t enough for several councilmembers, who just two days ago finally wrung another $30 million in community benefits from Chevron, making the total a whopping $90 million.
The anchor of the agreement is a $35 million fund to provide scholarships to Richmond residents graduating from public schools in the West Contra Unified School District in a “promise program” similar to the El Dorado Promise or Kalamazoo Promise that guarantee full college tuition and fees to graduating high school students.
Depending on who you talk to, the City Council members who approved this permit are either sellouts or heroes. I don’t feel like either one. I think we got the best deal we could for the people of Richmond, and as a result, the refinery will, in fact, be safer and cleaner. A thousand jobs will be created, and Richmond’s property tax revenue will be substantially enhanced.
Richmond will eventually have a 12 megawatt solar farm on Chevron property operated by our electric utility, MCE. Millions of dollars will fund greenhouse gas reduction and sustainability projects in Richmond, creating a lot of jobs and attracting perhaps additional millions in matching grants. Job training will move hundreds of Richmond residents into employment.
Did we leave anything on the table? CBE and other organizations wanted more, but we will never really know. There is a limit that you can push anyone, even an insanely rich multinational corporation. Chevron has threatened before to sue the City for overreaching, close or downsize the refinery or go to the legislature for a CEQA exemption. All are possible, but no one knows the tipping point, maybe not even Chevron itself.
I was part of the team that negotiated a $115 million tax settlement with Chevron in 2010, and we were both praised and condemned. Some said we left too much on the table then.
All I know is that I did the best I could, spending hundreds of hours reviewing documents, meeting with staff and consultants, listening to others, including my son Andrew on the Planning Commission, and finally negotiating with Chevron as well as some of my own colleagues on the City Council – the most difficult part of all.
It takes a village. We owe a lot to every person or organization that dogged this permit process, including CBE and other environmental organizations, the attorney general, the BAAQMD, Contra Costa County Health Services, Planning Commission and surprisingly, the Contra Costa Times, for continually raising the bar. And our staff and consulting team were the best.
We also owe thanks to the RPA and the two councilmembers who ultimately abstained from the final vote. Their holding out for more stringent conditions and mitigations helped raise the ante for what we eventually achieved.
CBE believes the CEQA process remains flawed and that other conditions and mitigations are required. Our staff and consultants disagree, but I chose to side with our staff and consultants. We heard from the BAAQMD that they will be adopting new rules in the future that will deal with some of CBE’s concern’s and we can address other issues through revisions to our Industrial Safety Ordinance with fewer legal constraints.
I think we did the right thing. I assume that CBE and others will bring a CEQA lawsuit, and this could go on unresolved for months or years, but for now, I am finished, and I’m going on vacation.
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Richmond approves massive Chevron refinery project with $90 million in community benefits
By Robert Rogers
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 07/30/2014 12:15:21 AM PDT1 Comment
Updated: 07/30/2014 09:46:23 AM PDT
RICHMOND -- Chevron's five year-plus quest to initiate a $1 billion upgrade to its century-old refinery, the largest in Northern California, was approved by the City Council late Tuesday after the company and city staff hammered out a last-minute deal upping community investments and installing safety and piping upgrades as part of the project.
The vote passed 5-0, with two abstentions, and triggered a raucous applause from the crowd.
Last-minute concessions by the San Ramon-based oil giant appeared to pave the way for approval. Among the changes, which were distributed to the council hours before the meeting, were $90 million in community investments over the next decades and agreements to upgrade all carbon steel piping in the refinery's crude unit that could be susceptible to higher sulfur crude by 2017, and install more sensors and air monitors.
"It became clear we would need to do this," refinery General Manager Kory Judd said of the concessions. "We knew the city and the community would hold us to a higher standard, (but) this puts a significant constraint on our operations."
Pressure has mounted in recent weeks in favor of the project. Councilman Jim Rogers said U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, called him and his colleagues to express his favorable view of the refinery modernization.
"First time George Miller called me in 30 years," Councilman Tom Butt wrote on Facebook during the meeting.
The council weighed whether to uphold the oil giant's appeal or side with the city's Planning Commission, which ruled last month that Chevron's project should include a series of additional conditions. Those included requirements for new piping throughout the refinery, $8 million per year until 2050 in community investments in green energy programs, and steeper reductions on a range of emissions.
Chevron appealed the commission's recommendations to the council, and the council's own staff and consultants sided with Chevron.
Tuesday's meeting was a continuation of a July 22 hearing, at which over 200 members of the public signed up to speak about the project. More than 100 were still waiting when the council recessed.
Like the July 22 hearing, Tuesday's meeting was held at the Richmond Memorial Auditorium because of the large expected crowd. More than 600 turned out.
Jennifer Hernandez, the lead environmental review attorney retained by the city to analyze Chevron's project, said health risks in the community would decrease with the project.
"The risks go way down," Hernandez said.
But environmental groups disagreed, noting that some categories of emissions will go up, although overall greenhouse gases will be capped.
"We don't agree that the health risks will decrease; there is disagreement on that," said Roger Lin, lead attorney for Communities for a Better Environment. "Some toxic air contaminants are not capped."
The main project components include replacing a 1960s-era hydrogen plant with more modern technology. The modernization would give the refinery flexibility to process crude oil blends, including those with higher levels of sulfur, according to Chevron.
Opponents say the project does not go far enough in limiting pollution and upgrading safety at the facility, and say the company should give more than the planned $90 million over 10 years in community investments.
Chevron officials, employees and many residents implored the City Council to accept the project without the Planning Commission's additional conditions.
Chevron officials last week reversed their previous position and agreed to a condition, dubbed Alternative 11, that caps greenhouse gas emissions and reduces sulfur-processing levels. The office of state Attorney General Kamala Harris, which originally complained that the project did not go far enough to limit emissions, has stated its support of Alternative 11.
Chevron also announced that it would increase its community investments into local nonprofits and green jobs programs from $30 million to $60 million over the next decade. In the package approved Tuesday, the number swelled to $90 million, including money for college scholarships for local kids and donating land for a solar panel field.
In its agenda report, city staff and consultants supported Alternative 11 and recommended the council reject the Planning Commission's recommendations on grounds that they are not legal and are "factually contradicted by substantial evidence on record."
But activist groups and others urged council support of the commission's recommendations. They also cautioned the council to remember the refinery's history of accidents and the health and environmental consequences, including a massive fire in August 2012 that sent thousands of residents in search of medical treatment.
More than 70 speakers addressed the council Tuesday, ranging from calling on Chevron to close to urging the council to stop meddling in its affairs.
Several expressed dissatisfaction that no money was included for Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo, the largest emergency room in the area and the one that treated most of the people who sought treatment after the 2012 fire. The hospital is expected to close or be drastically downsized because of financial troubles.
Vice Mayor Jovanka Beckles floated a motion to give DMC $27 million and support the Planning Commission's more stringent emission requirements, seconded by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. Hernandez said there was no "legal nexus" to require the refinery to fund the hospital because the project would make the facility safer. The motion failed with the other five members dissenting. Both McLaughlin and Beckles abstained from the final agreement that passed. Beckles called the lack of money for the hospital "horrible."
Butt said in his negotiations with Chevron, the company was unwilling to infuse the hospital with immediate funds to stave off closure.
"Too little too late," Butt said. "Only Chevron could change that, and they apparently weren't willing to go there."
McLaughlin challenged Judd to do more to reduce emissions.
"It's within your means, isn't it, to do this as a goodwill gesture?"
"This project demonstrates a significant step forward in our willingness to address the concerns raised by the community," Judd said. "We go far beyond the legal requirements."
Council approval does not clear the way for Chevron to begin construction, however. The company said it will have to return to a Contra Costa County court that halted a previous version of the project in 2009 to get that judgment lifted.
Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726. Follow him at Twitter.com/sfbaynewsrogers. |
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