Martinez Environmental Group

Largest terminal in California would increase air pollution in region with worst air quality in U.S.

http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/kern-county-approves-five-fold-expansion-of-alon-refinery-s-rail-terminal-to-receive-bakken-crude

On Monday September 8, about 50 people filled the basement of the First Congregational Church in Martinez to learn about volatile crude-by-railtrains traveling through the residential areas of Martinez.

Organized by the Martinez Environmental Group (MEG), the community forum included an overview from Diane Bailey, senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as presentations by four long-time

Martinez residents who each provided a local perspective.  Bill Nichols talked about past Martinez train derailments and the 1988 Shell oil spill in the Marina; Jim Neu described five proposed major refinery projects in Contra Costa and Solano; Guy Cooper projected the dramatic increase in crude by rail traffic through Martinez and Peter Dragovich gave an update on the Martinez City Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting that evening discussing this topic.

Join GCM in a momentous event bringing together grassroots community leaders, technology innovators, agency representatives, academic researchers, policy analysts and…you!

Global Community Monitor, Public Lab and Louisiana Bucket Brigade are partnering to host the Community Based Science for Action Conference November 15-17, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Community Based Science for Action puts the power of scientific data back in the hands of people.

Community based monitoring is a crucial piece in the fight for Environmental Justice.  Empowering community residents as experts of their neighborhood allows residents to collect data when and where they have concerns about pollution.  That helps to eliminate gaps among regulatory agencies and identify toxic hot spots within the community.  Neighbors can then use that data to advocate for additional monitoring and/or enforcement and work to create healthy communities for themselves and their families.

This conference will bring folks together to: 

• Share the latest community-based scientific sampling techniques and methodologies to find out what will work best in each community.

• Learn to master the skills needed for a successful grassroots campaign, such as storytelling and fundraising.

• Network and collaborate with community activists, innovators, academics, technical experts and agency representatives to work effectively together and build supportive relationships.

• Learn from challenges and successes from communities that have won major victories using community-based science.

• Develop ideas to put community gathered data to work in neighborhoods, from media strategies to enforcement networks that bring together residents and government agencies, there’s something that will work in every community.

http://www.airhugger.org/

by JOHN RYAN   NPR   August 13, 2014

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/13/340153423/years-after-tragedy-tesoro-ducks-penalties-for-refinery-deaths

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Melissa Block.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I’m Robert Siegel. When a big industrial accident occurs we report on it, but all too often we don’t hear about what happens or doesn’t happen to the party at fault. In 2010, a Tesoro oil refinery in Washington State exploded. The blast killed seven people. It was the State’s deadliest industrial accident in nearly half a century. But as of today, the company has not paid any fines and no one has been prosecuted. John Ryan of member station KUOW has the story.

JOHN RYAN, BYLINE: It was just after midnight on a chilly April night. A fireball half the size of a football field erupted from the Tesoro Refinery on the outskirts of Anacortes. A plume of black smoke drifted toward the seaside town about an hour north of Seattle. 911 calls poured in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: 911.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Hi. What was the explosion that just happened at 12:31 and shook the whole building?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: It was near the refineries and I don’t have any other information.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Oh, my God, I hear the sirens going. I’m going to pray for them.

RYAN: That fireball killed seven Tesoro workers. Its taken federal investigators four years to complete their long, overdue study of the accident causes. Yet the question of who’s responsible still hasn’t been answered fully.

HERSHEL JANZ: Four years is a long time.

RYAN: That’s Hershel Janz. His son Lew died after suffering severing burns in the explosion. Lew Janz left behind two daughters and a fiance.

JANZ: I miss that boy as much tonight as I did four years ago. And I’ll miss him if I live 40 years from now. I will miss them just as much. There’s just no closure.

Continue reading →

http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/09/02/seattle-resident-suspends-herself-from-tripod-to-block-coal-and-oil-trains/

EVERETT, WA: Five local residents have stopped work at a Burlington Northern Santa-Fe Rail Yard in Everett by erecting a tripod structure on the outbound railroad tracks, directly in front of both a mile-long oil train and a coal train. Seattle resident Abby Brockway – a small business owner and mother – is suspended from the structure 18 feet above the tracks while four other residents are locked to the legs of the tripod. The group is demanding an immediate halt to all shipments of fossil fuels through the Northwest and calling on Governor Inslee to reject permits for all new fossil fuel projects in Washington, including proposed coal and oil terminals.

“People in the Pacific Northwest are forming a thin green line that will keep oil, coal and gas in the ground,” said Brockway, “Just one of these proposed terminals would process enough carbon to push us past the global warming tipping point – we won’t let that happen.”

Today’s protest has shut down work at BNSF’s Delta Rail Yard in Everett. With the increase of fossil fuel transport in recent years the yard has become a crucial staging ground for coal trains headed to Canadian export terminals and oil trains bound for Washington refineries. An oil train carrying explosive bakken crude oil sat stalled while the protest continued.

“Exploding oil trains running through my town are just a reminder of how out of control the fossil fuel industry really is,” said Jackie Minchew an Everett resident and retired educator locked to one of the tripod’s poles.

Continue reading →

By Balazs Koranyi and Joachim Dagenborg  Wed Aug 27, 2014

* Oil discoveries hit new lows in 2013, 2014

* Oil firms cutting spending, including exploration

* Spending cut could hit oil price with a lag

* Costs soar, making many project unviable

By Balazs Koranyi and Joachim Dagenborg

STAVANGER, Norway, Aug 27 (Reuters) – The rate of oil discoveries continues to disappoint after a record low last year and firms could even cut their exploration budgets to save on costs, a risk to long-term supplies and prices, industry executives said.

Explorers are finding so little oil, many are retreating from high-risk frontier areas to safer bets like North American shale, executives at a major Norway oil conference said. This will likely force them to buy expensive discoveries once investor sentiment shifts focus to reserves from cash flow.

“If you look back on 2013, it was a record low year in terms of discovering new resources,” Helge Lund, the CEO of Norway’s Statoil, said. “And year to date it’s been around 4.4 billion barrels of oil equivalents, the lowest I have seen for decades.” Continue reading →

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/report-on-fatal-ellicott-city-train-accident-details-how-a-piece-of-rail-snapped/2014/08/23/aee05714-2950-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html

By Ashley Halsey III    August 23 a
They would be college graduates now, poised on the brink of life, had not a train gone off the tracks two years ago in a tragic fateful moment that caught them where they should not have been.

After almost two years of investigation into a 2012 train derailment in Ellicott City, Md., the National Transportation Safety Board said a piece of rail near replacement age simply snapped under the weight of a half-mile-long train carrying 9,873 tons of coal toward the Baltimore docks.

Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, both 19 and celebrating their imminent return to college, were sitting a few feet away on a trestle 20 feet above Main Street. They were buried beneath the spilling coal. Death transformed them into a parable for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for the random cruelty of fate. The details played out on the airwaves and in print as far as Australia. Continue reading →