Biofuels Refinery Plans Lose Court Ruling

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — Environmental groups won a legal challenge against two biofuel projects slated for refineries in Martinez and Rodeo following a ruling in Contra Costa County Superior Court on Friday.

The lawsuits claimed that the planned biofuel conversions had flawed environmental review processes, violating the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. The refineries would change from processing crude oil to producing fuel from vegetable oil and animal fat feedstocks.

The court found that the county failed to properly assess ways to reduce odors from the refinery planned for both the Marathon-Tesoro refinery in Martinez and the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo.

Judge Edward Weil ordered that the county set aside its environmental review and redo flawed sections for the Rodeo project, and that it improve its odor mitigation measures for the Martinez project. The court, however, is not ordering a halt in construction for the Rodeo refinery.

Both biofuel refinery projects are thus not off the table, as both will be reconsidered by the court after the county revises its CEQA evaluations by mid-August.

"CEQA is California's bedrock environmental law, meant to provide decisionmakers and the public with vital information," said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that filed the suit. "In the face of the significant environmental and community harms these projects would cause, the county's incomplete reviews were inexcusable."

The Rodeo refinery would produce more than a billion gallons per year of biofuel products, making it one of the largest biofuel refineries in the world, while the Martinez refinery would produce 700,000 gallons of biofuel per year, making it one of the largest in California, according to a Center for Biological Diversity press release.

In addition to the impacts that processing biofuels has on climate change and food prices, the environmental groups cited concerns about the operation of the refineries, including the number of truck trips, railcars and ship and barge visits annually that each would require. Combined, the projects would call for 82,000 truck trips, nearly 29,000 railcars and more than 760 ship and barge visits annually, according to the press release.

Communities surrounding the proposed refineries are already vulnerable, and categorized as "disadvantaged" by the state, due to their high exposure to pollution from existing industries.

"We hope that (Friday's) decision mark a turning point, one that begins to reverse a legacy of fossil fuel harm and advance a just transition to the equitable future that Martinez and Rodeo residents have fought so long and so hard for," said Ben Clark, a student attorney for the law clinic representing Communities for a Better Environment, the other environmental group that filed the suit.

The refineries and the county were not immediately available for comment.

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