In other news, City Council to consider bumping up police pay to address staffing crisis; annexation workshop planned; school district sees good, bad news in budget ahead of board meeting
The MRC Oversight Committee had its 2nd set of meetings Thursday, March 9th and I will attempt a quick recap!
The Public Meeting of the O.C. started with a presentation by CCHealth Department discussing it’s recent release of a “letter” regarding not attempting to eat vegetables or fruits until further notice. A Public Comment period brought many of the concerns that are so deeply important to our communities. Several people from FB were in attendance on the zoom and as always, I learn a lot from all the comments. The video of the meeting, and the minutes, will be available on the cchealth.org/mrc website in a few days to my information.
Some of the main themes: Soil testing, and other property related tests to address levels of exposure for families, pets and food. To address any relationship to property values. Timeline to get testing done as quickly as possible. Frustrations with communication or lack of the information needed, and the length of time it takes to get accurate information from qualified agencies (Consultants). Communication improvements for both MRC contacting and the County contacting the communities. Some have experienced noticeable health changes, which could only be encouraged to consult medical attention, but the real results of the hazards to us have still not been identified. Mitigative actions as to what is healthy for properties, people and accountability from MRC. These issues will be carefully documented so that this committee can push consulting firms for the most information we can get. There will be 2 consultants, one for Root Cause Analysis, and one for Risk Assessment. We gave the firms who might respond 3 short weeks to put together their proposals and the deadline to be received is March 10.
The scoring process was designed and discussed and further developed and the Oversight Committee will be interviewing for these consulting firms next week. While the process needs to be thorough we are moving post haste to get these underway. I asked if there is some other way to get testing done, as possibly individuals hiring someone and charging the MRC and was told that the only way to proceed is through this process. Thus in an “abundance of caution” the notification was put out through our Health Services Department to not tamper with or eat things that might be contaminated.
We also added one additional community member who lives in the surrounding neighborhood which makes a total of 6 now. 3, I believe from the immediate area of the refinery (includes new member Kent Hull, myself and Tony), and 1 downtown business owner (lives in Virginia Hills), and 1 official from Benicia and 1 resident from town of Pacheco.
~A full list of members will be assembled and posted on the County website as soon as it is ready.~
Thanks goes out to the community that was at the zoom and who were able to speak to issues! I see us getting our group more cognizant to our tasks and authority and also determining where we DON’T have authority so we as a community can take additional steps elsewhere to fully address everything before us! ~C.G.
Thank you Craig! Yes, it has occurred to me (especially lately) how unfortunate it is to be missing any true b & w news paper to help get the word out as so many used to rely on the news in print so we didn't HAVE to chase down social media sources (which you correctly point out can be inadequate). I am supremely thankful you stepped up to fill this gap and can only hope you and others can put some hard print back on our morning tables eventually! You covered it perfectly and have since the first day of the expulsion! I will add some personal notes in a separate comment.
News Desert indeed! Even knowing that didn’t prepare me or anyone to know how to compensate for it when it hit. Naming an issue is a start. Thanks for giving so much space to it.
MANY of us are not on social media. Thus, the need for better communications. A newspaper would be great, of course. Regarding the refinery, some of us do use email and that's fine. However, it seems that sending letters (yes, on paper) to all residents regarding the 20 tons of toxic material throughout our community would have been the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately, no entity did that. Further, updates need to be sent out via different avenues. I believe Title 6 law requires Equal Access. Again, many of us are not on social media.
It is unconscionable that the County’s communication “system” sucks! I don’t necessarily blame Nicole Heath but in general, look what it took just to convince Glover to add people, other than Cheryll Grover, who live in the directly affected areas!
It will be the citizens who drive the investigation into the depths of what happened and why it can never occur again. Quite frankly, Dr. Mekuria’s laissez-faire attitude kinda gutted me. I know she cannot afford to be an alarmist but we all want a little more honesty. I know, they can’t tell us what they don’t have any facts on but damnit, I believe they know the hazards of lifelong effects of any spent catalyst by now.
By the way, thanks Chey for serving on the committee!
The MRC Oversight Committee had its 2nd set of meetings Thursday, March 9th and I will attempt a quick recap!
The Public Meeting of the O.C. started with a presentation by CCHealth Department discussing it’s recent release of a “letter” regarding not attempting to eat vegetables or fruits until further notice. A Public Comment period brought many of the concerns that are so deeply important to our communities. Several people from FB were in attendance on the zoom and as always, I learn a lot from all the comments. The video of the meeting, and the minutes, will be available on the cchealth.org/mrc website in a few days to my information.
Some of the main themes: Soil testing, and other property related tests to address levels of exposure for families, pets and food. To address any relationship to property values. Timeline to get testing done as quickly as possible. Frustrations with communication or lack of the information needed, and the length of time it takes to get accurate information from qualified agencies (Consultants). Communication improvements for both MRC contacting and the County contacting the communities. Some have experienced noticeable health changes, which could only be encouraged to consult medical attention, but the real results of the hazards to us have still not been identified. Mitigative actions as to what is healthy for properties, people and accountability from MRC. These issues will be carefully documented so that this committee can push consulting firms for the most information we can get. There will be 2 consultants, one for Root Cause Analysis, and one for Risk Assessment. We gave the firms who might respond 3 short weeks to put together their proposals and the deadline to be received is March 10.
The scoring process was designed and discussed and further developed and the Oversight Committee will be interviewing for these consulting firms next week. While the process needs to be thorough we are moving post haste to get these underway. I asked if there is some other way to get testing done, as possibly individuals hiring someone and charging the MRC and was told that the only way to proceed is through this process. Thus in an “abundance of caution” the notification was put out through our Health Services Department to not tamper with or eat things that might be contaminated.
We also added one additional community member who lives in the surrounding neighborhood which makes a total of 6 now. 3, I believe from the immediate area of the refinery (includes new member Kent Hull, myself and Tony), and 1 downtown business owner (lives in Virginia Hills), and 1 official from Benicia and 1 resident from town of Pacheco.
~A full list of members will be assembled and posted on the County website as soon as it is ready.~
Thanks goes out to the community that was at the zoom and who were able to speak to issues! I see us getting our group more cognizant to our tasks and authority and also determining where we DON’T have authority so we as a community can take additional steps elsewhere to fully address everything before us! ~C.G.
Thank you Craig! Yes, it has occurred to me (especially lately) how unfortunate it is to be missing any true b & w news paper to help get the word out as so many used to rely on the news in print so we didn't HAVE to chase down social media sources (which you correctly point out can be inadequate). I am supremely thankful you stepped up to fill this gap and can only hope you and others can put some hard print back on our morning tables eventually! You covered it perfectly and have since the first day of the expulsion! I will add some personal notes in a separate comment.
News Desert indeed! Even knowing that didn’t prepare me or anyone to know how to compensate for it when it hit. Naming an issue is a start. Thanks for giving so much space to it.
MANY of us are not on social media. Thus, the need for better communications. A newspaper would be great, of course. Regarding the refinery, some of us do use email and that's fine. However, it seems that sending letters (yes, on paper) to all residents regarding the 20 tons of toxic material throughout our community would have been the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately, no entity did that. Further, updates need to be sent out via different avenues. I believe Title 6 law requires Equal Access. Again, many of us are not on social media.
It is unconscionable that the County’s communication “system” sucks! I don’t necessarily blame Nicole Heath but in general, look what it took just to convince Glover to add people, other than Cheryll Grover, who live in the directly affected areas!
It will be the citizens who drive the investigation into the depths of what happened and why it can never occur again. Quite frankly, Dr. Mekuria’s laissez-faire attitude kinda gutted me. I know she cannot afford to be an alarmist but we all want a little more honesty. I know, they can’t tell us what they don’t have any facts on but damnit, I believe they know the hazards of lifelong effects of any spent catalyst by now.
By the way, thanks Chey for serving on the committee!