Bay Crossings has reported several times in recent months on the efforts of Orcem, an Irish company that plans to manufacture cement and build a deep-water port and shipping terminal (VMT) to import an industrial byproduct called slag (essential to their production process) from Japan to the site of a former General Mills flour mill at the entrance to the Mare Island Strait on Vallejo's waterfront.
The former General Mills flour mill at the entrance to the Mare Island Strait on Vallejo’s waterfront is within hundreds of feet of residential properties and a quarter mile from an elementary school. Photo by Joel Williams
BY JOEL WILLIAMS
Published: July, 2017
Bay Crossings has reported several times in recent months on the efforts of Orcem, an Irish company that plans to manufacture cement and build a deep-water port and shipping terminal (VMT) to import an industrial byproduct called slag (essential to their production process) from Japan to the site of a former General Mills flour mill at the entrance to the Mare Island Strait on Vallejo’s waterfront.
Since the plans were made public, over 50 organizations have openly opposed the Orcem/VMT project, including Baykeeper, Sierra Club, the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce and, most recently, the powerful San Francisco-based International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Among other things, opposition to the project has focused on potential health concerns. Overexposure to slag can cause chemical burns, irreversible skin and eye damage, lung failure and cancer. And the slag—along with other materials such as cement, limestone, gypsum and pozzolan—would be stored in piles along the waterfront.
A draft environmental impact report was released in September 2015. Citizen groups, environmental organizations and regional agencies claimed there were major holes in the report, which downplayed health risks. Angry opponents organized community meetings to voice their concerns. As more information became available, these concerned citizens coalesced into an organized effort to fight the project, claiming that the potential damage to the community in environmental and quality of life standards greatly outweighed any benefits.
Then, during a community meeting, Orcem President Steven Bryan let it slip that Orcem and VMT had been meeting privately with some members of the city council for almost two years to move the plan along. Earth Island Journal reported that documents obtained by community groups via the Freedom of Information Act allegedly revealed that a state law prohibiting secret government meetings had been skirted by keeping the number of elected officials who attended just under the legal limit.
The Vallejo Times-Herald reported at the time that council member Jess Malgapo had expressed apparent support for the project on numerous occasions and chaired the Mare Island Straits Economic Development Committee (MISEDC), a group formed in April 2014 to explore dredging the strait for economic development and “gain traction” for the Orcem/VMT project.
Many contend that, as MISEDC included representatives from VMT and Orcem and held meetings in private with up to three members of the city council without the knowledge of other council members (and in one case including the ex-mayor), it was actually acting as a “shadow government.” (If four members of the city council attended, such a private meeting would violate state law.)
In March, after hours of public comments and much debate, the project was voted down six to one by the City of Vallejo Planning Commission, with at least one member saying that the comments received from the community were 10 to one in opposition to the waterfront cement plant.
Instead of ending there, Orcem/VMT appealed the decision, which sent it directly to the Vallejo City Council. All of the council members associated with MISEDC—Jess Malgapo, Rozzana Verder-Aliga and Pippin Dew-Costa—were backed by the JumpStart Vallejo PAC. With the addition of another JumpStart candidate, Herme Sunga, who was elected in 2016, a JumpStart Vallejo majority now holds a four-to-three advantage on the city council.
It was also revealed by The Irish Times that Orcem’s parent company, Ecocem, donated $10,000 to JumpStart, while VMT gave the group an additional $12,500. All four of the JumpStart Vallejo-sponsored council members are clearly voting as a block regarding this project. Some in the audience held signs urging the MISDEC members to recuse themselves from the vote for apparent bias. Other signs pointed out that some of the council members face re-election in 2018.
Led by Verder-Aliga, a resolution was put forth at the city council meeting on June 1 directing city staff to work with Orcem/VMT on finalizing the impact report, delaying the council action on the appeal to no later than January 16, 2018. The vote was four to three in favor of this action by all the JumpStart sponsored council members now referred to by many as the “Orcem Four.”
Those opposed said, among other things, that enough time and money has already been spent on learning about this ill-advised project that will negatively affect the quality of life in Vallejo. The decision by the city council caused the crowd at the meeting, consisting mostly of those opposed to the project, to shower the dais with shouts of “shame.”
CEQA, or the California Environmental Quality Act, is a statute that requires state and local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if feasible. A public letter presented by the lawyer representing Fresh Air Vallejo states that CEQA applies only to projects that a public agency proposes to carry out or approve, and does not apply to projects that the agency rejects or disapproves. To require a public agency to prepare a final EIR including requests to comments, before rejecting a project would impose a substantial burden on the agency.
“The cement factory wants to grind down the city and force it spend even more time and money on a project that should have been quashed a year ago,” said Peter Brooks, president of Fresh Air Vallejo, after the meeting. “The council majority’s decision puts the profits of out-of-town corporate polluters over the health and safety of the people who live here.”
