ISSUES | Chevron and the Environment

On Friday April 5th, Senator Loni Hancock and Assembly Member Nancy Skinner presided over a three and a half hour public meeting at the Richmond Civic Center. Over 200 people heard updates on the status of all of the investigations into the causes of and responses to the August 6th fire. There were over two hours of reports from the US Chemical Safety Board, Cal OSHA, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Contra Costa County Department of Environmental Health, the Governor’s Taskforce on Refinery Safety, Supervisor John Gioia, and City Manager Bill Lindsay which were then followed by Q&A and public comments.

The picture that was painted was more than just sobering. Multiple problems were clearly identified and discussed:

• Chevron placed short term profits over adequate preventive maintenance and safety best practices. The pipe that failed was identified as needing replacement in 2002 and wasn’t replaced in either the 2007 or 2011 Turnarounds. Management ignored the recommendations of their own inspectors and their own refinery operations personnel. The Richmond refinery produces around $500 mil/week in revenue – Chevron simply doesn’t want to lose any production. Chevron says “There is always time to do it right” and “Do it safely or not at all,” but in practice, they like to “run it until it fails.” According to Cal OSHA, similar problems exist in El Segundo. There is a huge backlog of necessary preventive maintenance work.
• Nothing in our current regulatory system made Chevron do the right thing. None of the regulators knew the pipe was corroded until after the fire. None of the regulators know in any depth how the Chevron Richmond Refinery compares to the other refineries in California. What is the value of regulation like this? The US Chemical Safety Board’s Western Region Director stated that the US was far behind Europe and the developing world in having a “continuous improvement safety culture” and made two main points:
• The entire approach to industry regulation should be changed. CSB will be recommending a shift to a “Safety Case” method of regulation in which the company is responsible for creating a comprehensive safety plan with public operating performance targets, maintenance goals and data about component age, inspection history & scheduled repair or replacement. The job of the regulator should be to license a refinery or plant to operate when the plan is adequate and to inspect and monitor compliance with the plan.
• Regulatory Agencies need more inspectors with better technical skills. He noted that Cal OSHA conducted only 3 inspections of the Richmond Refinery over the six years prior to the fire and that only one of their seven inspectors is a chemical engineer. Senator Hancock added that Great Britain has ten times as many inspectors for the same number of refineries as California.
• The refining of higher sulfur oil is not only causing increased toxic emissions; it is also causing increased corrosion and safety risks. Chevron has increased the sulfur content of the oil it is refining in Richmond by close to 50% over the last decade and now there are over 2,000 clamps in use at the refinery. Some of this is due to deferred maintenance, but much is due to increased corrosion. Now they are interested in “modernizing” the refinery to be able to double the sulfur content of the crude they process. If they are allowed any increase in sulfur content, it clearly must be contingent on more spending on both preventive maintenance & emissions reduction.
• Our emissions monitoring, emergency response and public warning systems were inadequate last August. Some of these systems have been fixed, some are in the middle of being improved and some still need to be addressed. City Manager Lindsay and the report developed for the Governor’s Taskforce on Refinery Safety both made the point that the costs of preparedness and response incurred by Richmond and Contra Costa County are not adequately funded and that none of the fines and penalties assessed on Chevron ever go to Richmond

Upcoming Meetings & Developments

• The US Chemical Safety Board will be issuing its draft report next week with a public meeting to walk people through their recommendations on April 19th. 
• The Bay Area Air Quality Management District will be holding a community meeting on the status of the new emissions monitoring system on April 24th at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. There may be an update on the penalties they will assess on Chevron for the 5 violations they found. (This is separate from Cal OSHA’s 25 violations and $1 mil in fines)
• Supervisor Gioia announced that the County Health Services department will be conducting a full safety audit of the refinery with an oversight committee made up of representatives from USW Local 5, the Building Trades, the City of Richmond and Contra Costa County. Independent consulting inspectors will be hired by the oversight committee and the costs will be covered by Chevron.
• Initial results from the new emissions monitoring system can now be seen at www.fenceline.org/Richmond. Feedback on how the information is presented is desired
• Recommendations of the report commissioned by the Governor’s Interagency Taskforce on Refinery Safety can be found at the University of California’s Center for Occupational & Environmental Health - Labor Occupational Health Program web site www.lohp.org . Recommendations address emergency response systems and procedures, safe operations, and sustainable practices.

So What Can We Do?

• Make sure our state legislators and county/city officials adopt the CSB's recommendations and change the way we regulate our refineries & chemical plants
• Support USW Local 5 in their efforts to have a bigger role in plant safety and curtail Chevron's use of contract workers in the maintenance workforce
• Be ready to review the "revised" Refinery Modernization Project's Environmental Impact Report - it may be out as early as this summer
• Insist that our new emissions monitoring system is giving us the information we need to protect our health
• Insist that Chevron pay its fair share of property taxes in order to cover all of the public services it requires

Chevron Tries End-Run Around the Community 

Chevron is trying to use Sacramento lobbying  to bypass environmental protections for Richmond.

Negotiations are still going on between environmental groups, the city of Richmond and Chevron about protections for restarting the Chevron  expansion project. But  Chevron is now lobbying the state legislature to sneak through a special exemption which allows the giant oil company to do its project without having to file an Environmental Impact Report and reach agreement with the city about environmental protections.  In  July 2009  a court  ruled that Chevron's Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for its expansion project was flawed because it did not reveal its true plans for the expansion, Chevron stopped the project instead of submitting a revised EIR or negotiating with the environmental groups. Chevron then appealed and again the Courts ruled that its EIR was seriously flawed noting that Chevron told one thing to its stockholder but another to the community.  In the last few months a Democratic assemblyman has been serving as a mediator  to find a way  to restart the project.  The city delegation for the mediation includes  Mayor McLaughlin, Vice Mayor  Ritterman,  Council Member Viramontes, the City Manager and City Attorney (see Chevron Loses).  In previous mediation attempts  the environmental groups demonstrated a willingness to try other approaches to protect the community. Chevron has refused to seriously address concerns about community health.

Chevron asks CEQA exemption
Apparently Chevron is trying to bypass these negotiations by asking the legislature for a special exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  This act requires that projects must file and get local community approval of an Environmental Impact Report.  This is the main tool which allows communities to protect their air and water and other environmental conditions.   An exemption for any project should be questionable under any circumstance.  But to give an exemption to a company after judges have ruled that it mislead the public with its report would be  a scandal  and is only possible because Chevron has such deep pockets for politicians.

A number of mainstream environmental organizations like the Planning and Conservation League have drafted letters to send to the leadership of the State legislature asking them to refuse an exemption to Chevron.

Write your legislator and ask that they too refuse to give a free pass to Chevron.  Our air and water and our lives  are too important to trade for Chevron campaign contributions. We don't want a further weakening of the California Environmental Quality Act.  Demand that Chevron come to the negotiating table prepared to negotiate real protections of our air and water and to file a truthful and accurate Environmental Impact Report.

 See the LA Times blog on this.

Appeals Court Rules against Chevron on Environmental Impact Report

On April 26 the Appeals Court rejected Chevron's main claims.
The court found that the Environmental Impact Report was indeed flawed on the issues of heavier crude and greenhouse gasses. The judges did side with Chevron on the issue of the hydrogen pipeline.

This leaves the injunction standing, the project stopped and 1200 workers not working. The environmental groups, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, and West County Toxics Coalition, have demonstrated a willingness to negotiate a way to restart the project and provide for the health of the community and environmental concerns, including taking some major steps at the request of Attorney General Brown's office. Thus far Chevron has refused to budge.

For more detail see:

Press release issued by groups participating in the suit

Environmental Groups accept offer to mediate

Contra Costa Times article

Chevron’s Move to Dirtier Oil:
One Richmond Worker’s Perspective

The California State Court of Appeals ruled against Chevron’s switch to refining dirtier, heavier oil at its Richmond refinery, citing violations of state environmental laws. This is a tremendous victory for Bay Area communities.

My name is James Walker. I live in Richmond and work for a local city agency. My mother immigrated here from Sweden in 1968 and our family has been here ever since. Fortunately, we don’t live next door to the refinery, but I can still see the smokestacks from my house.

Over the course of my life, I have seen far too many children and families suffering unnecessarily from the toxics in our air. Richmond children are hospitalized for asthma at twice the rate of children in the rest of the county. All of us are suffering the consequences of Chevron’s pollution, even those of us on the outskirts.

Is it any wonder that we suffer from these health problems? Chevron is in our backyards, pumping thousands of tons of toxics into the air each year. Chevron’s refinery alone is already responsible for 90% of industrial emissions in Richmond.

That’s why several years ago, when Chevron announced its plans to expand the refinery to process dirtier, heavier crude, workers and community members joined together in protest. The proposed expansion would likely have exposed our communities to even higher levels of toxic pollution. So we made our voices heard by packing city council meetings and courtrooms, putting our stories front and center.

It’s Richmond’s working class and communities of color that are hardest hit by Chevron’s toxic emissions. Nearly 80% of people living within one mile of the Chevron refinery are people of color and the majority are working class. So it comes as no surprise that Chevron’s strategy has been to divide these communities – pitting workers against communities of color, prospective jobs against community health.

These are false choices.

How dare Chevron ask us to choose between our health and the health of future generations, a clean environment, and much-needed jobs? Which among these would Chevron executives choose? We have the right to breathe clean air.

We have the right to raise our children in a clean, healthy environment. And we commend the California State Court of Appeals for recognizing this.

Our victory yesterday shows what’s possible when workers and communities stand together and demand more of our politicians and the corporations that operate in our backyards. Together, we sent a message that Chevron cannot continue profiting at the expense of our health. It’s time for all of us to embrace a cleaner, greener future.

This victory is just the beginning. In coming weeks, I will continue to work in coalition with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, and West County Toxics Coalition toward building healthy, green communities for all. I hope you will join us.