Latest Refinery Furor Dominates Last City Council Meeting of the Year as Residents, Officials Tear into MRC

Key agenda items surrounding housing and cannabis policy pushed late into night or delayed as city leaders again are forced to wade into an issue over which they have little, if any, control

What was originally expected to be a pivotal, year-end City Council meeting focused on hot-button social issues surrounding housing and cannabis policy Wednesday instead turned into the latest community uproar over an issue in which Martinez leaders have little, if any, control: the ongoing operations and incidents at PBF Energy’s Martinez Refining Co.

As a result of impassioned comments (and at times heckling of MRC officials) by the public and equally angry tongue lashings by council members, much of the City Council’s agenda for its final meeting of the year was pushed late into the night — despite the fact that the city has no regulatory powers over the refinery and its operations. The Housing Element, over a year in the making and designed to finally stem the tide of the affordable housing crisis that has upended communities like Martinez throughout the state, received much shorter shrift when it finally got underway around 10 p.m. And a proposal to revamp the city’s Cannabis Ordinance, amid concerns over security standards at the city’s dispensaries and the impact and influence that legalization is having on youths, had to be put off altogether, to be taken up next month.

Residents pack the City Council chamber on Wednesday to protest the Martinez Refining Co.

And for the second consecutive meeting, a planned update by City Manager Michael Chandler on the fire hydrant woes in the Muir Oaks neighborhood that came to light during an Oct. 2 vegetation fire had to be postponed.

Underscoring Wednesday’s focus on public health, it was also a long night for the county’s top medical doctor, Health Officer Ori Tzvieli, who not only addressed the concerns of a standing-room-only council chamber over the impact of MRC’s string of incidents on public health, but also called back into the meeting around midnight, when the council chamber and virtual audience had dwindled to a handful, to offer his thoughts on youth cannabis use and the need to strengthen regulations to protect their well-being.

By that time, however, the council had announced that the hour had grown too late for it to take up the proposed cannabis revisions, though it did choose to allow public comment for those who had hung on for five-plus hours to have their say on that topic.

Roughly four hours earlier, Tzvieli spoke in front of a packed chamber filled with residents carrying signs protesting MRC’s continued accidents and violations, which have led to widespread community alarm over the past 13 months. “We have very serious concerns about what is happening at this refinery,” he told the council.

“We will be talking to our board and partners to see what actions we can take so that these things don’t continue to happen,” Tzvieli added later, referring to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, which has ultimate authority over the refinery’s operations.

But, as resident and former councilwoman Anamarie Avila Farias pointed out during her public comment, the elected officials with the real power to regulate the refinery were not in attendance Wednesday.

“I just want to state the obvious,” she said. “Where are our county Board of Supervisors? I know as a former city councilwoman, the City Council doesn’t have regulatory oversight of the county’s refineries. They should have been here tonight.”

The two-plus-hours of diatribes against the refinery appeared aimed largely at shaming MRC officials, who were on hand to provide a regular bi-monthly update, over the most recent incidents (a major flaring event on Friday that caused strong odors to permeate the community, and a grass fire/ground flaring event on Sunday that created highly visible black smoke). But questions about what, if anything, could be done to curtail the refinery’s actions went largely unanswered, much as they have for the past 13 months, since a major toxic dust release that started on Thanksgiving night in 2022.

While some outraged residents again called on the refinery to be shut down, that is simply not in the cards. Refineries routinely experienced far worse accidents and explosions in the 1980s and 1990s, before the county instituted an Industrial Safety Ordinance and major incidents steadily fell, and there was never any credible effort to shut down refineries during those times.

Much of the rhetoric by the public and MRC officials echoed what’s been stated following every previous refinery release or major flaring incident since November 2022, with residents accusing the refinery of poisoning the community and running an unsafe operation; and refinery manager Daniel Ingram attempting to assure the community that MRC is doing everything in its power to identify problems, implement corrective actions and invest in upgrades and preventive maintenance. The raw emotions were almost identical to those expressed at a virtual town hall one year ago, following the Thanksgiving 2022 spent catalyst release and a major flaring event a few weeks later that alarmed the community with its towering flames.

What was quite different Wednesday, however, was the tone of council members, who after the initial incidents last year tempered their criticism of the refinery with acknowledgement of its longstanding role in and financial support of the community.

That was all out the window Wednesday as they lit into MRC and said they were fed up.

Mayor Brianne Zorn set the sharper tone by proposing that going forward, the refinery be referred to by the name of its corporate owner (PBF), rather than Martinez Refining Co., because of the damage it has done to the community.

“In light of my frustration with how this refinery has not been a good neighbor, I’ve been very frustrated that they’ve been using the name of the city of Martinez basically in vain, so tonight I’m going to recommend that we start referring to them by their parent company, which is PBF Energy,” she said, to loud cheers from the audience.

That was a stark reversal from Zorn’s comments to me in a podcast interview in February, when she made a point of saying she preferred to refer to the company by its Martinez name rather than its parent, in discussing its continued community involvement in the wake of the initial incidents that generated public alarm.

“The PR folks at PBF … we don’t need to call them PBF, Martinez Refining Company, MRC … are very involved,” she said at the time. “They still participate in the Chamber of Commerce board meetings, I still see them participating in school meetings. They’re there and around, and we do see them regularly.”

The other four council members were equally harsh.

Debbie McKillop: “This cannot continue. These people deserve better. We have no confidence right now.”

Satinder Malhi: “With due respect, I feel like I’ve given you ample opportunity to restore the trust that was violated last Thanksgiving, and instead of working in good faith with us to restore that trust, you continually demonstrate why you are not up to the task.”

Jay Howard: “This is impacting everybody. It’s the entire city, and we’re scared, and we’ve got to do something.”

Mark Ross: “We’ve all invested our heart and soul, and the taxpayers have invested a lot of their money, to make this a great place, and it’s just dispiriting, no matter what your intents are, it’s just dispiriting when these things happen. We have to find our way to a better path here.”

Contra Costa Health Services’ Hazardous Materials Programs chief, Nicole Heath, provided a chart at the meeting showing that since November 2022, MRC has had more incidents from flaring, fires and spills than any other refinery in the county. But only two of the incidents (the spent catalyst release and last Friday’s flaring incident) qualified as Level 2 on the Community Warning System scale, which indicate possible health impacts to sensitive populations and does not trigger a public shelter-in-place order. The rest were categorized as Level 1, which means that no offsite health consequences are anticipated.

Some speakers, however, raised concerns that the volume of these lower-level incidents could ultimately portend a higher-magnitude event. In 2012, for instance, a major fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond caused widespread health effects.

Resident and former Martinez Unified School District board member Jonathan Wright said that as someone who suffers from asthma, the health impacts have already been severe from the 2022 spent catalyst release. “My lungs have never been the same since that incident. I continue to suffer adverse impacts.”

After the council chamber largely emptied of refinery and health officials, TV cameras and community members, the council finally got down to conducting the city’s business, but the refinery drama cast a pall over the rest of the night.

In introducing the much-awaited final revisions to the Housing Element around 10 p.m., Zorn described the topic as “what I thought was going to be the most important item on the agenda when we published a couple days ago.”

When the council took up a funding allocation for the Martinez Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Martinez & Co. to further spur economic activity downtown, Ross mused before a nearly empty chamber about how yet another worthwhile item on the agenda — nearly a year in the making — had been lost in the furor over MRC.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men are torn asunder by flares and grass fires. Here we are tearing our hair out and working our butts off to promulgate Martinez as a destination. We’ve got a 287-acre park, we’re going to have a management plan in place,” he said, referring to a study session earlier in the evening for the newly acquired Alhambra Hills Preserve. “Any other city, this would be the gems, the news of the month. What’s going to be on TV? You know what’s going to be on TV tonight, and that’s the image people are going to have. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I don’t know how we overcome it again this time.”

Ross said that in his multi-decade tenure on the council, he had seen Martinez bounce back quickly from past refinery controversies and accidents, including major explosions. But with the steady drip of toxic dust releases and polluting flares over the past 13 months giving the city one black eye after another, he predicted a tougher road ahead.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen this time. I think we’re going to have to have a concerted effort.”

Note: I plan to have a detailed post on the other major items from Wednesday’s council meeting, including the pivotal Housing Element, after the Christmas holiday. Wishing everyone a safe, peaceful holiday weekend.