MRC Oversight Committee Tackles Communications, Soil Testing Questions in Latest Meeting

In other refinery news, owner of Golden Eagle Refinery is fined $27.5 million for air pollution violations, study details impact on refinery workers who lost their jobs when facility shut down

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By Tom Lochner

Communication – or lack of it – was the focus during the early part of last Thursday’s Martinez Refining Co. Oversight Committee meeting in response to the "spent catalyst" release on Thanksgiving night and the following day. The incident has grown into a major public concern after the refinery initially appeared to downplay its significance.

The latter part of the meeting, conducted over Zoom, focused on the timing, scope, locations and other details of a soil sampling to be conducted as part of a "community risk assessment" by a consultant in areas believed to have been impacted by the Nov. 24-25 release. 

It dumped from 20 to 24 tons of toxic dust on surrounding communities – not just Martinez, but also as far as Benicia, El Sobrante, Rodeo and Hercules and even beyond, according to a computer-generated map, based on wind speed and direction, produced by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The dust contained "elevated levels of aluminum, barium, chromium, nickel, vanadium and zinc," according to a Jan. 18 news release by Contra Costa Health Services.

The county's Hazardous Materials Programs got involved on Nov. 26, two days after Thanksgiving, after CC Health became aware of a social media post about "some white dust." 

"That triggered where we are today," said Kim McCarl, communications officer at CC Health.

The refinery has said it didn't know about the spread of toxic dust into the community until it was alerted by residents who discovered the dust on their properties the following morning. The county District Attorney's Office is looking into the refinery's failure to notify authorities of the incident.

MRC eventually put out a social media post indicating there was "nothing harmful in the dust," McCarl said. 

"We asked them not to make that notification," McCarl said, adding: "We told them that if they did choose to make that notification, we would not necessarily back them up."

When the mandated 72-hour incident report came in from MRC on Nov. 29, "it was clear that there was different messaging we needed to put out," McCarl said. On Nov. 30, a community notification that included a fact sheet on the spent catalyst and its ingredients was disseminated to the public through all of CC Health Services' various channels, she said. A Nov. 30 media release titled "Hazardous Materials Release at Martinez Oil Refinery Contained Heavy Metals" noted that “most significant health risks were short-term respiratory impacts from breathing in the metals in the hours after the release” and that “exposure to high concentrations of these metals over a long period of time could cause more serious health problems.” The release is available at https://cchealth.org/press-releases/2022/1130-Hazardous-Materials-Release-at-Martinez-Oil-Refinery.php .

"We really are learning the magnitude of this incident as it goes on," McCarl said. She and her team did not realize, until about Dec. 14, that "this was going to qualify as a major release." On that day, McCarl said, her agency issued its recommendation for an independent investigation, which had to be approved by the Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) Committee of the county Board of Supervisors; that occurred almost a month later, on Jan. 12, leading to the creation of the oversight committee. Part of the reason for the delay was due at least in part to the need to observe government regulations including public notice rules, she said.

An initial community meeting on Dec. 19, just days before Christmas, was "an amazing experience," McCarl said, with about 300 people in attendance, most staying for almost three hours.

"We really consider communication to be part of environmental justice," McCarl said. "This is not something that we do haphazardly."

She noted a fundamental difference between two types of communication: "acute," during and immediately after a crisis situation, versus "long-term" in its aftermath, and how the two relate to something like the produce in people's gardens. 

"In this situation, the risk to health was the worst when the dust was in the air," McCarl said, adding: "We did not have the opportunity to warn the community while the dust was in the air." As a result, officials could only offer some after-the-fact guidance, she said, such as urging people to use gloves and masks when removing the dust from surfaces.

An example of the acute-type communication was recommending how to wash the produce and safely eat what was already in the garden. For the long term, "we had to make a pivot," McCarl said, such as shifting focus from the produce to the soil, and asking people not to eat what they grow until authorities know what is in the soil.

After McCarl's presentation, committee members weighed in with suggestions.

Benicia Fire Chief Josh Chadwick noted that CC Health is "very Contra Costa County-centric" and suggested more coordination with his city; McCarl agreed. Hazardous Materials Programs Director Matt Kaufmann added that communication should also go out to the Solano County level. To Chadwick, Kaufmann said, "I will definitely make sure that you're in the Rolodex … of people we need to notify." More generally, Kaufmann said, there's a need to be "more nimble" when it comes to communication and environmental justice.

Committee member Cheryll Grover said, "I think that we're relying too much on social media," and suggested more mailers, both from CC Health and MRC, and that robocalls to alert residents through the Community Warning System should kick in at lower thresholds of emergency. Tom Lang, the newest member of the committee, suggested to try to find out how many people, and who, are not connected to social media.

After the communications discussion, the county's hazmat ombudsman, Michael Kent, introduced himself. Kent reports directly to the director of CC Health and the county Board of Supervisors. The position, Kent noted, was created in 1998 in the aftermath of a 16-days-long catacarb leak in 1994 at what was then the Unocal refinery in Rodeo, now Phillips 66, and a sulfuric gas release at General Chemical Corp. in Richmond the year before. Kent said the frequency of refinery incidents in the county has gone down while the hazmat program has become more sophisticated.

There followed a discussion with the consultant, Concord-based TRC, about the upcoming sampling operation and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's map showing the directions in which the dust-laden plumes are believed to have moved as they emanated from the refinery.

Superimposed onto the map are 12 proposed sampling areas, labeled MRC-1 to MRC-12. The plumes, according to the map, moved mostly to the northwest, west and southwest of the refinery, reaching all the way to Benicia, Crockett, Rodeo, El Sobrante and even beyond. The most dust-laden plumes – projected to leave deposits of 0.10 grams or more of particles per square meter – circulated over downtown Martinez and to the immediate northwest of the refinery, according to the map. One plume sliver, not of the densest variety, reaches east across the I-680 freeway. 

Map from Contra Costa Health Services showing areas identified for soil sampling.

The part of the Vine Hill area to the immediate southwest of the refinery is not included in the area of highest dust projection – a source of consternation to several members of the committee, given that the map is supposed to guide the sampling effort. This was despite assurances by TRC Project Director Jonathan Scheiner that the air district's methodology and base map are "intelligent" and "science-based."

Acting Hazardous Materials Program Director Nicole Heath later clarified that markings on the map indicating that no visible deposits were observed do not mean that no deposits were there; just that no observations were conducted there by county inspectors. There are three such markings at school sites, which appear to be Las Juntas, Morello Park and John Muir elementary schools.

TRC will collect samples from the top 6 inches of soil at the 12 sampling areas, to be evaluated "according to published toxicity and cancer potency criteria to determine health risks," according to Scheiner. The concentrations of metals will also be analyzed according to "ecological toxicity criteria for non-human resources," Scheiner said.

Only one of the 12 initially proposed sampling areas is centered inside Martinez city limits: MRC-1, which on the map appears to be centered around City Hall. A yellow marker identifying a "Visible Deposit-Observed" appears nearby, at or near Martinez Junior High School; there are two other yellow markers: at or near Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, and at or near the Amtrak/bus transit center. 

MRC-5 is centered in unincorporated Vine Hill near Interstate 680. 

The apparent scarcity of suggested sampling sites in the city and in the vicinity of the refinery was a subject of concern among some committee members.

"We need to take a lot more samples closer to where the actual dust fell,” said one, Tony Semenza. Grover advocated samplings near Las Juntas and Morello Park elementary schools, as did committee member Ben Therriault.

"I would suggest that we correct this map so that people who have been impacted are not left out in the dust, so to speak, by MRC, with their claims," Grover said.

Earlier, Heath said more sampling areas could be added to address committee members' concerns. She also pledged that none of the original 12 projected sampling areas would be eliminated.

Lang, the committee member from El Sobrante, who earlier identified himself as a semi-retired professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at UCSF, supported the 12 initially chosen sampling areas, noting that chemically different and possibly more hazardous, lighter particles from those that fell close to the refinery may have been deposited in the outlying areas. Lang later voted to adopt the initial 12-site sampling plan, as did member Pedro Babiak, who said he liked the original plan.

Part of the study will look into the uptake of the metals into the roots of edible plants and possible resulting effects on health.

Shortly before the sampling point issue was put to a vote, Ken Axe, the committee member representing the refinery, asked that the possible addition of samplings in the MRC-1 and MRC-5 areas be put to separate votes.

That resulted in some confusion, with some members appearing to interpret it as a choice between adding extra sampling points in MRC-1, or MRC-5, or neither one – but not both.

In the end, Heath said the majority vote seemed to be to add samplings in the MRC-1 to MRC-5 area. CC Health will work with TRC to choose the exact spots.

Soil sampling was set to begin this week. Once completed, turnaround would be five days, and results hopefully will be available at the next oversight committee meeting on May 18. In the meantime, Assistant City Manager Lauren Sugayan said she would get the word out to the greater community, while McCarl said she would contact CCTV to possibly produce video of a sampling.

The following items were written by Craig Lazzeretti

Fine levied against owner of Golden Eagle Refinery

While the Martinez Refining Co. on Pacheco Boulevard has been the focus of attention in recent months, its neighboring, currently shuttered refinery to the east has also generated some news recently.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice announced last week that Tesoro Refining and Marketing Co. will pay a $27.5 million penalty for violating a 2016 consent decree ordering the company to reduce air pollution at its Golden Eagle Refinery on Solano Way (Tesoro was bought by Marathon Petroleum in 2018). According to a news release announcing the settlement, Tesoro failed to limit air emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOX), a pollutant that contributes to smog.

Marathon shuttered the refinery in May 2020 with plans to convert it to a renewable fuels plant. Should the refinery at some point decide to resume refining petroleum, it must install specific air pollution control technology, at an expected cost of $125 million, to ensure that NOX emission limits are met, according to the EPA announcement. If Marathon converts the facility to a renewable fuels plant, the settlement will result in annual air emissions reductions of about 440 tons of nitrogen oxides.

Marathon said in a September 2022 news release that it plans to bring online “pretreatment capabilities” for the new renewables facility by the second half of 2023, with the capability to produce 730 million gallons per year by the end of the year.

Study details job loss impacts for refinery workers

In further news related to the Golden Eagle Refinery, a new study released by the UC Berkeley Labor Center addressed the impact on the 345 union refinery workers who lost their jobs when the refinery suspended operations in 2020. Billed as “one of the first comprehensive studies of displaced fossil fuel workers,” the report by UC Irvine researchers draws on a survey of 140 former Marathon workers and nearly two dozen interviews, according to the Labor Center.

The study found that most workers were unable to find jobs at the same pay levels they had at the refinery. From the report’s Executive Summary:

In the aftermath of the refinery shutdown, workers were relatively successful in gaining post-layoff employment but at the cost of lower wages and worse working conditions. At the time of the survey, 74% of former Marathon workers (excluding retirees) had found new jobs. Nearly one in five (19%) were not employed but actively searching for work; 4% were not employed but not looking for a job; and the remaining 2% were temporarily laid off from their current job. Using standard labor statistics measures, the post-layoff unemployment rate among Marathon workers was 22.5% and the employment rate was 77.5%. If workers who have stopped actively searching for work were included, the post-layoff unemployment rate was higher at 26%.

The study found that the median hourly wage at Marathon was $50, compared with a post-layoff median of $38. It also found that even workers who found higher-way jobs reported a decline in working conditions, including “hazardous worksites, heavy workloads, work speed-up, increased job responsibilities, and few opportunities for advancement.”

The Labor Center made the following recommendations for displaced workers based on its findings:

• Extended cash payments to maintain pre-layoff income levels

• Financial support to cover the 24% average gap in workers’ pre-layoff wages and their post-layoff wages

• Bridge-to-retirement funding that provides full retirement benefits to workers eligible for early retirement within one year following layoff

• Third-party certifications to define and verify the skills of refinery workers, and facilitate more efficient and accurate skill matching between jobs and workers in the labor market

• Targeted, individualized job search assistance that focuses on a broad scope of strategies for identifying good job opportunities, and preparing for and applying for those jobs

• Targeted, short-term training for a specific set of occupations and industries, with income support for workers during training

• Short-term, stand-alone training modules to enable workers to maintain certifications they had earned on-the-job at the refinery, such as CPR and HAZMAT training certifications

• Counseling services for workers and their families during layoffs and job transitions

As California continues its transition away from fossil fuels to combat climate change, the Labor Center says “a fair and equitable transition for workers out of the fossil fuel sector depends upon a robust economic development strategy that generates new jobs comparable in quality to the jobs these workers are leaving behind. Successful transition requires both transition assistance and high-road job growth. One without the other will leave workers, and the region, behind.”

The link to the full report: https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/fossil-fuel-layoff/

Mt. View Sanitary District takes up rate hike again

The Mt. View Sanitary District board will meet Thursday (May 4) at 6:30 p.m. to again consider whether to adopt sewer rate increases of approximately 9% annually over the next five years to pay for infrastructure improvements and maintenance costs. This is a continuation of the April 13 public hearing, which lacked a sufficient number of board members in attendance to approve the increases. As of April 24, the district had received 730 written protests from property owners to the proposed increases.

According to a district staff report, the general managers of Mt. View and Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) were scheduled to meet May 1 to discuss a possible feasibility study on consolidating the two districts. A Central San official attended the April 13 hearing and said that it “makes sense to look at” the possibility of a merger.

Thursday’s meeting to decide on the rate increases will be held in the Mt. View board room at 3800 Arthur Road in Martinez (look for a post this weekend on the results). The link to the meeting agenda: https://www.mvsd.org/files/7bbf21141/LINKED+Agenda+5-4-2023-.pdf

City Council preview

The City Council is scheduled to hold public hearings on Wednesday (May 3) to adopt a new user fee schedule for a variety of city services and to adopt its Five-Year Capital Improvement Program. The staff report detailing the new fee schedule (including some steep fee increases) can be found here.

According to the staff report:

Given the city has not updated its fee schedule since April 2019, the city is significantly subsidizing the actual cost of providing fee-based services to its customers and limiting the amount of revenue the city is allowed to receive for providing these services

Below is a chart from the staff report outlining various proposed fee increases.

The City Council held a study session in March on the Capital Improvement Program where it discussed its top priorities for infrastructure and other capital needs (see this post for details). The staff report detailing the proposed CIP can be found here.

The council meeting starts at 7 p.m. and is accessible both in person and on Zoom. Click here to read the agenda and find the link to attend remotely.

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