Non-Disclosure Agreement Clears Way for Investigation to Begin into Cause of Refinery Spent Catalyst Accident

Consultant hired by county can now begin work into determining what caused Thanksgiving night release; public meeting on risk assessment report planned Sept. 25; still no word on status of D.A. probe

Editor’s note: I’m mostly taking August off from newsletter posts, but I did say that I would try to keep the community informed about key news developments, and one happened last week in regard to the Martinez Refining Co. investigation.

A non-disclosure agreement has been signed between the Martinez Refining Co. and the consultant hired to conduct an independent investigation into the root cause of the Thanksgiving night “spent catalyst” release, clearing the way for the long-awaited probe to start.

Consultant Scott Berger, who has been hired by the county to conduct the independent review of the accident that spewed 20 to 24 tons of toxic dust on the surrounding community, said at Thursday’s MRC Oversight Committee meeting that the agreement had just been signed. Negotiations over the agreement — intended to protect confidential MRC business information and trade secretes from public disclosure — had stalled the start of the investigation for months.

The root cause analysis is the second facet of the independent investigation into the November accident, following the long-term risk assessment focused on possible soil contamination that ultimately found no ongoing health risks from produce grown in soil affected by the metal-laden dust.

“It looks like we are good to go now,” Berger said at the meeting, adding that he was awaiting a tranche of documents from MRC that would jump-start the process. A site visit from his firm, Scott Berger and Associates, to the refinery will follow.

A couple other items of note from Thursday’s meeting:

• A public meeting will be held Sept. 25 (time and location wasn’t announced) to discuss the report on the risk assessment investigation conducted by consultant TRC. There will also be a 45-day public comment period on the report, which is undergoing final reviews before being released to the public.

• The committee voted to send out a request for proposal (RFP) soliciting applications from contractors interested in conducting a comprehensive safety culture assessment of the refinery in light of the string of mishaps that started with the spent catalyst release and included a pair of coke dust releases in July.

There was also one significant item not addressed at Thursday’s meeting that Contra Costa Health officials had previously said would be. In an email notification to Martinez community members on July 14 following the July 11 coke dust release, CC Health said that “the (oversight) committee will receive an informational update on Aug. 10 from the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office about its investigation of the November release, and CCH will provide an informational update regarding the investigation of this week’s release.”

There was no update from the D.A. and no explanation by CC Health about why it didn’t take place as promised. There was also no discussion about an investigation into the cause of the July 11 coke dust release, including a delayed notification through the Community Warning System that day.

This is not the first time CC Health has promised the public something regarding the refinery release investigation that did not materialize. In a media release announcing plans for a transparent, community-involved independent investigation in December, CC Health Chief Executive Officer Anna Roth indicated that the probe would include the reason for the refinery’s failure to activate the Community Warning System and alert public health authorities. CC Health has since prohibited Berger from addressing that failure in its root cause analysis because the matter has been referred to the District Attorney’s Office for possible charges against MRC. The D.A., which took up the issue in early January, has given no indication if and when it will file charges in the case.

As many readers of this newsletter are aware, the failure of the Community Warning System during the spent catalyst release and shortcomings and delays that have come to light in the months since have been primary area of focus for me (the issue of public notification has also been a focal point of Mayor Brianne Zorn, who has led the city to initiate its own emergency alerts notification system for residents).

The issue of whether the Contra Costa Community Warning System is properly equipped to keep residents safe with vital, potentially life-saving information in the event of a true disaster may take on heightened relevance for the community in the wake of the apparent communication failures on the part of Maui authorities during the wildfire that destroyed the town of Lahaina this past week. Among the failures, emergency sirens were not activated to alert residents to the fast-approaching flames. As the Washington Post reported in this article:

The silent sirens have raised questions about whether everything was done to alert the public in a state that possesses an elaborate emergency warning system for a variety of dangers including wars, volcanoes, hurricanes and wildfires. ….

The Associated Press created a timeline of the wildfires, using information from multiple sources including the county’s announcements, state and local Emergency Management Alerts and interviews with officials and survivors.

The timeline shows public updates on the fires were spotty and often vague, and much of the county’s attention was focused on another dangerous, larger fire in Upcountry Maui that was threatening neighborhoods in Kula. It shows no indication that county officials ever activated the region’s all-hazard siren system, and reveals other emergency alerts were scarce.

Fortunately, the MRC incidents have not created any widespread dangers to health and safety, but beyond the question of why MRC didn’t activate the CWS during the spent catalyst release, another troubling revelation came to light in its 72-hour report following the minor July 11 coke dust release when it said it had twice tried and failed to reach county hazmat officials by phone before activating the CWS. It also indicated in the report that it had left a voicemail for hazmat staff; a CC Health official told the City Council over a week later that it had been unable to retrieve that voicemail.

Upon learning that CC Health officials had paid a visit to the refinery after the July 11 release, Councilman Satinder Malhi asked Deputy Health Director Matt Kaufmann at the July 19 council meeting: “Did you give them your cellphone number?”

More refinery news

Across the Carquinez Strait in Benicia, Valero’s refinery is in hot water with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District over continued violations stemming from toxic emissions. According to a report by the Vallejo Sun, the violations led to 165 tons of illegal emissions.

From the Sun report:

The air district discovered the violations during its investigation into the release of toxic emissions from a hydrogen vent at the refinery that went on for nearly 20 years. The air district separately obtained an abatement order for those violations last year, though by the time it revealed the excess emissions publicly, it had already worked with Valero to correct them for some time.

Another interesting piece from the Sun last year showed how Valero, under growing community criticism for its operations in the city, tried to influence the outcome of the 2022 Benicia City Council election with campaign spending.

Valero has owned the refinery in the center of town since 2000 and is a major source of revenue for the Benicia city government, accounting for 20% of the city’s general fund. It is also the city’s largest employer with more than 500 employees. It has been a frequent source of controversy for the refinery’s emissions and its attempts to influence the city’s elections.

The political influence of Valero and Chevron in Richmond, which has long played an active role in local elections, stands in stark contrast to Martinez, where MRC, and Shell before it, have largely stayed out of city politics in recent elections, and, prior to the spent catalyst incident, avoided significant controversy around its operations. Given the degree to which that has changed over the past eight months, it will be interesting to see whether MRC’s parent company, PBF Energy, pulls out its political checkbook in next year’s elections the way Valero and Chevron have in their refinery towns (rest assured, I’ll be keeping a close eye on whether any political spending materializes and reporting it to you through this newsletter).

Next year will also be the first city election where campaign finance statements are directly accessible to the public online through a new campaign finance public access portal, something I spent years lobbying for. Voters will be able to look up special interest and other campaign funding for themselves without having to request documents through the City Clerk’s Office or rely on others to report it.

Concerns around public notification and emergency alerts from refinery incidents, as well as MRC’s overall safety culture, has continued to be a focus of attention among the mayor and City Council members in the months since the spent catalyst release, particularly in the wake of other incidents such as a major flaring event in December and the July 11 coke dust release. Meanwhile, media coverage and community activism have largely centered on issues such as potential soil risks from the release (which were ultimately allayed) and daily emissions from the refinery, including whether it should be required to install a device known as a wet gas scrubber to reduce them (a matter currently being litigated in court). The community group Healthy Martinez is trying to convince the City Council to pass a resolution calling on MRC to drop its opposition to the new air district rule that would require it to install the wet gas scrubber; the question of whether such a device would have prevented or mitigated the Thanksgiving night accident has also been a source of debate at public meetings.

Regardless of what happens with these investigations into MRC and efforts to force it to improve its safety culture and reduce emissions and accidents, it’s a safe bet that refinery politics will be an election issue in Martinez next year in a way that it hasn’t been for quite some time, if ever. And it may not be limited to the City Council. The refinery’s longtime support for local schools, most notably through the annual Run for Education that it has long sponsored, may also come up in the context of next year’s school board elections (the Martinez Unified School District Board of Education has generally been much less vocal and engaged on the issues stemming from the MRC incidents than their counterparts on the City Council, despite the close proximity of many of its campuses to the refinery). Yet another factor that could come into play: the role that labor unions have long played in local politics, and the fact that refinery labor unions in particular have largely been at odds with environmental interests in recent years because of concerns over whether new regulations and laws could put their jobs at risk.