Refinery Town Hall Wrap-Up: Furious Residents, MRC's Apology and County Crackdown

Here are my major takeaways from Monday's three-hour Zoom meeting to discuss recent incidents at the Martinez Refining Co.

County, city, regional air quality district and refinery officials held a virtual community meeting on Monday, Dec. 19, to discuss the recent incidents at the Martinez refinery on Pacheco Boulevard that have alarmed residents, most notably the Nov. 24-25 release of “spent catalyst” that blanketed surrounding areas with a toxic dust laden with heavy metals.

Oh, and a few dozen outraged residents also had some thoughts to share.

Below are my major takeaways from the three-hour-plus town hall held over Zoom. You can also read a summary of the meeting from the city’s newsletter here and watch a video of the town hall here.

Contra Costa County is not messing around in investigating the Thanksgiving night hazardous materials release.

Contra Costa Health Services officials reiterated that the release of a powdery “spent catalyst” on Thanksgiving night and into the following morning was a major chemical release that carried public health implications, and that the refinery failed in its responsibility to promptly notify the appropriate authorities. At the town hall, county officials showed again just how seriously they are taking this matter by saying they plan to refer their investigatory findings to the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office for potential prosecution by the end of the month or early January (it has already cited the refinery for discharging hazardous materials into the stormwater system). It is also asking the Industrial Safety Ordinance Ad Hoc Committee of the county Board of Supervisors to establish an oversight committee with the responsibility of conducting an independent investigation and a “community risk assessment” of the release. A meeting of the committee (consisting of county supervisors Federal Glover and John Gioia) has been tentatively scheduled for Jan. 12 to move ahead with establishing an oversight committee to carry out the investigation. The oversight committee would include three community members as well as representatives from Contra Costa Health Services, the city of Martinez, MRC and a refinery labor representative, as well as an independent contractor hired to carry out the investigation. It would both explore the root cause of the release as well as the health and environmental impacts.

Both of these moves make crystal clear that this was far from a minor incident or oversight by the refinery in its failure to communicate it. Rather, the incident and its handling warrant significant independent scrutiny by appropriate government and regulatory agencies and corrective action. “We will hold accountable the Martinez refinery, and we will uncover through that investigation a number of things that will help us to be a better-running operation,” Glover said at the town hall. “…We will use this process to help us become a safer community. We will work with MRC to address incident investigation findings to prevent these incidents from happening in the future.”

The refinery apologized for its failure but provided little clarity on how and why it happened.

As the refinery came under withering criticism from dozens of members of the public during the meeting, refinery manager Daniel Ingram repeatedly apologized for the spent catalyst release. He expressed disappointment that “we fell short of living up to our own expectations and standards for being a good neighbor” and said they would “strive to do much, much better in the community.” At the same time, he indicated that refinery officials didn’t even know about the release of the spent catalyst into the community until they started receiving reports from residents the following day. I found this comment startling, and I followed up in my own public comments (as did other residents) to ask how it could be that refinery personnel were unaware of a major chemical accident impacting the surrounding community until community members reported it to them? Should we be left to fear that, going forward, the refinery would not be aware of similar incidents impacting the community (including nearby schools) until the community brought the impacts to its attention? Ingram responded: “We too want to understand the failure that not only led to (the release) but also led to the failure to notify the public and initiate the (Community Warning System). Our investigation, I’m confident, will draw the proper conclusions and come up with the right corrective actions to address that.”

In response to my questions about PBF Energy’s safety track record (which I explored previously in this post) and whether safety standards had changed in the wake of refinery’s sale from Shell in 2020, Ingram was adamant that there had been no changes in safety practices and said the refinery’s safety record had been “impeccable” over the past 18 to 24 months, with the refinery experiencing one of its “best runs” in the facility’s history in terms of incidents of worker injuries and process safety events.

The public turned out in force to lambaste the refinery.

Ingram’s apology at the start of the meeting did little to satisfy the scores of angry residents who called in to express indignation over the fact that the refinery showered the surrounding area with heavy metals and then failed to inform them of what had happened. Residents shared stories of unknowingly exposing themselves and their children to toxic materials on the day after Thanksgiving because of the refinery’s failure, potentially harming their health. Residents said they have experienced respiratory issues in the weeks since the release; expressed concerns about fruits and vegetables they had consumed from their gardens being tainted with metals; and whether their drinking water had been affected. A common theme was that community trust had been broken.

Jonathan Wright, a former Martinez school board member, in his public comments said that as a severe asthmatic, he must stay inside during Spare the Air days. “If I had known on the Friday after Thanksgiving that the refinery had spewed toxic waste into my community, I wouldn’t have spent the day outside. But I did, and my health has suffered greatly since that day. I’ve had a series of severe asthma attacks. The symptoms I’ve been experience I believe, and my physician believes, is a direct result of the spent catalyst being spent into the atmosphere.”

Wright and others also challenged the refinery over the Dec. 9 flaring incident that sent towering flames into the night sky as the result of an “equipment malfunction.” Some residents relayed concerns about the heavy shaking their homes experienced as a result of the flaring. While acknowledging that the flaring was large, Ingram said that “all gases were properly routed to the flare system as designed and the flare system itself operated as designed.” Others portrayed the refinery as a nuisance that cannot be trusted and even suggested the it should be shut down (a sentiment I personally don’t believe is productive and risks a political backlash by refinery management and workers were it to gain steam). By the time the meeting finally drew to a close, one thing was eminently clear. The refinery’s reputation in the community has been seriously battered, and it has significant fence-mending to do if it expects to earn back its trust.

We got some clarity on why the refinery initially downplayed any potential health impacts from the Thanksgiving night release.

The refinery compounded its failure to promptly inform the public and local health authorities of the spent catalyst release by then downplaying any potential health impacts from the dust. “There are no health risks associated with this material,” it wrote in a Facebook post two days after the incident. Contra Costa Health Services promptly contradicted that assessment when it conducted its own testing, saying there were “short-term respiratory impacts from breathing in the metals in the hours after the release. Exposure to high concentrations of these metals over a long period of time could cause more serious health problems.” The town hall discussion revealed that refinery officials based their initial assessment of “no health risks” on a “safety data sheet” for spent catalyst and “historical industry information.”

However, Contra Costa Deputy Health Director Matt Kaufmann said that when his department finally became aware of the release two days after it occurred, it was concerned because spent catalyst typically has heavy metals associated with it. “That’s why we wanted to do testing before we could say definitively whether there was a concern from the health department.” Ingram confirmed that when refinery officials consulted with county health officials on the Monday after the release, they were asked “to pull back on those comments and statements until we could work together to understand the full impact of this release. Since that day, we have cooperated and done that.”

Of course, this all begs the question: Why is there an industrial safety sheet for spent catalyst that suggests it doesn’t pose health impacts when it clearly does?

The city wants to create its own communications platform for alerting residents about incidents such as the Dec. 9 flaring.

Because the “significant” flaring on Dec. 9 that was visible, and could be heard and felt, from miles around apparently posed no “off-site” health or safety risks, the county Community Warning System did not trigger any shelter-in-place order or direct health advisories to nearby residents. Contra Costa Health Services said it conducted real-time air sampling monitoring that did not indicate “any immediate health impacts to the community from this flaring.” As a result, the only public notification by the county was done through its website and social media channels. This left many residents in the dark about how to respond, if at all, to an event that by all indications was less dangerous than it appeared to the naked eye.

Contra Costa County Fire Protection District deputy chief Aaron McCallister said the fire department received “dozens and dozens” of 911 calls during the flaring. Fire crews responded to the refinery but quickly determined that “there were no off-site consequences or immediate risks to the community,” he said. Though flaring incidents are not uncommon, McCallister acknowledged that “this specific incident was a little more spectacular than normal.” The Dec. 9 incident is under investigation by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which has said it anticipates “discovery of regulatory violations.”

Zorn addressed the frustration residents felt about the lack of information they received on the nature of the Feb. 9 flaring and whether it was something more significant and dangerous to their safety. “The community has clearly said they don’t accept that and they want that to change,” she said. “We acknowledge the need to improve how we communicate with the community as we go forward, as what has been historically done is not enough.”

Zorn and City Manager Michael Chandler said the city would be working on developing its own notification system to keep residents in the loop on the latest information when incidents such as this happen in the future. Although the details are still to be worked out, this would presumably be similar to Nixle alerts that public safety agencies routinely send out in emergency situations. Stay tuned for more details. The refinery also said it plans to relaunch a website to keep residents informed about operations and incidents at the refinery instead of relying exclusively on Facebook and social media.

Other things of note:

• The refinery and county health officials said they were continuing to conduct soil and other testing to try to gauge any longer-term impacts from the spent catalyst release, as well as looking at “dispersion models” on how far the hazardous materials may have traveled.

• County Public Health Director Dr. Ori Tzvieli said residents who continue to have health concerns that they believe may be related to the spent catalyst release should consult with their physicians to try to get their questions answered.

• Several residents asked whether the refinery would pay for soil testing or other potential impacts they experienced from the incidents. Ingram said they should contact the refinery directly to discuss their specific situations and concerns. They can email mrc.communityrelations@pbfenergy.com or call 1-925-313-3777 during business hours. For questions about issues at the refinery after hours, call 1-925-313-3601.

• In response to concerns about the potential impact of the Nov. 24-25 release on the city’s drinking water, the city recently conducted testing at its water treatment plant and distribution system to see whether there were any elevated levels of metals. “The test results show that the levels of all of the tested metals in the drinking water are within the state and federal regulatory limits and that the water is safe to use.” The results can be found here.

• At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Zorn said she wanted to focus in coming months on educating the community about the science of refineries and their operations. She also expressed interest in Martinez exploring the adoption of its own industrial safety ordinance, noting that Richmond, which is home to the Chevron refinery, has taken that step. MRC falls under the scope of the county Industrial Safety Ordinance , which implements safety programs designed to prevent serious accidents at oil refineries and other chemical facilities, and investigates them when they do occur.