[Source: Los Angeles Daily News] ExxonMobil’s Torrance refinery was given regulatory approval Saturday to produce emissions that violate clean air standards as it restarts the plant for gasoline manufacturing more than a year after it was crippled in an explosion.
Approval was granted on a narrow 3-2 vote by the South Coast Air Quality Management District Hearing Board after a marathon daylong hearing at City Hall attended by an overflow crowd of about 450.
ExxonMobil also will pay about $5 million in penalties for air pollution violations as a result of the February 2015 explosion and violations that could occur during the startup of the refinery, the agency said. Half the money will be earmarked for projects to benefit neighborhoods around the refinery.
The five-member panel sifted through testimony that included lengthy presentations by district staff and ExxonMobil, more than 170 emails and nearly 30 speakers — two-thirds of them refinery workers or contractors — before making its split decision.
The board was forced to resort to complex public legal gymnastics to reach its decision. One of the dissenters called it a gray area of the law. It required legal counsel from the district and the oil company to huddle and offer language to overcome what board Chairman Edward Camarena had described as a legal impasse.
Central to that technical impasse was the company’s apparent culpability in deliberately failing to fix equipment that led to the explosion, a preliminary finding from a federal investigation that has yet to formally conclude.
Board members had difficulty adopting a finding allowing ExxonMobil to resume gasoline manufacturing because of legal constraints should the company be found at fault for the blast.
But in the end, a majority of the hearing board concluded it was in the public interest to allow the refinery to resume operations using a method intended to reduce the likelihood of a fire or another explosion.
“There will be some excess emissions at certain times, but we heard testimony that air quality standards will not be significantly (exceeded),” Camarena said. “That contribution is negligible. I believe that any (air) monitoring will not see the difference because it is small.”
During the restart, the refinery will pump into the air net excess emissions amounting to 632 pounds of particulate matter, including 55 pounds of particularly hazardous fine particulate matter, 144 pounds of carbon monoxide and 337 pounds of nitrogen oxides.
Most of the pollution will occur within the first six hours because refinery pollution control equipment will not be functioning as a safety precaution.
District officials called the concern of another explosion a “justifiable’ reason for the dirtier-than-normal restart.
“We have not found any significant health impacts associated with the excess emissions,” said Mohsen Nazemi, AQMD’s deputy executive officer for the Office of Engineering and Compliance. “This is very comparable to other start-ups.”
Opponents did manage to win some concessions: The restart will occur from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., when schools are not open and children could be exposed to excess pollution.
Residents also will be notified at least 48 hours before the restart occurs via the Torrance Alerts system.
Still, opponents criticized the board’s action after the hearing.
“I’m disappointed in the ExxonMobil refinery for what they’re doing because, ultimately, all they are looking to do is sell this property — it’s already sold — so they just need to have it up and running so they can walk away,” said Maureen Mauk, a member of the refinery’s Community Advisory Panel.
“This is the equivalent of slapping some paint on your home to get it resold and walking away to a safer place, which is maybe what a lot of Torrance neighbors need to do.”
Source: Los Angeles Daily News
April 2, 2016
