Emissions: Investigators are trying to figure out what spewed into the air from flaring at refineries and tank fire.
What chemicals were released into the air after flaring at two Martinez refineries and a fire at a Crockett fuel storage facility this week?
Smoke from the Crockett fire carried small particles over the area, a health official said. But until companies release official reports, Ralph Borrmann, a spokesman with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said it’s “difficult, if not impossible” to know exactly what else people were breathing.
A 4.5magnitude earthquake that rocked Contra Costa County Monday night triggered flaring — a safety measure that releases excess gas into the air — at the two Martinez refineries. On Tuesday, two fuel tanks with 252,000 gallons of ethanol at a storage facility in Crockett caught fire, and an explosion sent a fireball high in the sky. The billowing smoke trapped residents indoors, closed Interstate 80 for hours, and has shuttered the facility for now.
Officials have not determined what caused the fire and explosion at the Crockett facility, run by a San Antonio company called NuStar.
County officials said Tuesday’s fire in Crockett was a Level 3 incident, the highest health risk. It triggered community warning si
rens and a shelterinplace order. Flaring at the refineries was a Level 1 event that requires only communication with the county and not the public, officials said.
NuStar spokeswoman Mary Rose Brown said in an email that during the incident the company tested for potential contaminants, including carbon monoxide and dioxide, methane and nitrogen dioxide, and reported to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District that they were below detectable levels. The company will submit a written report to the county health department within three days and to the district in 10 days.
“Flaring is an important part of keeping the refinery running safely. Flares are highly regulated safety devices used in refineries to relieve pressure during the refining processes and help keep our equipment and plants operating safely,” Chevron spokeswoman Amy Mosley said in an email. She said the company monitors air emissions and shares realtime data with the community online.
Marathon, whose Martinez refinery flared, didn’t respond immediately to a request for the kind and quantity of chemicals released into the air. Shell, whose Martinez refinery also flared, could not immediately provide details. The refineries have up to 60 days after an incident to file a report, according to Borrmann.
Contra Costa County officials had urged residents to stay inside Tuesday.
The big issue was the smoke from the fire, which “has a lot of particulates in it,” county health officer Randy Sawyer said. “They did find some unhealthy levels of particulates throughout the night.”
Sawyer said the county wasn’t able to get measurements of what was in the smoke Tuesday. The two tanks on fire were 1% filled with ethanol, which Sawyer said can produce carbon monoxide.
Borrmann of the air quality district said in an email it was “reasonable to assume that CO was generated” but didn’t see elevated measurements at regional air monitoring stations. He added that it’s “difficult, if not impossible” to quantify the amount and types of chemicals released without specific information about what burned.
Borrmann said most of the smoke wasn’t from the ethanol but from the asphalt around the tanks.
After county hazardous materials specialists took measurements Tuesday night, they said air quality returned to normal and lifted the shelterinplace order.
“With a short exposure, we’re not expecting any kind of longterm health impacts,” Sawyer said.
Seven patients complaining of respiratory distress, coughing and difficulty breathing went to the emergency department at Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo shortly after the fire on Tuesday, according to Monique Binkley Smith, a hospital spokeswoman. All were treated and released that day.
“Luckily it wasn’t any worse than it was,” Binkley Smith said. “Everybody was able to get treated and go home.”
Carolyn Sanford, 77, and her husband, 81, were evacuated from their home next to the Crockett fire by law enforcement officers. They waited at the Dead Fish Restaurant nearby for five hours. Sanford’s husband requires an oxygen tank, but she said neither of them had any breathing difficulties from the smoke.
“I guess the way the wind was blowing, it wasn’t blowing down here,” she said. “That didn’t bother us. We’re fine.”
Sanford and her husband have lived in the house for more than two decades, and said they’ve never had any issues with the oil refineries and energy facilities so close.
The Crockett site must file an incident report to the county health department within three days and submit an annual business plan about what hazardous materials it contains. The EPA also requires facilities to report infractions of air quality regulation.
California regulations after the Chevron Richmond refinery fire in 2012 require refineries to perform seismic assessments and create riskmanagement plans. The Western Petroleum States Association, an oil and gas industry group, sued the state in July arguing the requirements overreached.
But NuStar doesn’t fall under the regulations because it doesn’t reach the threshold of chemicals.
“There are millions of residents who live around refineries across the state. Here’s a giant fuel storage facility that (is) completely exempt from it,” said Mike Wilson, national director for BlueGreen Alliance’s occupational and environmental health program.
Under the federal Clean Air Act, facilities are required to report what chemicals are released into the air after industrial accidents to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, but a lawsuit resolved this year showed the board didn’t carry out that mandate.
The lawsuit was sparked in part by Hurricane Harvey, which flooded the Houston area two years ago. In that scenario, “you have situations where industrial facilities were going to blow and nobody knew what was going to be emitted,” said Jeff Ruch, the Pacific director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group involved in the lawsuit. “That’s relevant to Crockett, again a situation of communities and first responders not knowing what’s in the plume.”
A federal judge’s ruling directed the board to create a mandate for reporting emissions after an industrial accident — but it doesn’t go into effect until next February. The board did not respond to a request for comment Thursday about how the mandate would be enforced.
In 2018, Bay Area refineries had 23 flaring incidents, according to Bay Area Air Quality Management District data. Flares released methane, nonmethane hydrocarbon, and sulfur dioxide, although less than since 2004. Chevron in Richmond had the most incidents — eight — last year.
Some residents like Torm Nomprasseurt, senior community organizer with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network who lives on the fence line with the refinery, have been concerned about air quality for years — especially with flaring incidents.
“For us who live on the front lines, it’s always a concern,” he said.
“With a short exposure, we’re not expecting any kind of longterm health impacts” (from the Crockett fire). Randy Sawyer, Contra Costa County health officer