Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
November 28, 2007
4. Water Quality
GROUNDWATER CLEANUP:
Shell Oil restarts cleanup of site - Bakersfield Californian
REGULATION:
Martinez petroleum firm hit with suit; Golden Gate and affiliates accused of activities that may prevent detection of gas leaks - Contra Costa Times
GROUNDWATER CLEANUP:
Shell Oil restarts cleanup of site
By Stacey Shepard, staff writer
Shell Oil has restarted a system to clean up pollution beneath the
The cleanup system was installed in the 1990s to remove toxic chemicals in the soil and groundwater from spills and leaks at the refinery that caused millions of gallons of petroleum products and the fuel additive MTBE to seep into the ground.
Shell sold the refinery to Big West of California in 2005 but under terms of the sale, Shell retained responsibility for past contamination.
In August, The Californian reported that despite extensive contamination, regional water quality regulators never issued any formal cleanup orders for the spills and leaks, even after Shell shut down the only cleanup system on site in March 2005.
Several days after the story was published, the water board issued a formal enforcement that required Shell to restart the cleanup system by Nov. 1. The order also required Shell and Big West of California to fully investigate the extent of contamination in the ground and determine if it's a threat to human health and safety.
The outer edge of the contamination comes close to the Kern River and a city well, both sources of drinking water for
Shell spokeswoman Alison Chassin said Tuesday the cleanup system was restarted in early October.
A water quality regulator confirmed the system was running during a Nov. 1 visit to the refinery, according to Bert Van Voris, a supervising engineer with the Central Valley Water Quality Control Board's office in
Shell halted the cleanup system after it sold the refinery to current owner Big West of California, a Flying J subsidiary, in March 2005. Shell has said the shutdown was necessary to build an independent power source for the system.
Regional water quality officials said they were never notified of the shutdown and only learned of it during a routine visit to the refinery several months later, while Shell has said it notified a water quality staffer verbally over the phone. Water quality officials then made repeated requests in letters to Shell for the system to be restarted immediately.
Over the next two years, Shell set three deadlines for the system to go back online but missed all of them.
Records on file at the regional water quality control board document more than a dozen leaks and spills at the refinery going back to 1987, when the facility was owned by Texaco.
The worst was in 1987, when an underground pipeline leaked an estimated 4 million to 5 million gallons of partially refined fuel into the ground.
Chassin, the Shell spokeswoman, said the cleanup system will continue to remove pollution from the ground at the refinery for an additional 12 to 15 years. #
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/296280.html
REGULATION:
Contra Costa Times – 11/28/07
By Janis Mara, staff writer
State and local prosecutors filed a $50 million lawsuit against a
About 30 gas stations across the state owned by or associated with Martinez-based Golden Gate Petroleum were accused of tampering with safety monitoring sensors and other activities that might cause gas to leak into groundwater or soil undetected.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the State Water Resources Control Board and a number of district attorneys from several
The board and the attorney general conducted a two-year investigation into the gas stations' practices before the lawsuit was filed. The complaint accuses the company of violations including inoperable or missing line leak detectors, liquid and debris in the secondary containment, failure to perform monitoring within the required time period and alarm failure.
"This is one of the most egregious cases we've come across," said David Boyers, senior staff counsel with the state water board's enforcement office. "There's a tremendous amount of noncompliance."
He said the board has been negotiating with the company but wasn't able to resolve the problems.
"They (the gas stations) did not have a spill or leak. There was no pollution that resulted from any of this," said Mark Pollock, environmental counsel for Golden Gate Petroleum.
Golden Gate, founded in 1946, is a family-owned company that employs more than 75 people in
Boyers agreed that the lawsuit is not about leaking gasoline, but rather violations that might lead to problems going undetected.
"Our action is not an action for releases (of gas into the environment)," the attorney said. "It's an action for failure to comply with monitoring standards that are very important."
Boyers said "a lot" of the sites involved in the suit have had releases of gasoline into the environment. According to GeoTracker, an online tool linked to environmental data for regulated facilities in
The complaint lists 39 gas stations across the state owned by
####
No comments:
Post a Comment