Torrance resident Isabel Douvan Schwartz mentioned she worries a couple of main earthquake hitting her neighborhood, largely due to the impression it might have on the large Torrance Refinery two miles from her house.
The most important concern is that the refinery continues to make use of the extremely poisonous chemical hydrofluoric acid to course of gasoline, a follow that Schwartz and different activists wish to see stopped.
“If hydrofluoric acid or modified hydrofluoric acid is launched, then it types right into a ground-hugging poisonous cloud that travels with the wind,” Schwartz mentioned. “It may trigger demise and everlasting severe harm to these uncovered to it.”
Hortensia Galvez participates within the rally.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
Schwartz was amongst dozens of demonstrators who held a rally at Columbia Park on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of an explosion on the then Exxon Mobil Refinery that injured 4 employees and through which particles from the blast hit close to tanks containing hydrofluoric acid, in keeping with federal regulators.
The Torrance Refinery Motion Alliance organized the rally and argued that safer options exist, and that most of the refineries in California not use hydrofluoric acid.
PBF Vitality, which bought the refinery in 2016, issued an announcement Saturday rebutting the activists’ accusations.
“We’re conscious of the deceptive and inaccurate claims by the activist group, which they’ve been making for years,” the assertion mentioned. “The cleaner-burning gasoline offered in California requires alkylate to adjust to essentially the most stringent tailpipe emissions necessities on the planet. The Torrance Refinery has been safely and reliably manufacturing alkylate for transportation fuels utilizing hydrogen fluoride (HF), together with modified hydrogen fluoride (MHF), in its Alkylation Unit for greater than 60 years, with none offsite impression.”
On the refinery’s web site, PBF Vitality argues that Californians reside in a state with strict environmental rules, but nonetheless can drive wherever they need within the automobiles of their selection “with the reassurance their native refineries produce the world’s cleanest-burning gasoline utilizing course of referred to as alkylation.”
As regulators identified, the explosion in 2015 didn’t instantly contain hydrofluoric acid however that particles got here near hitting tanks with the chemical inside.
The California Division of Occupational Security and Well being, or Cal/OSHA, issued 19 citations towards Exxon Mobil, most of which have been categorised as severe, for office security and well being violations. Exxon Mobil was fined $566,600.
The Torrance Refinery Motion Alliance organized the rally and march to protest inaction by the trade and regulators.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
Cal/OSHA discovered the corporate uncared for to remove recognized hazardous situations and “deliberately did not adjust to state security requirements,” possible leading to employees being critically injured or killed, in keeping with the company’s Division of Industrial Relations.
Cal/OSHA additionally decided the corporate’s administration knew the electrostatic precipitator — which exploded in 2015 — might explode throughout a flammable vapor leakage. A security evaluation in 2007 addressed issues concerning the leakage, however the firm failed to repair it, state regulators mentioned.
Regulators on the U.S. Chemical Security and Hazard Investigation Board reviewed the explosion and located it was “preventable.”
“That is the ninth anniversary of what might need been a disaster,” mentioned Jane Affonso, vp of the Torrance Refinery Motion Alliance, at Saturday’s rally. “There was an explosion on the Torrance Refinery, which is true over there, and an enormous piece of kit got here inside eight ft of the tank of hydrofluoric acid, and if it had hit it , many individuals would have died and been injured.”