Torrance resident Isabel Douvan Schwartz mentioned she worries a couple of main earthquake hitting her group, largely due to the affect it might have on the large Torrance Refinery two miles from her residence.
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 varieties right into a ground-hugging poisonous cloud that travels with the wind,” Schwartz mentioned. “It could possibly trigger demise and everlasting severe damage to these uncovered to it.”
Hortensia Galvez participates within the rally.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)
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, based on federal regulators.
The Torrance Refinery Motion Alliance organized the rally and argued that safer alternate options exist, and that most of the refineries in California not use hydrofluoric acid.
PBF Power, which bought the refinery in 2016, issued a press release 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 bought in California requires alkylate to adjust to essentially the most stringent tailpipe emissions necessities on this 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 affect.”
On the refinery’s web site, PBF Power argues that Californians reside in a state with strict environmental laws, but nonetheless can drive wherever they need within the automobiles of their alternative “with the reassurance their native refineries produce the world’s cleanest-burning gasoline utilizing course of known as alkylation.”
As regulators identified, the explosion in 2015 didn’t immediately 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 in opposition to 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 Occasions)
Cal/OSHA discovered the corporate uncared for to eradicate identified hazardous situations and “deliberately didn’t adjust to state security requirements,” doubtless leading to employees being significantly injured or killed, based on 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 considerations 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 may 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 toes of the tank of hydrofluoric acid, and if it had hit it , many individuals would have died and been injured.”
