Refinery Ruling = Less Dioxin in San Francisco Bay

SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 22, 2002 (ENS) - A decision that is expected to result in stricter discharge limits for dioxins and other pollutants that impair many California waterways was handed down by the San Francisco Superior Court on Friday.

Superior Court Judge James McBride has rejected a Clean Water Act permit for the Tesoro Petroleum Corporation's refinery in Avon, near Martinez on Suisun Bay. The refinery was formerly owned by Ultramar, and before that by Tosco.

In June 2000 the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board announced that the refinery would be allowed to increase its dioxin discharge limits into San Francisco Bay by nearly five times.

The Tesoro refinery on Suisun Bay in Martinez, California. (Photo courtesy Tesoro)

A lawsuit challenging the permit was filed by San Francisco BayKeeper, a project of WaterKeepers Northern California, and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) was filed in March 2001, after their challenge of the permit before the State Water Resources Control Board was rejected.

BayKeeper and CBE challenged the Tesoro permit because it failed to adequately restrict the plant's discharges of dioxins, a group of chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects. They said the permit change violated the federal Clean Water Act and state law because it failed to set the dioxin discharge limit at a level which protects public health and the environment.

The judge agreed with the groups' allegation that the permit "fails to include a numerical water quality-based effluent limitation" for dioxins as required under the Clean Water Act. He remanded the permit back to the state and regional boards for revision.

"Judge McBride's decision is a victory for the Bay and for the environment in California. The ruling closes a loophole that would have stalled water quality improvements for a decade or more," said San Francisco BayKeeper Leo O'Brien. "The Water Boards will now be forced to change dozens of illegal permits."

"The Regional Board attempted to use its failure to come up with a plan to clean up dioxins in the Bay as a rationale for easing up on the refinery's permit requirements," said Earthjustice attorney Michael Lozeau, who represented the environmental groups. "Permits are supposed to clean up pollutants, not perpetuate toxics in the Bay."

Lozeau says the Tesoro permit roll-back has since become a watershed event resulting in weaker discharge permits for industrial facilities around San Francisco Bay and around the state.

"The regional boards looked at the state board's decision upholding this permit as setting a precedent. There's one example, last week, where the state board approved a similar dioxin discharge limit in the Chevron Refinery's permit in Richmond, California," said Lozeau. "It is in fact working as a precedent, whether it technically was or wasn't."

"So we believe," Lozeau said, "that almost every permit in the Bay Area for industrial facilities and some sewage plant facilities ... would have received limits just like the ones that were rejected in this current court decision."

"I suspect that the state board's decision was read by other regions and they also took advantage of that to issue permits guaranteeing compliance rather than guaranteeing that water quality would be improved," Lozeau said.

The groups also alleged that the permit established an illegal 10 year delay of action to stop ongoing Bay dumping of dioxins and other toxic pollutants despite findings by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that these same pollutants are already causing "high priority" health threats in the Bay.

Satellite image of Suisun Bay in the northeastern portion of the San Francisco Bay area. (Photo courtesy USGS)

The EPA is working to develop a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for dioxins in the Bay, but the judge wrote, "Due to the complexity of the issue, however, EPA has not completed and issued the TMDL for dioxins for Suisun Bay."

The regional water board permit required the refinery to comply with a TMDL by 2012, or if the EPA still had not issued one by then, the alternative final limit was that the refinery must discharge no dioxins, or offset any discharge with an equal reduction. But no numeric water quality based effluent limition was required under the regional permit, a violation of the Clean Water Act.

Dioxins are among the most toxic synthetic chemicals known and cause increased risk of cancer, endometriosis, immune system disorders, learning disabilities and other developmental injuries.

Because dioxins bioaccumulate in fish, local anglers who regularly eat fish from the Bay are exposed to unsafe levels of the toxics.

According to research by CBE, subsistence fishers and their families are exposed to dioxins at a level up to 30 times higher than the general population.

"It's about time state water boards stopped letting oil companies poison the fish people eat," said Greg Karras, senior scientist for CBE.

Tesoro Petroleum Corporation has six refineries with a combined crude capacity of nearly 560,000 barrels per day. The Golden Eagle refinery in Martinez is the company's largest. Located in Contra Costa County on the east side of San Francisco Bay, it has the capacity to process 168,000 barrels of petroleum daily.

The Martinez plant converts crude oil into the specialized, cleaner burning California Air Resources Board gasolines and diesel fuels sold in California. The plant became a part of Tesoro's refining system in 2002.

The other five Tesoro refineries are located in Anacortes, Washington; Kapoleim, Hawaii; Kenai, Alaska; Mandan, North Dakota; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Not available for comment on the court's decision, Tesoro says on its website that the company "works to assure Golden Eagle and its other refineries maintain outstanding safety records and operate in harmony with the environment."