Arco Fined $6,000, Faces a $50,000 Cleanup Bill for Oil Spill

Atlantic Richfield Co. was fined $6,000 Wednesday and will be billed nearly $50,000 for expenses incurred by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts in handling millions of gallons of oily waste that the firm’s Carson refinery improperly discharged directly into county sewers in May, sanitation officials said.

The discharge threatened explosions at the sanitation districts’ treatment plant in Carson and resulted in the dumping of 350 million gallons of inadequately treated sewage into Santa Monica Bay, officials added.

Arco’s spill “was disturbing” because it caused the districts to violate stringent federal and state standards governing ocean discharges for the first time, said Chuck Carry, chief engineer and general manager of the sanitation districts.

Disregarded Alarm

The spill occurred when employees at Arco’s Carson refinery disregarded and then turned off an alarm warning of the discharge at 2:30 a.m. on May 31, thinking it was a false alarm, a company report on the incident said.

When the waste reached the sewage treatment plant in Carson two hours later, an alarm was triggered there, and workers shut down the plant’s secondary treatment system for 14 hours.

“If we had ignored that alarm the same way Arco ignored it, the whole plant could have blown up,” sanitation districts’ spokesman Bob Miele said Wednesday.

An explosion might have occurred had the oily wastes been mixed in the secondary treatment area where pure oxygen is used in the treatment process, officials said.

Company’s Expense

Workers at the treatment plant rerouted flows through the plant, capturing almost all of the wastes, Miele said. The wastes were picked up in tanker trucks and returned to Arco--at the company’s expense--for proper disposal, he added.

Wednesday’s fine was the largest the sanitation districts can charge for a one-day violation.

Arco spokesman Al Greenstein said Wednesday that the company had received no formal notice from the county of either the fine or the expense billing. But he added, “This was an unfortunate accident, and the company has taken steps to assure there will be no reoccurrence.”