Chevron Will Help Pay for Canyon to End Pollution Suit

Chevron USA Inc. has agreed to pay $100,000 toward the purchase of Malibu’s Solstice Canyon as the final settlement of a Sierra Club lawsuit over illegal pollutant discharges into Santa Monica Bay.

The settlement, which follows an earlier record agreement to pay $1.5 million in civil penalties, concludes nearly two years of litigation over what had been repeated pollution discharge violations at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery.

Under a consent decree filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, the $100,000 will be paid to the Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco-based nonprofit land conservation group that is seeking to acquire for public use the pristine canyon that was once part of the Roberts Ranch.

The trust will use the $100,000 to buy the final portion of the property, which contains one of the only year-round creeks that drains into the Pacific from Malibu Canyon. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which is acquiring the property from the trust, plans to open the canyon to the public on June 29.

The Sierra Club sued Chevron in 1985 and the Environmental Protection Agency filed a second suit in 1986. Both suits alleged that Chevron polluted Santa Monica Bay by dumping thousands of pounds of oil, grease, ammonia and other pollutants in excess of its permit discharge limits.

The $1.5-million civil penalty that Chevron agreed to pay in January as settlement of the EPA suit was the largest such fine imposed on an industrial facility in the last decade. The Sierra Club settlement extends that agreement to cover violations that occurred during 1980 and 1981, a period not covered by the EPA lawsuit.

“We are very pleased with this settlement, which accomplishes both goals of (the) lawsuits. . . ,” Sierra Club attorney Deborah Reames said. “First, the pollution we sued to stop has stopped. Second, Chevron’s fine is substantial enough to convince all dischargers that it does not pay to pollute.”

Chevron officials said the company more than a year ago completed a $42-million waste water diversion project that has virtually eliminated the discharge problem. The refinery had a perfect compliance record with its discharge permit limits in 1987, and its treated wastes now comprise less than 0.5% of the pollutants discharged into Santa Monica Bay, the company said.

“Today, these added systems collect both the storm water runoff and dry weather flow and store it for treatment. No other industrial facility or municipality adjacent to Santa Monica Bay meets this high standard,” Dave O’Reilly, general manager of the refinery, said in a statement announcing the settlement.

Jim Dodson, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, said the Solstice Canyon settlement will have long-term benefits because once the Trust for Public Land sells the property to the state, the money will be recycled to acquire additional lands in the Santa Monica Mountains area.

Marty Rosen of the Trust for Public Land said the proposal “will provide public access for Angelenos and the greater Southern California area to a remarkable area of natural diversity that is a gem, and invisible until you get there.”