Mobil Agrees Its Refinery Tainted Ground Water

Mobil Oil Corp. has acknowledged publicly for the first time that its Torrance refinery is responsible for part of a huge plume of gasoline-tainted ground water that stretches at least three-fourths of a mile from its plant, and has agreed to participate in a cleanup effort.

A spokesman for Mobil, which has spent $3 million over three years to define the problem, said the company could not estimate how high the cost will climb or how many years the cleanup will take.

The oil company--already pumping nearly pure gasoline from atop the water table beneath the refinery--has also agreed to install a barrier of wells to block the flow of contaminated water from its property, the company confirmed Wednesday.

Accepts Responsibility

The company accepted responsibility for part of the pollution in recent letters to the city and a state regulatory agency, although it has yet to find the specific source of the gasoline among its many tanks and pipes.

Mobil now believes that gasoline leaks at its tank farm in eastern Torrance not only deposited 2.4 million gallons of fuel into shallow ground-water pockets and a regional aquifer but also spread dissolved hydrocarbons southeast of the refinery, spokesman Greg Munakata said.

The pollution poses no threat of explosion and has been found only in water basins not used for drinking in the Torrance area, he said. Mobil has tested drinking water aquifers beneath the contaminated basins and found no pollution, Munakata said.

Nonetheless, test wells show that a toxic plume up to 1,000 feet wide stretches at least 4,000 feet from the tank farm at Van Ness Avenue and Del Amo Boulevard south to Torrance Boulevard. The plume underlies the city’s largest redevelopment project, the $200-million American Honda Motor Co. national headquarters now under construction.

Mobil accepts responsibility for the northern 500 feet of the plume. And, Munakata said, if more tests “tell us that we have a greater responsibility, then we’ll accept it.”

Munakata said Mobil expects the Regional Water Quality Control Board to eventually conclude that several other companies share responsibility for the contamination, which consists mostly of highly toxic chemicals found in gasoline.

Other Sources Discovered

But state water engineers and city officials said they think Mobil is responsible for nearly all of the plume, even though two other sources of the pollution have also been discovered in recent months.

Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert said Mobil’s position is hardly a large step forward. In fact, she said, the city is looking at its legal options because of the slowness of Mobil’s response.

“It’s a recognition of what appears to be the obvious,” she said. “None of this has moved at the rate expected.”

Torrance filed suit against the refinery in April in an attempt to have it declared a public nuisance and subject to city regulation. The city maintains that the refinery’s use of deadly hydrofluoric acid and its history of fires, explosions and illegal air emissions justify city intervention. Mobil has countersued, saying that the refinery is safe.

Four Years of Tests

Mobil’s acknowledgement of responsibility for part of the plume comes more than four years after the regional water board directed Mobil and 14 other refineries in Los Angeles County to conduct tests to determine the extent of ground-water pollution under their facilities.

Last year, the water board’s chief refinery engineer, Jim Ross, said water pollution at Mobil had led to “the largest off-site migration” of any of the refineries. The board then ordered Mobil to pump gasoline from beneath its refinery and to come up with a comprehensive plan for cleaning up the plume by this spring.

“There had been some concern that Mobil wasn’t owning up to the problems that were being detected off-site,” Ross said. “I wouldn’t say they’re rushing to achieve the fastest possible cleanup. But to say they aren’t cooperating is totally inaccurate.”

Torrance Councilman Dan Walker, also a member of the regional water board and a vocal critic of the refinery, said he has been assured by state engineers that “things are proceeding in a satisfactory manner, and I have to place my reliance on them.”

Ross said Mobil’s proposal to build a wall of wells to pump and clean contaminated water at the border of the refinery answers the state’s greatest concern at this point--the migration of gasoline to the plume. “Once they’ve accomplished this, then it makes sense to go after the off-site cleanup,” he said.

Munakata said Mobil plans to begin drilling the barrier wells this fall and to complete the project next June. Meanwhile, it will also continue testing of tanks and pipelines to try to pinpoint the source of the leaks. Tests over the last two years have detected only two dime-sized holes in two tanks, he said, probably not enough to account for the seepage.

It will also drill many new wells to confirm its contention that other companies, including a now-defunct plating company, share in the blame. “We know there’s gasoline contamination in that plume,” Munakata said. “We also know there is contamination of industrial solvents that the refinery hasn’t used and are not present in the northern portion of that plume. And we know there are other sources of gasoline contained in the southern portion of that plume.”

Test wells have found levels of benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, thousands of times higher than the state standard for drinking water in the plume. High levels of other toxic chemicals, including toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene, have also been found.