Torrance Spurns Draft Report OKing Refinery Acid Use : Safety: Council votes 5-0 to reject an air quality district report that favors allowing the Mobil Oil refinery and others to keep using hydrofluoric acid if they take more precautions. Council members insist toxic chemical should be banned.

Furious that their representatives on a regional hydrogen fluoride task force were not given a chance to contribute to a draft report, Torrance City Council members Tuesday rejected the document, which suggests that the highly toxic chemical should not be banned.

Council members called the draft report by the staff of the South Coast Air Quality Management District premature, inappropriate and presumptuous, and voted in favor of an interim ban on bulk use of the chemical.

“Why was (the report) pushed without having all of us involved?” Councilman Bill Applegate said. “It just doesn’t ring very right. There are so many holes. . . . It stinks.”

The chemical, known in its liquid state as hydrofluoric acid, is used at Mobil Oil Corp.’s Torrance refinery to make high-octane gasoline. Councilman Dan Walker is pushing a local ballot initiative that would force Mobil to stop using the chemical in the city.

Walker called the district’s draft report “overwhelmingly flawed.”

The council voted 5-0 to reject the report and urge members of the task force, formed two years ago to study hydrogen fluoride, to recommend banning bulk use of the chemical in Los Angeles until scientific evidence shows that it can be used safely. (Councilmen George Nakano and Tim Mock were absent.)

According to a cover letter released with the draft report, AQMD staff members did not poll the members of the task force but rather “assumed (they) would select” the option of improving safety equipment rather than banning hydrogen fluoride outright. The three Torrance city staff members on the task force said they were never consulted about the draft’s conclusions.

The draft report recommends that the five Los Angeles County industrial plants using hydrogen fluoride be allowed to continue using it if they take additional safety measures.

But a Torrance staff report presented to the council Tuesday sharply criticized the 75-page district report for failing to consider earthquake damage, which could knock out crucial water-spray safety systems; the dangers of transporting the chemical through urban areas, and the considerable lag time involved in installing new safety equipment. It said the district is relying too heavily on an acid-evacuation safety system that has yet to be completed anywhere.

“The (district) report imparts no sense of urgency. It imposes no deadlines, even for changes it admits are necessary,” the city report said.

Rather than defending the district report, however, AQMD staff members said the City Council’s comments were exactly what they had been trying to elicit.

Faced with “a group of professional, technical people who appeared reluctant to make a policy decision,” staff members wrote the draft document “in order to give them something to shoot at,” district spokesman Tom Eichhorn said. “It is about as tentative and far from a final action as one could get.”

Torrance’s comments, along with those of other task force members, will be incorporated in a final recommendation to be approved by the full 45-member task force and sent to the AQMD board.

The final recommendation may ultimately contradict the draft report, Eichhorn said.

“Our effort with the draft was to draw this to a conclusion,” he said.

Although Mayor Katy Geissert expressed frustration with the way the draft report was prepared, she welcomed indications that the district staff is willing to make changes and additions.

“I get the impression that we haven’t seen the end of this,” Geissert said. “I am not ready to totally give up on the AQMD staff.”

NEXT STEP

Members of the South Coast Air Quality Management District task force on the industrial use of hydrogen fluoride have until Jan. 19 to respond to the draft report, which may then be debated at a full meeting of the group. The final report is scheduled to go to the AQMD board on March 2.