Chevron Plant in El Segundo Tops AQMD List of Pollutant Producers

When it comes to industrial air pollution, the South Bay more than holds its own.

Consider the list released this week of 1988’s top producers of reactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, two key pollutants that react in sunlight to form ozone, a main ingredient in smog.

According to the ranking by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, South Bay plants made up eight of the top 10 producers of reactive hydrocarbons and six of the top 10 sources of nitrogen oxides in the four-county South Coast Air Basin.

The No. 1 producer in both categories was Chevron’s giant El Segundo oil refinery, which in 1988 released more than 1,400 tons of reactive hydrocarbons and 3,700 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air.

For air quality officials, the South Bay’s showing came as no surprise.

“Many of your major refineries and power plants are located in that area, and they put out a lot of emissions,” said Wayne Zwiacher, an engineer with the Air Quality Management District. “They’re big plants.”

Officials from several companies listed in the rankings said the lists are misleading because they do not include all major sources of air pollution.

The annual rankings, based on industry-supplied data reviewed by the AQMD, cover 30,000 so-called stationary air polluters, ranging from oil refineries to dry-cleaning stores.

They do not take into account pollution from the estimated 8 million motor vehicles in the South Coast Air Basin, which encompasses Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties and the non-desert portion of San Bernardino County.

According to the AQMD, motor vehicles churn out more than two-thirds of the region’s reactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.

“While we recognize these companies are the largest sources of industrial pollution, the biggest culprit in the basin’s air pollution is the automobile,” James Lents, the AQMD’s executive officer, acknowledged in a statement accompanying the rankings.

In the ranking of industrial air polluters, eight South Bay plants were among the top 10 sources of reactive hydrocarbons, which are produced by the incomplete combustion of gasoline and by fumes from fuels, paints and dry-cleaning solvents.

The plants and their rankings: Chevron’s El Segundo refinery (1); Arco’s Carson refinery (2); the Shell (3), Texaco (5) and Unocal (7) refineries in Wilmington; the Trendwest Furniture factory in Carson (8); Mobil’s Torrance refinery (9), and the Reynolds Metals plant in Torrance (10).

Two other South Bay facilities were listed among the top 20--Northrop Aircraft’s Hawthorne plant, ranked 16th, and Ultramar’s Wilmington refinery, 20th.

Local plants also figured prominently among the top producers of nitrogen oxides, which stem from fuel combustion in engines, power plants and industrial boilers.

Six of the top 10 were South Bay facilities that figured among the top 10 reactive hydrocarbon producers--the Chevron (1), Arco (3), Unocal (7), Texaco (8), Shell (9) and Mobil oil (10) refineries.

Two other local facilities, the Southern California Edison plants in Redondo Beach and El Segundo, were 11th and 13th, respectively.

Companies at or near the top of the AQMD’s air pollution lists downplayed the importance of the rankings. Several pointed out that their plants meet all state and local air quality standards and are successfully reducing emissions of the two pollutants cited by the AQMD.

Chevron spokesman Rod Spackman complained that the only reason his company’s El Segundo plant heads the AQMD list is that it is so large, accounting for a quarter of the refining capacity in Southern California.

Company studies show that for each barrel of oil refined, Chevron and Arco actually generate less air pollution than other refineries in the region, Spackman said. Of the $85 million Chevron invested in its plant in 1989, he said, $43 million of it was aimed at controlling pollution.

And although Chevron’s refinery is the region’s largest single source of reactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, Spackman added, it still accounts for less than 1% of the emissions of each pollutant.

“We recognize we have a responsibility to reduce emissions, but we see the problem as a collective one for the community as a whole, not just for us,” Spackman said.

Arco charged that the AQMD list creates the erroneous impression that industry is the main source of smog.

“Arco believes that publication of a polluters’ list by (AQMD) does nothing but mislead the public into believing that the biggest enemy in the war against polluted air is the local refinery or factory,” the company said in a statement issued Tuesday.

But AQMD officials bridle at the suggestion that their agency should refrain from identifying the single-biggest sources of air pollution, even if their share of air contamination overall is not large.

“No matter when we say someone is polluting the air, they say, ‘I’m just polluting a little bit; my contribution is insignificant,’ ” said AQMD spokesman Bill Kelly. “With that attitude, we’re not going to make any progress.”

However, the AQMD acknowledges that the region’s top polluters are not necessarily the worst violators of air pollution laws and regulations. Among the worst violators, they say, are small and medium-sized businesses.

“Gas stations, for example, produce twice as much air pollution as all of the basin’s refineries,” said Diana Love, the AQMD’s chief prosecutor. “And paint fumes from homes as well as businesses constitute 11 times as much pollution as from refineries.”

To illustrate the point, the AQMD this week also released a list of the 20 companies that last year paid or agreed to pay the largest penalties for air pollution violations.

Leading the list was a group of businesses that operate more than 160 service stations in the four-county air basin--California Target Enterprises Inc., Alameda Management Inc., P&M; Service Stations and Pronto Marketing.

The group, headed by businessman Gary Lazar, agreed to pay $355,000 after being cited for failing to maintain vapor recovery systems on gas tanks and pumps.

SOUTH BAY FIRMS CITED BY AQMD

The AQMD this week released a list of the 20 companies that last year paid or agreed to pay the largest penalties for air pollution violations. Four of the top 20 penalties were the result of violations by South Bay industrial plants or businesses. Here are the South Bay violators and their rankings.

4. A $150,000 penalty being paid by the May Co. department store chain stemmed from the failure of the company’s Redondo Beach and Costa Mesa stores to submit an employee car-pooling plan to the AQMD.

7. Plastiglide Manufacturing Corp., a plastic and metal components manufacturer in Hawthorne, paid a $50,000 penalty after being cited for excessive hydrocarbon emissions from a painting facility.

12. Douglas Aircraft Co. has agreed to pay $30,000 after being issued notices involving excess vapor pressure in solvents and operating pollution-producing equipment at its Torrance plant without permits.

15. Unocal settled with the AQMD over numerous permit violations and emissions of nitrogen oxides at its Wilmington refinery by paying $27,250.

TOP POLLUTERS LISTED: B2