Council Scored on Measure A Defeat
The Torrance City Council members, minus Dan Walker, are to be congratulated on their great victory! They managed to deliver to the Mobil refinery the major missing piece of evidence that Mobil needs to defend itself against Torrance’s public nuisance lawsuit: an overwhelming 3-to-1 mandate from the people of Torrance that the use of hydrofluoric acid and other toxic chemicals is not sufficiently troublesome to warrant immediate remedial action.
Mobil has always possessed strong defenses to Torrance’s public nuisance lawsuit. The Mobil refinery has been in continuous operation at its present site since 1929. The refinery has used hydrofluoric acid since 1944 without hydrofluoric fumes escaping the refinery grounds. The statistical analyses of governmental regulatory agencies demonstrate that Mobil’s safety record is roughly equal to industrywide standards. Furthermore, public nuisance claims are always balanced against the social and economic utility of the business involved, and the Torrance refinery is Mobil’s only West Coast facility. The refinery employs numerous persons and produces a product that is essential to the continued economic viability of California and essential to the defense of the nation.
These are powerful arguments, but they could have been overcome if the city of Torrance were able to demonstrate overwhelmingly that the persons of this community had come to regard the refinery’s current methods of operation as a threat to life and limb. Thanks to the Torrance City Council, minus Dan Walker, this is now impossible.
The Torrance City Council became obsessed with the consequences of Measure A’s passage upon the public nuisance lawsuit, but the council never contemplated the consequences of Measure A’s overwhelming defeat upon the lawsuit. Nor did the council contemplate the consequences of the measure’s overwhelming defeat upon Assemblyman Curtis Tucker’s (D-Inglewood) pending legislation that would impose a statewide ban on the use of hydrofluoric acid in populated areas. Assemblyman Tucker has already acknowledged that Torrance’s rejection of Measure A will be used by colleagues to fight his bill. Politicians know how to read 3-to-1 votes. AQMD bureaucrats know how read 3-to-1 votes. Despite claims to the contrary, courts know how to read 3-to-1 votes.
Six of the seven members of the Torrance City Council have been saying for months that the Dan Walker initiative was about politics rather than safety. Ironically, they turned out to be correct. Torrance City Council members became so unnerved that one of their members breached an unwritten protocol against unilateral action, that they turned the election into a referendum on the issue of the combined credibility of the mayor, City Council, city attorney, and city treasurer versus the solitary credibility of one lone council member, Dan Walker.
The mayor and council squandered their political capital punishing a maverick member of the council, and in so doing the mayor and council delivered their supposed foe, Mobil, an overwhelming mandate from the people of Torrance to continue doing business as usual. The mayor and council were unable to discipline themselves sufficiently to accept that passage of Dan Walker’s Measure A, with all (its) perceived faults and complications, was far better for them, their lawsuit, and the city of Torrance than the defeat of Dan Walker’s Measure A.
Mobil Oil and its lawyers must be having a good laugh.
CRAIG KESSLER
Torrance
