Chevron’s Wastewater Plan Under Attack : Environment: A permit being considered by the state would allow the refinery to continue releasing treated water close to shore in Santa Monica Bay.

Environmental groups are criticizing a proposal to allow the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo to continue releasing 7.9 million gallons of treated wastewater daily into Santa Monica Bay within 100 yards of the shore.

On Monday, the State Regional Water Quality Control Board is scheduled to consider a recommendation by its staff to renew a five-year permit authorizing the discharges.

The new permit would require more rigorous cleansing of the water, some of which is used in the refining process and carries oily pollutants. But critics say the new conditions do not make up for the location of the discharges--within 100 yards of the El Porto area, a popular swimming and surfing spot.

“The discharges are absolutely too close to shore,” said Lisa Weil, policy director for American Oceans Campaign, a Santa Monica environmental group. “It’s grossly inappropriate.”

Said Mark Gold of the Santa Monica group Heal the Bay: “It’s a human health hazard. It’s outrageous.”

Environmental groups say they will urge the board Monday to require Chevron to extend its ocean disposal pipe farther into Santa Monica Bay or to reroute the wastewater to the nearby Hyperion sewage treatment plant.

But Robert Ghirelli, director of the water quality control board’s staff, said that because there is no evidence the discharges represent a health risk, he will recommend that the permit be renewed.

“We have no technical basis upon which to force Chevron to extend the pipe or pump to Hyperion,” Ghirelli said. “There is no data to indicate that the discharge has an adverse effect on water quality in the bay.”

Under debate is a federal wastewater discharge permit issued by the water quality control board. Chevron points out that its wastewater treatment has improved dramatically since the mid-1980s, when the refinery’s poor handling of ocean-bound water repeatedly ran afoul of regulatory agencies.

In 1986 alone, water quality officials say, Chevron was cited for 880 violations of the Clean Water Act and fined $1.5 million by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

But the officials said the company’s water quality record has improved dramatically since then because it built a new treatment plant. And stricter state ocean discharge standards required by the new permit will ensure that intensive treatment of the wastewater will continue, regulators say.

Chevron says health risk and water pollution tests it has performed show no danger to the public. Said company spokesman Rod Spackman: “All of the scientific data clearly shows that we do not pose a health-based impact to people using that area or to the marine environment.”

Heal the Bay, which opposes Chevron’s discharges near shore, says the oil company’s studies were cursory at best. “The study was a farce,” Gold said. “There isn’t an epidemiologist in the country who would stand behind that study. It’s insulting.”

Gold acknowledges that the 7.9 million gallons of wastewater that Chevron pumps seaward each day is intensively treated and is far less than the 310 million gallons a day that Hyperion discharges.

But Hyperion’s wastewater, he points out, is pumped through a long underwater pipe and is disposed of five miles offshore. Gold and other environmentalists cite a water quality board finding that during ebb tides, Chevron’s wastewater moves south through the El Porto surf break.

“I was out there diving recently, and when I came out, my wet suit smelled as if I had dipped it in diesel oil,” said Tim Hunter of Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group made up of surfers.

Spackman said Chevron considers extension of the disposal pipe or diversion of the wastewater to Hyperion “not practical and financially unacceptable.” Either project would cost $10 million, he says.

Ghirelli said the water board cannot compel Chevron to spend such sums unless there is serious scientific evidence that the refinery’s treated wastewater represents a threat to human health or marine life.

“To make that a requirement of the permit, we would need the scientific data,” Ghirelli said.