Chevron Agrees to Pay Fine of $8 Million : Environment: It admits to repeatedly dumping excessive amounts of toxic wastes off Ventura County during the 1980s.
Chevron U.S.A. agreed Monday to pay an $8-million fine for violating the federal Clean Water Act by repeatedly dumping excessive amounts of oil, grease and other toxic wastes off the coast of Ventura County during the 1980s.
If the settlement is accepted by a federal judge in Los Angeles, the fine would be the third-largest criminal penalty assessed against a company for violating environmental statutes, a federal prosecutor said.
Under terms of the settlement, Chevron agreed to plead guilty to 65 misdemeanor violations of the Clean Water Act from 1982 to 1987, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Gary S. Lincenberg.
The violations took place on one of Chevron’s oil drilling platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, Platform Grace, about 12 miles southwest of Ventura. The company admitted that it knowingly and repeatedly discharged toxic material from the platform--and tried to cover up the illegal discharges by concealing samples of tainted water, Lincenberg said.
As part of its settlement agreement with the government, Chevron will pay $6.5 million in criminal fines and another $1.5 million in civil penalties, he added.
“We’re very happy,” said Lincenberg. “We got everything that we wanted.”
A U.S. District Court judge will be selected next week to hear the settlement agreement, said Lincenberg, one of four federal prosecutors who oversaw the four-year criminal investigation.
The judge is expected to review the agreement within the next 60 days, Lincenberg said. Chevron President Raymond Galvin will be required to personally appear to enter the guilty pleas, he said.
“We are extremely embarrassed and disappointed by this,” said Chevron spokesman Michael Marcy. “We have learned a very painful and expensive lesson.
“And we are determined to do everything in our power to make sure something like this never happens again,” Marcy said.
All operating deficiencies on the platform have been corrected since October, 1987, Marcy said. Chevron has eight platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, but only half are operational. The remaining four have long ceased operations and are in the process of being dismantled.
Marcy said Platform Grace began oil-pumping operations in 1982. He said it was a year later before officials realized that the platform’s waste-water treatment system was not working properly.
He said the system failed to adequately treat waste water that had been mixed with crude oil before dumping the water back into the ocean. The levels of oil and grease in the water exceeded permissible limits allowed under Chevron’s discharge permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Maggie Hooper, an environmental engineer with the agency, said there was no specific evidence that the oil and grease discharges had caused any significant environmental damage. Hooper said she last inspected the platform last month and found no operating violations on the rig. She said it was only in recent years that a policy was established ensuring that offshore rigs would be inspected twice a year.
Lincenberg compared the settlement to the record fine of $125 million paid by the Exxon Corp. for environmental damage caused by the massive oil spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in March, 1989.
He said the second-largest settlement with the federal government occurred on March 25, when Rockwell International agreed to pay $18.5 million and plead guilty to illegal disposal of radioactive waste and environmental contamination that forced the 1989 shutdown of its Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site outside Denver.
