Unocal Blamed for Ailments : Environment: Residents who live next to crude-oil processing facility in Huntington Beach say it is the source of health problems.

Some angry and scared Huntington Harbour-area apartment residents who live next to a crude-oil processing plant are blaming it for body rashes, breathing difficulties and headaches they say they are suffering.

The plant’s owner, Unocal, on Thursday night sent representatives, including a company doctor, to meet with residents. Unocal officials told the residents they are concerned about the health complaints, but they denied that the plant is causing the problems.

Nonetheless, company officials said they would launch additional testing, adding that officials of the nearby Harbour View Elementary School has been told about the situation.

On Friday, Marilyn Koeller, principal of Harbour View, confirmed that Unocal had contacted school officials. But she said the school’s health coordinator has received no complaints from teachers or students.

Unocal refused repeated demands from residents at the Thursday meeting to shut down the plant until its safety is double-checked. That prompted an outburst from some in the audience.

“You’re giving us double talk,” one man said. “You’re lying to us!”

Dr. Mary McDaniel, a physician on the Unocal staff, attempted to ease the residents’ fears.

“I know you’re scared,” she said. “We don’t think there is a health problem. If we did, the facility wouldn’t be open.”

The processing plant, at 4541 Heil Ave., adjoins the Harbor Village apartment complex. The plant receives crude oil pumped underground from Unocal’s Platform Eva, just offshore of Huntington Beach. Unocal officials said the incoming, ocean-dredged crude is about three-fourths water. The processing plant, by a heating process, removes that water and then pumps the resultant crude via underground pipes to a series of mainland refineries.

The plant produces very low levels of toxic chemicals, such as benzene and toluene, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Charles Lambert, a Unocal toxicologist, said the plant produces about a pound of benzene a year, and that a service station produces about a pound of the same toxic chemical each week.

A spokeswoman with the air quality district said the agency has found no problems with the plant during routine inspections. The Huntington Beach Fire Department, which is responsible for monitoring oil field health and safety in the city, also has no adverse reports against the Unocal plant.

But residents said they have had trouble getting through to anyone in a regulatory agency who would listen to them or take them seriously. They said they therefore concentrated their complaints on Unocal.

The plant was built in 1963, when what is now western Huntington Beach was mostly open land. Unocal officials said that because of its then-remote location and because the plant had walls all around it, people at the time called it “Fort Apache.” The name stuck, and today, even though the area is heavily developed with expensive homes, the facility is still officially called Fort Apache by Unocal.

According to James H. Bray, a spokesman for Unocal, the company had received no health complaints until late last year. Bray said the number of complaints increased last spring. In response to the residents’ calls, Bray said, Unocal invited Harbor Village residents to a meeting at the nearby Meadowlark Country Club.

About 25 residents, including some mothers with infants, attended. Other Unocal representatives at the meeting included Susan L. Santos, a health consultant for Unocal; Bob Young, foreman-manager at the plant, and Randy Shipley, a community affairs specialist for the oil company.

Shipley apologized to the residents, saying that Unocal had not been prompt enough in responding to their increasing complaints.

“We’ve been slow in reacting,” he said.

One former apartment resident, Anoka Rashid, responded: “Why didn’t you do something last spring? Did you think we’d go away?”

Rashid, in a later interview, said she lived at Harbor Village from November to last August. She moved, she said, because of health problems, which she blamed on the Unocal plant.

“I was getting headaches, and my daughter was sick. I realized after eight months of living there that I was sick constantly.”

Unocal officials said that they will increase monitoring of emissions from the smokestack of the plant. Lambert said he hoped to hire an environmental-safety company for the monitoring work in about two weeks, and he estimated that the results would be known in about two months.

Young, the foreman-manager of the plant, told the residents that the air quality district, which is in charge of monitoring air pollution, inspects the plant at least once a year and has found no safety problems. Young said that following the flurry of health complaints, Unocal double-checked pipe fittings and valves and found no leaks.

He said there had been what he called “an incident” at the plant last February that briefly involved a malfunction. He said the plant automatically shut itself off, which it is designed to do, and that nothing more resulted than a lot of black smoke from the stack.

Young also said a ground-level pipe once leaked at the plant. He said that the leak resulted in only about a barrel of crude oil spilling onto a paved surface.

Lambert told the audience that the Unocal plant posts a routine warning sign about dangerous chemicals, as required by the state’s Proposition 65.

Many in the audience said their fears had not been allayed.

Rashid, as a parting shot to the Unocal officials, said: “A lot of people have not heard about this problem. But by the time I’m finished, everyone in Huntington Beach will know about it.”

At Harbor Village apartments on Friday morning, resident Tim Harvey, 34, stood outside his home and said he and his family have been having a series of health problems that worry him.

“My wife and I have been having major, and I mean really major, headaches,” he said. “And I’ve been coughing more than I ever have before.”

Harvey said his daughter, Ashley, 4, recently had bronchitis, and that his son, Zachary, 11, “is coughing constantly.”

Looking at the Unocal plant wall, about 20 yards from his front door, Harvey said: “I’m very concerned now. I didn’t realize the kind of problems that existed here.”