Chevron to Stop Dumping Waste Near Shoreline

In an action that removes the last major source of industrial pollution in the swimming areas of the Santa Monica Bay, Chevron USA Products Co. will stop its daily dumping of treated refinery waste water less than 100 yards off El Segundo.

The oil refinery--currently the only discharger that dumps into the bay’s “near-shore waters”--spews out 7.9 million gallons of chemical-filled waste water daily, posing what the environmental community calls a serious health threat to the 500,000 swimmers and surfers a year who use the area.

The company will announce today that it will extend its waste water pipeline two-thirds of a mile from the beach within a year. Refinery discharge dumped that far into the bay will not affect recreational beach users. Chevron will spend at least $2 million on the operation, which involves revamping an unused series of pipelines that stretch from the refinery to a tanker mooring.

Michael Fitts, senior project attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the change a “very significant” improvement in the health of Santa Monica Bay.

Chevron “is the last industrial discharger into a heavily used recreational area of the ocean,” Fitts said. “Now we can be sure that we’re swimming in the ocean, not in waste water. . . . It’s a great day for swimmers and surfers in the Santa Monica Bay.”

Unlike sewage spills--which occur only several weeks each year and trigger beach closures--Chevron’s dumping of treated waste water occurs daily, just offshore from Scattergood Beach, a popular swimming and surfing site.

Despite the frequency, Chevron spokesman Rod Spackman downplayed the health risks to swimmers and surfers. He said the discharge into the bay has met federal standards all but three times in the last seven years.

But environmentalists contend that swimmers and surfers at Scattergood and nearby El Porto beaches are “inside an undiluted waste-water plume” from the refinery, which causes discomfort and could pose health risks.

Although there has been no thorough survey of exposure to swimmers and surfers, some have complained of dizziness, headaches, nausea and skin irritation after contact with water at the discharge site, said Mark Gold, staff scientist for Heal the Bay, part of a coalition of environmental groups that worked with Chevron to hammer out a new discharge plan.

“Maybe three weeks a year we have beach closures because of sewage,” Gold said. “This is more of a human health issue. We have heard numerous anecdotes where swimmers say they see the plume, they smell the odor, they feel uncomfortable. This will take care of all that.”

Chevron’s discharge includes water has had “the potential of coming into contact with oil and grease or any of the chemicals used” in refining, Spackman said. Water used for cleaning and irrigation also is dumped.

The chemicals that make their way from the refinery into the bay include petroleum hydrocarbons, which are potential carcinogens, and heavy metals.

Still, Spackman said that his company, the refining and marketing arm of oil giant Chevron Corp., is “very confident that our facility has not and does not today pose a health risk. At the same time, it was also important to us to address a concern where people had a genuine interest to move the discharge from the shoreline.”

Chevron has been discharging into the Santa Monica Bay since the 1920s, decades before the federal Clean Water Act and the California Ocean Plan were passed in the 1970s. Since then, Chevron and other dischargers have had to undergo a permit process and comply with health standards in order to dump into the ocean.

When Chevron’s permit was renewed in 1992, a coalition of environmental groups--the Natural Resources Defense Council, Heal the Bay, the Surfrider Foundation and the American Oceans Campaign--appealed the renewal, arguing that it violated state laws protecting recreational use of the ocean.

Now that Chevron has voluntarily agreed to discharge away from the surf zone, the appeal will be dropped, the organizations said.