SEAL BEACH : Reopening Unocal Plant Stirs Debate

The relentless winter storms of 1983 that flooded streets and decimated the city’s historic pier have left a lasting mark on Seal Beach.

Eleven years later, the City Council will take up an unlikely byproduct of the storms when it decides tonight whether Unocal can reopen an industrial plant at Marina Drive and 1st Street.

The 20-year-old plant separates oil and water that is pumped onshore from a group of wells off the coast of Seal Beach. It was closed in 1983 when storms destroyed the wells.

Now the wells have been repaired, and Unocal wants to reopen the plant.

But residents who live around the facility oppose the move, fearing the plant will flood their neighborhood with toxic emissions.

Unocal officials deny the operation will create environmental problems, and the Planning Commission seemed to agree last year when it approved the company’s proposal.

Residents appealed the decision to the City Council, which will take up the issue tonight in a meeting expected to be long and heated.

“This is a heavy industrial site in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” said John O’Neil, who lives about a block from the plant. “It just doesn’t belong here. You can’t mitigate the location no matter how high you build the walls.”

O’Neil and other residents fear the plant will emit pollution into the air, perhaps the equivalent of 150 more cars daily driving through the neighborhood.

“Right now, you have zero air pollution out of the facility,” he said. “No matter what you do, you are going to have a degradation of the air quality.”

Residents want the council to at least delay a vote on the project until Unocal completes a full environmental impact report.

Unocal officials said they are willing to provide more data. “Let’s do an EIR. But let’s make sure at the outset that we cover all the topics the residents care about,” said Unocal spokeswoman Janet McClintock. “We want to be complete.”

Previous studies have found that oil-water separation plants do not harm the environment, McClintock said.

A study of a similar plant in Huntington Beach measured air quality both outside the facility and inside nearby homes. It found no change in air quality when the plant was operating, McClintock said.

Unocal held a public meeting on the issue in December, but the company has had little luck in convincing some residents of the plant’s safety.

“It doesn’t belong in this area,” O’Neil said.