Torrance Defends Changes in Safety Pact With Mobil

Bristling at claims that they secretly weakened a much-praised safety pact, Torrance officials are defending their decision to alter the rules under which the Mobil Oil Corp. refinery would have to stop using toxic hydrofluoric acid.

“We have done nothing in secret,” Mayor Dee Hardison announced Tuesday after the Torrance City Council heard a lengthy report on the status of its 1990 safety pact with Mobil.

Torrance officials prepared that report in response to criticism that the city and Mobil privately modified that pact just months before the year-end deadline for a key report on the safety of hydrofluoric acid.

The City Council agreed to the Sept. 30 change behind closed doors because it was considered a matter of litigation, city officials have said. It was first reported by newspapers last week.

Some environmentalists have charged that the change will make it easier for Mobil to continue using the acid, which has been ranked as one of the most dangerous chemicals used in the Los Angeles Basin. Tests have found that the acid can form a dense, ground-hugging fog potentially lethal for miles.

The 1990 pact was devised after the city brought a public-nuisance lawsuit against Mobil, and originally called for the oil giant to stop using the acid by the end of 1997 unless it could find a safer form by the end of this month.

But the city recently agreed to allow Mobil to continue using “HF” as long as a study of a newly modified form of the acid--due by Dec. 31--shows it is safer than the chief alternative: sulfuric acid.

“We wanted to make sure that whatever was done at the refinery was the safest alternative,” said Michael Leslie, an attorney for the city.

In fact, it was the city--not Mobil--that initially suggested reopening the language governing hydrofluoric acid, Leslie said. And Ernest Getto of the law firm Latham & Watkins, which represents Mobil, said cities commonly ask industry to do risk analyses such as the one called for by the new language.

But at the Tuesday meeting, Torrance resident Craig Kessler criticized the decision to change the rules.

“It appears they’ve knocked the legs out from under the cornerstone of the agreement,” Kessler said.

A court-supervised safety adviser is to issue a report by Dec. 31 on whether Mobil can continue using the acid. The city and Mobil then have 30 days to make comments, officials said. But the safety adviser has been instructed by the retired judge overseeing the pact not to talk to the media.