Contra Costa County Residents Could Soon Get More Alerts for Refinery Incidents

On Thanksgiving morning in 2022, Martinez residents awoke to a powdery substance containing high levels of heavy metals, blanketing everything outside.

The release of toxic materials began the night before, but the Martinez Refining Company (MRC) did not activate the county’s community warning system, which would have notified those who signed up for the opt-in system. It was just one of 272 releases of hazardous materials that occurred in a 13-month period from the four fuel refineries in Contra Costa County.

Now, on the heels of a grand jury report finding that the county’s alerts are failing to reach most residents for less-impactful chemical releases, officials are taking action. At its Tuesday meeting, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors will vote to move forward with plans for a more robust warning system in response to the grand jury’s recommendations.

For people like Heidi Taylor, the change would be a long time coming. She was among many who packed their local city council chambers after the Thanksgiving 2022 incident, and she went on to form the group Healthy Martinez to hold the refinery accountable and continue to push for better warnings from Contra Costa County Health and Human Services and the sheriff.

“I want to be notified every time there is a flaring or any kind of release,” Taylor said. “And what’s been missing from the community warning system has been accountability. We know they’re releasing things. We are tired of living in this beautiful community and being showered with all kinds of toxic dust, toxic air. We deserve better.”

The Contra Costa grand jury report in June found the county has no way to directly notify residents of smaller instances of hazardous releases from refineries, such as flaring events that last under 20 minutes. Flaring, the intentional burning of hydrocarbon gasses to prevent larger malfunctions, represents the most common form of release from refineries in Contra Costa County.

Instead, the county’s current community warning system sends people alerts for only the most dangerous releases — but only about 30% of residents have signed up for it, the grand jury found. That system allows residents to pick which chemical facilities in the county they want notifications from.

The proposal recommended by the grand jury would modify the current system that notifies the public through phone calls, text messages and emails to include Level One releases, or those not expected to have health consequences outside the refinery.

In a letter to the grand jury, the Board of Supervisors said that the recommendation has not been implemented, but the health department plans to bring the board its plans for doing so before the end of the year.

Taylor said she appreciates the improvements but wants a more rigorous warning system in place like the one PBF Energy — the owner of MRC — has for its Torrance facility. There, residents are notified every time a pollutant goes over a certain threshold. Taylor said the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is working on a similar requirement, but that’s taking some time.

“We are constantly in a holding pattern, waiting, waiting for things to be the way they should have been a long time ago,” she said. “I’m tired of waiting. I want that information now, and I want it publicly accessible.”

A bill in the California Legislature, SB 674, would go further, requiring all refineries to have air monitoring systems and requiring notice to the community when pollution goes over a threshold.

Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, who represents the area that includes Chevron’s Richmond refinery, said the county is working on letting people customize which events they’re alerted to in real time.

“People deserve to be notified if they see an industrial release and wonder what’s in question, what’s going on, even if there’s no off-site health impact,” Gioia said. “But if there’s a very minor flaring incident that you can’t see or smell, and there’s no impacts off-site, then we didn’t want those all pushed out because it’s like crying wolf.”

Gioia said the health department, which oversees hazardous materials, is working on guidance for the alerts for the sheriff’s department, which oversees the county’s warning system.

Also, in response to the grand jury’s recommendations, the county increased the number of employees in its hazardous materials department, adding a few specialists and putting a toxicologist on retainer to help the public better understand potential health effects when the next release occurs.