1

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1 Environmental Protection Agency

2

3

4

5 Public Hearing on

6 Proposed Petroleum Refinery Sector Risk and

7 Technology Review and New Source

8 Performance Standards

9

10

11

12 9:09 a.m.

13 Wednesday, July 16, 2014

14

15 Banning's Landing Community Center

16 100 E. Water Street

17 Wilmington, California 90744

18

19

20

21

22
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1 EPA Panel:

2 PENNY LASSITER, Panel Chairman; and

3 Group Leader, Refining and Chemicals Group

4 Sector Policies and Programs Division,

5 Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards

6 BRENDA SHINE,

7 Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards

8 SHAHEERAH KELLY, Region 9 Office

9 ELIZABETH ADAMS, Region 9 Office

10

11 INTERPRETERS:

12 MAYRA CARILLO

13 VERONICA HERNANDEZ

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22
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1 C O N T E N T S

2 PAGE

3 DAVID FRIEDMAN,

4 American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers 11

5 HOWARD FELDMAN, American Petroleum Institute 18

6 MICHAEL WANG,

7 Western States Petroleum Association 24

8 DAVID CAMPBELL, United Steelworkers 30

9 TAMANNA RAHMAN, American Lung Association 36

10 FLAVIO MERCADO,

11 Coalition for a Safe Environment 43

12 SOFIA CARRILLO (via interpreter),

13 Community Organizer, Wilmington, California 46

14 MARBELLA CARRILLO (via interpreter),

15 Resident of Wilmington, California 50

16 EVELYN KNIGHT,

17 Resident of West Long Beach, California 51

18 SHABAKA HERU, Society for Positive Action 54

19 RICARDO PULIDO,

20 Coalition for a Safe Environment 58

21 JORGE MADRID, Environmental Defense Fund 69

22
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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 PAGE

3 JESSE MARQUEZ,

4 Coalition for a Safe Environment 76

5 ALFRED CARRILLO,

6 Resident of Wilmington, California 84

7 ADRIAN MARTINEZ,

8 Staff Attorney with Earth Justice 87

9 CYNTHIA BABICH, Del Amo Action Committee and

10 Los Angeles Environmental Justice Network 95

11 RUBINA SUWOL, California Safe Schools 102

12 JANE WILLIAMS,

13 California Communities Against Toxics 104

14 CHRISTINE ARAQUEL,

15 People's Community Organization for

16 Reform and Empowerment, People's CORE 114

17 FLORENCE GHARIBIAN,

18 Retired Federal and State Employee 117

19 ALBERT CASTANON,

20 Resident of Wilmington, California 125

21 KATHLEEN WOODFIELD, San Pedro and Peninsula

22 Homeowner's Coalition 129
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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 PAGE

3 JOAQUIN AMADOR,

4 Resident of Wilmington, California 136

5 FE KOONS, Resident of Carson, California 140

6 DAN HOFFMAN,

7 Resident of Wilmington, California 144

8 WILLIAM KOONS,

9 Carson Beautification Committee and 

10 Philippine Action Group for the Environment 152

11 JOSE LUIS MUNTOZ (via interpreter), 167

12 SILVIA NUNEZ (via interpreter),

13 Resident of Wilmington, California 169

14 ONOFRE TORRES,

15 Resident of Torrance, California 170

16 DREW WOOD,

17 Resident of Wilmington, California 175

18 ABRAHAM CABRERA,

19 Resident of Wilmington, California 187

20 SAM REVELES,

21 Resident of Wilmington, California 189

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6

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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 MS. LASSITER: Good morning, and thank 

3 you for coming out today. My name is Penny 

4 Lassiter. Thank you for attending this public 

5 hearing. I am the Group Leader for the Refining 

6 and Chemicals Group in the Sector Policies and 

7 Programs Division in EPA's Office of Air Quality 

8 Planning and Standards. We are a National 

9 Headquarters office, but we are located out of 

10 Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

11 I will be chairing the hearing this 

12 morning -- and all day, in fact -- and joining me 

13 on the panel, with me are Brenda Shine with EPA's 

14 Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards and 

15 Shaheerah Kelly from EPA's Region 9 office here 

16 in California.

17 We are here today to listen to your 

18 comments on EPA's Proposed Petroleum Refinery 

19 Sector Risk and Technology Review and New Source 

20 Performance Standards.

21 EPA published the proposed standards in 

22 the Federal Register on June 30th, 2014. This 
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1 proposed rule is based on the risk and technology 

2 review of two emission standards already in place 

3 at refineries: the National Mission Standards 

4 for Hazardous Air Pollutants from Petroleum 

5 Refineries, which we refer to as Refinery MACT --

6 M-A-C-T, which is Maximum Achievable Control 

7 Technology -- "Refinery MACT 1"; and the National 

8 Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants 

9 for Petroleum Refineries, specifically for 

10 catalytic cracking units, catalytic reforming 

11 units, and sulfur recovery units, which we refer 

12 to as "Refinery MACT 2."

13 The EPA is proposing additional emission 

14 control requirements for storage tanks, flares, 

15 and coking units at petroleum refineries. The 

16 EPA is also proposing to require monitoring of 

17 air concentrations of air concentrations at the 

18 fence line of refinery facilities as an approach 

19 for managing emissions of fugitive sources and 

20 also to ensure that neighboring communities are 

21 not being exposed to unintended toxic air 

22 emissions.
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1 When fully implemented, the provisions in 

2 this draft rule will result in a reduction of 

3 approximately 5,600 tons per year of toxic air 

4 pollutants and 52,000 tons per year of volatile 

5 organic compounds, or VOC.

6 Today, we will be accepting oral 

7 arguments on all aspects of our proposal, and we 

8 will prepare a written transcript of the hearing. 

9 The transcript will be available as part of the 

10 official record for this rule, and we will place 

11 it in the regulatory docket. We are also 

12 accepting written comments on the Proposed Rule 

13 until August 29th of this year.

14 At the registration area outside, located 

15 in the lobby, there are handouts with detailed 

16 information outlining how to submit written 

17 comments by mail, fax, or electronically. EPA 

18 will consider your comments as we move forward to 

19 complete a Final Rule.

20 Written statements and supporting 

21 information submitted during the comment period 

22 will be considered with the same weight as any 
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1 oral comments and supporting information 

2 presented at today's hearing.

3 So let me take a moment to describe the 

4 logistics for today's hearing. I will call the 

5 scheduled speakers to this table in pairs. When 

6 it is your turn to speak, please state your name 

7 and your affiliation before you begin your 

8 testimony. It would help our court reporter, as 

9 well, if you would please spell out your name.

10 In order to be fair to everyone, I will 

11 limit your testimony to 5 minutes and ask that 

12 both people remain at the table until both 

13 speakers in the pair have finished. After you 

14 finish your testimony, members of this panel may 

15 ask clarifying questions.

16 If you would like to provide us a copy of 

17 your testimony, you can give a copy to the 

18 registration desk out in the lobby, or we 

19 recommend that you follow the procedures above 

20 for submitting documents to the regulatory 

21 docket.

22 I have a timekeeping device here on this 
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1 table, which will show you green, yellow, and red 

2 lights to help you keep track of your time as you 

3 speak. When you begin to speak, the green light 

4 will come on. When you have 1 minute left, it 

5 will turn yellow, and when the light is red, your 

6 5 minutes will pass. And I will ask that you 

7 please complete your testimony.

8 Today's hearing is scheduled to last 

9 until 8 p.m. tonight or later, if necessary, 

10 should we have additional speakers show up. The 

11 hearing will go on recess for a lunch break from 

12 12 p.m. until 1 p.m. and a dinner break from 5 

13 p.m. until 6 p.m. We will reconvene promptly at 

14 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., respectively.

15 If you would like to testify but have not 

16 registered to do so, please sign up at the 

17 registration table in the lobby outside of this 

18 room. For those who have already registered to 

19 speak, we have tried to accommodate your request 

20 for a specific time slot. I will ask your 

21 patience as we proceed through the list of 

22 speakers, and we may need to make some 
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1 adjustments as the day progresses.

2 Also, I would like to point out, if 

3 needed, we also have some Spanish-speaking 

4 interpreters with us today. So please let us 

5 know if you need their services.

6 If any questions arise throughout the 

7 day, please feel free to ask any of the staff 

8 members at the registration table in the lobby 

9 for assistance.

10 Again, thank you for coming, and I would 

11 like to go ahead and get started by calling the 

12 first of our speakers. So, as this time, I would 

13 like to ask Mr. David Friedman and Mr. Howard 

14 Feldman if they would please come together to the 

15 speakers table.

16 MR. FRIEDMAN: Good morning.

17 MS. LASSITER: Good morning.

18 MR. FRIEDMAN: My name is David Friedman, 

19 F-r-i-e-d-m-a-n. I am Vice President of 

20 Regulatory Affairs, American Fuel and 

21 Petrochemical Manufacturers.

22 AFPM appreciates the opportunity today to 
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1 discuss our views on the EPA's Proposed Refinery 

2 Risk and Technology, or RTR rule. The AFPM is a 

3 national trade association of more than 400 

4 companies, including virtually all U.S. refiners 

5 and petrochemical manufacturers. Our members 

6 operate 122 U.S. refineries, comprising 

7 approximately 98 percent of the U.S. refining 

8 capacity.

9 Air quality has improved significantly in 

10 the U.S. over the past three decades, and our 

11 industry has been a significant contributor to 

12 this improvement. Since 1990, our industry has 

13 invested $137 billion to reduce emissions from 

14 our plants and make cleaner fuels.

15 On the air toxic side, we have also made 

16 great strides in reducing emissions. Total 

17 hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs, from the 

18 refining sector have been reduced by nearly 

19 two-thirds since 1990, while fugitive HAPs have 

20 been reduced by 79 percent, and point source HAP 

21 emissions have been reduced by nearly 40 percent.

22 Despite these significant reductions, EPA 
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1 is proposing some requirements in this rule that 

2 simply are not justified by the level of refinery 

3 risk that the agency found in its analysis. EPA 

4 in its previous RTR rulemaking in 2008 determined 

5 that the risks posted to the refining industry to 

6 be acceptable, and therefore, no further actions 

7 were required. Although signed by the EPA 

8 Administrator, due to a change in the 

9 administration that rule was never published in 

10 the Federal Register and was subsequently 

11 withdrawn.

12 After EPA conducted a massive and 

13 unprecedented industry data collection effort 

14 from refiners in 2011, the risk levels found by 

15 EPA in its most recent analysis performed for 

16 this rule are similar to those found in 2008, 

17 still within an acceptable range. One quarter of 

18 the refineries had maximum individual risk levels 

19 below 1 in a million, and two-thirds had risk 

20 levels below 10 in a million.

21 Just to give a perspective on risk 

22 levels, the odds of being hit by lightning in a 
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1 given year at 1:960,000. According to the 

2 National Safety Council, the odds of dying in a 

3 passenger car in a single hear are 1:21,132, and 

4 the odds of dying in a pedestrian accident in a 

5 lifetime are 1:623.

6 Unfortunately, we are faced with the 

7 rule's significant cost but with little or no 

8 health or environmental benefits. EPA estimates 

9 that this rule will cost $240 million, but our 

10 members estimate that it will cost in excess of a 

11 billion dollars. 

12 Of even greater concern is that the 

13 health benefit gains are insignificant by any 

14 measure, meaning this rule will have financial 

15 impact to the economy with essential no 

16 measurable benefits.

17 Every refinery will be required to

18 install fence-line monitors at significant 

19 ongoing costs. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, many 

20 of those refineries have very low levels of risk. 

21 We don't understand how imposing a 

22 one-size-fits-all approach to every refinery will 
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1 improve public health, particularly when 

2 according to EPA analysis, a number of these 

3 refineries pose no health risk to the surrounding 

4 communities.

5 The EPA rule proposes a rolling annual 

6 average benzene concentration action level of 2.8 

7 parts per billion at the refinery fence line. 

8 That will be measured every 2 weeks from 20 to 30 

9 samples collected around the refinery fence-line 

10 perimeter. Exceeding this threshold would 

11 trigger a root-cause analysis and corrective 

12 action and could be deemed a violation by EPA. 

13 However, the threshold value is not an indicator 

14 of risk. The stated purpose of this monitoring 

15 is to check EPA's modeling of fugitive emissions. 

16 We fail to see how this can achieve this goal.

17 Further, EPA's own studies in the 

18 mid-1990s confirmed no effect on personal 

19 exposure of living close to major fixed sources 

20 of benzene, including oil refineries, chemical 

21 plants, and storage plants.

22 We also have concerns with the flaring 
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1 provisions in this rule. The recently adopted 

2 NSPS Ja flare rules resulted in instrumentation

3 costs to the order of millions of dollars per 

4 flare and will result in significant overall 

5 reductions in already very limited flaring 

6 emissions.

7 This proposal would require significant 

8 additional costs over and above those from the Ja 

9 rule and yet has few synergies with the earlier 

10 Ja investments and results in very little 

11 incremental benefit.

12 Any proposed flare combustion efficiency 

13 standards should (1) only address steam-assisted 

14 flares, (2) focus on oversteaming, and (3) limit 

15 the need for the wasteful addition of natural gas 

16 to the flares. 

17 Pressure relief valves, or PRVs, are 

18 designed to protect plant personnel, the public,

19 and equipment, and EPA should not change the MACT 

20 floor work practice for PRVs.

21 PRVs relieve very infrequently and for 

22 short periods of time with very little total HAP 
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1 emissions. While monitoring such releases to 

2 ensure that PRVs have properly closed makes sense 

3 and most companies already do so, prohibiting 

4 atmospheric releases will require routing PRVs to 

5 additional new flares. This will require massive 

6 investments, both for these new flares and for 

7 flare headers to control releases of rare events.

8 EPA has greatly overstated the risks that 

9 coking units pose, and the proposed 

10 depressurization requirements go well beyond the 

11 new requirements set by the recently promulgated 

12 refinery NSPS rule. EPA has greatly 

13 underestimated the costs of controlling these 

14 emissions, controls that result in virtually no 

15 benefit. 

16 One final note regarding process. EPA 

17 has reached a settlement agreement earlier this 

18 year that requires the rule to be completed 11 

19 months after the rule was completed in May. This 

20 simply does not allow enough time for everyone to 

21 properly review risk information and for EPA to 

22 finalize a rule that is defensible.
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1 In 2007 and '8, EPA needed more than 18 

2 months to complete the refinery RTR rule once it 

3 was proposed. Developing a good rule that 

4 properly determines risk and addresses solutions 

5 to lower that risk is more important than meeting 

6 an artificial deadline.

7 We hope that the Agency and the 

8 plaintiffs will reconsider the tight time frame 

9 and suggest that the rule be finalized at a later 

10 date in 2015. This will make for a better result 

11 for everyone.

12 Thank you again for this opportunity to 

13 speak, and I am happy to answer any questions.

14 MS. LASSITER: Thank you, David.

15 Panel, do you have any clarifying 

16 questions?

17 [No audible response.]

18 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

19 Howard?

20 MR. FELDMAN: Good morning.

21 MS. LASSITER: Good morning.

22 MR. FELDMAN: My name is Howard Feldman, 
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1 and I am speaking on behalf of the American 

2 Petroleum Institute.

3 API represents over 600 oil and natural 

4 gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven 

5 industry that supplies most of America’s energy, 

6 supports more than 9.8 million jobs and 8 percent 

7 of the U.S. economy and, since 2000, has invested 

8 nearly $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to

9 advance all forms of energy, including 

10 alternatives.

11 Our members are dedicated to continuous 

12 efforts to improve the compatibility of our 

13 operations with the environment and the

14 communities, while economically developing energy 

15 resources and supplying high-quality products

16 and services to our consumers. We recognize our 

17 responsibility to work with the public, with the 

18 government, and others to develop and use natural 

19 resources in an environmentally sound manner,

20 while protecting the health and safety of our

21 employees and the public. Many of our members 

22 will be directly impacted by the proposed 
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1 Refinery Sector Rule, which is the focus of 

2 today’s public hearing.

3 I have three key points I'd like to make 

4 today. One, air quality in the United States has 

5 improved significantly, continues to improve, and 

6 our industry is doing its part to contribute to 

7 that success. Two, after significant effort, the 

8 U.S. EPA has concluded in this rulemaking that 

9 the public is protected with an ample margin of 

10 safety. Three, the safe operation of our 

11 refineries to protect our workers and the 

12 community is our number-one priority. 

13 My first point is that air quality has 

14 improved significantly, continues to improve, and 

15 our industry is contributing to these 

16 improvements. According to the EPA Report on the 

17 Environment, mean benzene concentrations have 

18 dropped by 66 percent from 1994 to 2009 

19 nationwide.

20 Locally, the improvement has been even

21 more dramatic. California Air Resources Board 

22 data show that from 1990 to 2012, right here in 
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1 North Long Beach, mean benzene concentrations 

2 have dropped by 89 percent. And the U.S. oil and 

3 gas industry has been a key part of that

4 improvement, investing over $268 billion since 

5 1990 towards improving the environmental 

6 performance of its products, facilities, and 

7 operations. In the year 2012 alone, approximately 

8 $15 billion was expended on environmental

9 protection.

10 My second key point is that the EPA has 

11 concluded in this rulemaking that the public is 

12 protected with an ample margin of safety from 

13 refinery emissions. Once again, the EPA has 

14 reached this conclusion, this time after 

15 developing an entirely new protocol for 

16 refineries to report their emissions and a 

17 multimillion-dollar information collection 

18 campaign, including data collection from every 

19 refinery for all emission sources and direct 

20 emissions testing for a number of emission

21 sources. All of this information is then 

22 processed through conservative risk modeling,
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1 which has determined that communities around 

2 refineries are protected with an ample margin of 

3 safety from refinery emissions.

4 While this is going to be my final point 

5 today, it goes without saying that the safe

6 operation of our refineries to protect our 

7 workers and the community is our number-one 

8 priority. As such, API will be taking a close 

9 look to ensure these proposed regulations don’t 

10 compromise the safety of our workers and 

11 community.

12 For example, in this rule, EPA has 

13 proposed requirements prohibiting the use of 

14 equipment whose sole purpose is to prevent 

15 over-pressuring of equipment and avoid potential

16 catastrophic damage. This prohibition will not

17 only increase safety risk but will require many 

18 additional flares. Obviously, this part of the 

19 proposal needs to be revised from a safety 

20 perspective. Our written comments will address 

21 this provision in greater detail, as well as 

22 other parts of the proposal.
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1 In closing, API appreciates the 

2 opportunity to provide testimony on this 

3 important rulemaking for our industry. I'd like 

4 to reiterate that air quality in the U.S. has 

5 significantly improved, continues to improve, and 

6 our industry is doing its part to contribute to 

7 that success. After significant effort, the EPA 

8 has concluded that the public is protected with 

9 an ample margin of safety from refinery 

10 emissions, and that, third, the safe operation of 

11 our refineries to protect our workers and the 

12 community is our number-one priority.

13 We will be submitted detailed comments to 

14 the docket to ensure that the final regulation 

15 doesn't inhibit the safe operation of our 

16 refineries, doesn't increase emissions from any 

17 sources, and is cost effective.

18 Thank you.

19 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

20 [Pause.]

21 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

22 I would now like to call Mr. Michael Wang 
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1 and Mr. David Campbell. If you would both 

2 proceed to the speakers table.

3 Mr. Wang?

4 MR. WANG: Good morning. My name is 

5 Michael Wang, W-a-n-g, and I am Director of 

6 Legal, California Climate Policy, and the area

7 issues for the Western States Petroleum 

8 Association.

9 WSPA is a trade group representing 27 

10 companies that explore for, develop, refine, 

11 market, and transport petroleum and petroleum 

12 products and natural gas in Washington, Oregon, 

13 California, Nevada, and Arizona.

14 Refineries in Washington and California 

15 will be affected by these rules. We should note 

16 at the outset that you have just heard from API, 

17 the American Petroleum Institute, and the 

18 American Fuels & Petrochemical Manufacturers. We 

19 support their testimony and their statements.

20 In order to avoid duplication, WSPA will 

21 cover areas of particular focus to the West. We 

22 will be providing formal written comments to more 
25

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1 fully address the many technical details 

2 associated with the proposed rulemaking.

3 I would first like to comment on the 

4 overall context of the proposed action. EPA 

5 notes that when fully implemented, the rule will 

6 reduce 5,600 tons per year of toxic air 

7 pollutants and 52,000 tons per year of ELC. Such 

8 reductions, when cost effective, are certainly 

9 something that should be considered, but we note, 

10 as EPA knows, that the conventional metrics are 

11 tons per day.

12 Using the tons-per-day metric, that 

13 suggests that TAC, toxic air contaminants, would 

14 be reduced about 15 tons per day nationwide. 

15 Using the tons-per-day metric used by EPA and 

16 local agencies, the amount of ELC would be 142 

17 tons per day. While these reductions are 

18 nationwide, some localities will see much lower 

19 reductions, some may see more reductions, some 

20 may see no reductions at all, depending on the 

21 status of their local programs.

22 However, and this brings us to our first 
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1 point, one wonders about the need or focus for 

2 the program that would reduce 15 tons per day 

3 nationally of toxic air contaminants and likely 

4 cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We also 

5 wonder why VOC is included in the analysis, VOC 

6 compounds that are not considered HAPs, NESHAPs, 

7 or hazardous air pollutants, should be addressed 

8 within the context of ozone and PM-10 analyses 

9 rather than NESHAPs.

10 Even EPA's anticipated reductions in CO2

11 equivalent gases may be unreasonably optimistic 

12 given the current GHG reduction efforts underway 

13 in many parts of the region, including California 

14 under AB32.

15 That brings me to my second point. The 

16 cost effectiveness of the NESHAP's proposal must 

17 be adjusted to reflect current local programs 

18 that address the same pollutant but perhaps in 

19 different ways.

20 For example, consider the flare 

21 efficiency requirements. Most refineries in 

22 California, including those in Wilmington, 
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1 already are under regulations to minimize or 

2 monitor flare utilization. Flare use has been 

3 minimized by the regulation since the early 

4 2000s. As a result, flare use and flare 

5 emissions have already been documented and 

6 reduced. At the very least, then EPA's 

7 cost-effectiveness analysis needs to be adjusted 

8 to reflect these improvements. In other words, 

9 the cost-effective calculations used by EPA are 

10 most probably too low on a dollar-per-ton basis, 

11 because many of the tons have already been 

12 reduced. Again, this is probably also true of 

13 VOC emissions and for GHG emissions, as well.

14 This brings us to the third point. If 

15 some of the emissions have been reduced, as they 

16 have, and the emissions are very low, as they 

17 are, due to current and previous control efforts, 

18 and extensive costs are already committed, then 

19 we need to consider whether and to what extent 

20 additional controls are needed, as proposed.

21 Certainly, in some regions -- this is 

22 California, but others, as well -- state 
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1 regulations long ago went beyond EPA actions. 

2 EPA should be aware that the AB25 88 process in 

3 California, for example, reduced toxic emissions 

4 and risk, such that most refineries posted risks 

5 that are already less than 10, certainly less 

6 than 25 in a million.

7 We note, for example, that EPA's target 

8 for residual risk, after implementation of all 

9 these controls, is 10 in a million for 1 

10 pollutant and 25 in a million for all toxic air 

11 contaminants. How should refineries address the 

12 EPA proposal if they have already achieved target 

13 levels?

14 We will discuss these issues in more 

15 detail and provide additional comments on 

16 specific source category controls as part of our 

17 written comments. Thank you.

18 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

19 Do you have any questions?

20 MS. SHINE: Yeah, I do. Let me turn the 

21 mic.

22 David [sic], you said that our levels
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1 presumptive are 10 in a million and 25 in a 

2 million, and I'm not sure from what you're 

3 referencing.

4 MR. WANG: I was actually kind of 

5 confused at that, but I looked at the brief 

6 overview that you published as part of the public 

7 outreach, and it says that that's -- I seem to 

8 think that's what it says. I'll go back and 

9 check, but I think you should go back and look at 

10 these briefing documents, as well, because that's 

11 where I got it from.

12 MS. LASSITER: I also have a clarifying 

13 question, Mr. Wang.

14 MR. WANG: Sure.

15 MS. LASSITER: You made a statement a 

16 couple of minutes into your testimony about a 

17 relationship with greenhouse gases, and I'm not 

18 sure if I caught all of that or if I understood 

19 the point that you were making.

20 MR. WANG: Well, I noticed again in part 

21 of the briefing documents and part of the 

22 documents that I read that there was a reference 
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1 to greenhouse gases, and I just thought that that 

2 was probably not something that we wanted to use 

3 in part of the cost-effectiveness analysis. And 

4 I thought it was kind of strange that it was in 

5 the substantiating documentation.

6 Again, it might have been something that 

7 might have been ancillary to the EPA briefing 

8 document, but I just wanted to raise it.

9 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

10 All right, at this time, I would like to 

11 ask Mr. Campbell if he would make his 

12 presentation.

13 MR. CAMPBELL: My name is David Campbell, 

14 C-a-m-p-b-e-l-l, and I am here on behalf of the 

15 United Steelworkers, or USW, which represents 

16 most oil company proprietary employees in the 

17 United States. I am the Secretary-Treasurer for 

18 the USW Local 675, which represents refinery 

19 workers here in Southern California.

20 The USW is supporting the proposed EPA 

21 refinery and emissions control rule. The union 

22 sees this as a benefit to not only our members 
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1 who work inside the facilities but also to our 

2 friends and families who work and live outside 

3 the fence line. Many refiners are already 

4 following some proposed pieces of the rule 

5 through EPA consent decrees, and the 

6 implementation of the rule would help level the 

7 playing field.

8 The USW supported inclusion of 

9 atmospheric storage tanks in the Process Safety 

10 Management, or PSM standard, under the 

11 President's Executive Order 13650, Request for 

12 Information, or FI. The regulations for 

13 atmospheric tanks in this rule are a good fit for 

14 alignment of process safety management and risk 

15 management program rules.

16 Better combustion of flares would greatly 

17 reduce the amount of pollution that goes into the 

18 communities. Many facilities already have 

19 continuous pilots of automated steam controllers, 

20 which help improve combustion. 

21 This rule would require every site to 

22 comply with the same combustion rules, thereby 
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1 leveling the playing field on cost of new flare 

2 tips, combustion controls, and continuous pilots.

3 Weighing the allowable process pressure 

4 on coking units when going to the flare would 

5 reduce the amount of pollutants put out through 

6 the flare system and increase the amount of 

7 marketable hydrocarbons covered -- captured. 

8 While the pressure of 12 to 15 pounds per square 

9 inch does not sound like much, a coke drum is a 

10 fairly large vessel, and it becomes an issue of 

11 volume. Reducing that depressing value from 12 

12 to 15 pounds per square inch to 2 pounds per 

13 square inch will lower emissions that go out on 

14 an 8-to-12-hour cycle per drum. With only two 

15 drums, that is a reduction of four flaring events 

16 a day. This will benefit the overall flare 

17 emissions reduction.

18 Benzene is a new carcinogen, and all 

19 efforts to reduce exposure are greatly 

20 appreciated, but at the same time, we don't want 

21 to be just moving the exposed area. Workers in 

22 the facility that are exposed or have a history 
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1 of benzene exposure are monitored. People living 

2 outside the fence line and may be exposed are not 

3 monitored because the potential for exposure is 

4 not known. By tracking chemicals that are being 

5 released inside the refinery and then traveling 

6 outside, we can get a better picture of just what 

7 the hazards may be and the precautions that 

8 should be taken to reduce that level of exposure.

9 Making that information available to the 

10 public will also enable them to monitor the air 

11 in their own neighborhoods and hopefully enable 

12 them to take precautions when necessary.

13 The loss of flaring exemption for

14 startup, shutdowns, and upset conditions should 

15 drive a better maintenance program for the 

16 refineries. An improved mechanical integrity 

17 program can work to reduce breakdown conditions 

18 and reduce upset flaring. 

19 Also, controlled shutdown is easier to 

20 control by displacing products through the 

21 processes as opposed to de-pressuring product out 

22 through the flare.
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1 There may have to be some equipment 

2 modifications made to equipment operability, as 

3 most refineries, unlike an airplane, were not 

4 designed to start up or take off or to shut down 

5 or land. Airplanes have been designed with flaps 

6 to assist on takeoffs and landing, whereby 

7 refineries usually have no flaps, and their 

8 startups and shutdowns are not very smooth.

9 Refineries are for the most part designed

10 to fly to optimum altitude and speed, with little 

11 controls on -- or fuel controls on takeoff and 

12 landings. Better controlled mechanisms on the 

13 startup process can lead to a much smoother 

14 startup than currently exists and thereby less 

15 flaring.

16 These proposals in concert with each 

17 other would reduce exposures not only to workers 

18 but certainly to the community and improve the 

19 overall environment. The USW is in favor of the 

20 EPA rule proposal. It is not cost prohibitive, 

21 and it is necessary. Without mandatory 

22 requirements, refineries will not voluntarily 
35

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1 curb any emissions but will use easily obtained 

2 exemptions to address every exceedance. That 

3 will not produce better maintenance programs or 

4 better technology for startup.

5 We also note that the EPA has determined 

6 implementing the proposed rules will have no 

7 noticeable effect on the price of produced 

8 petroleum products.

9 Thank you.

10 MS. LASSITER: Thank you, Mr. Campbell.

11 Any questions?

12 [No audible response.]

13 MS. LASSITER: Thank you both.

14 Next, I'd like to call Ms. Sofia Carrillo 

15 and Ms. Marbella Carrillo. If you would come to 

16 the speakers table, please.

17 ATTENDEE: Sofia stepped out for a 

18 minute.

19 MS. LASSITER: Okay, all right. Thank 

20 you.

21 Well, in that case, I will move along the 

22 list, and then I will come back. So I'd like to 
36

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1 ask if Mr. Flavio Mercado and Ms. Tamanna Rahman 

2 would please come to the table.

3 Okay, thank you. So, if you would, 

4 please state your name and your affiliation. 

5 Thank you.

6 MS. RAHMAN: Certainly. My name is 

7 Tamanna Rahman. T-a-m-a-n-n-a. Last name, 

8 R-a-h-m-a-n. And today, I am speaking as a 

9 volunteer with the American Lung Association. 

10 A little background, I am a Ph.D. student 

11 at the School of Public Health at UCLA in the 

12 Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and 

13 my past professional and academic experience has 

14 been in the area of ambient air pollution and its 

15 public health related impacts. My current 

16 doctoral research considers how climate change 

17 will exacerbate air quality-related health 

18 impacts in the Greater Los Angeles area and how 

19 certain populations are more vulnerable and how 

20 to build the resilience among these populations 

21 that are already disproportionately burdened.

22 Today, I am presenting an overview of the 
37

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1 comments from the nationwide Lung Association, 

2 which will submit more detailed comments in 

3 writing.

4 First of all, the Lung Association 

5 appreciates the opportunity to testify today in 

6 support of strong standards to limit toxic air 

7 emissions from the petroleum refineries. The 

8 emissions from the 149 petroleum refineries in 32 

9 states pose serious, recognized harm to millions 

10 of Americans who live near them and millions more 

11 who live where the emissions blow downwind.

12 EPA has calculated that each year, these 

13 refineries produce 20,000 tons of emissions that 

14 are recognized as hazardous, including benzene 

15 and other carcinogens, hydrogen fluoride and 

16 other acid gases, and other persistent pollutants 

17 such as mercury. The EPA’s published risk review 

18 shows that at least 5.2 million people are 

19 exposed to levels of carcinogens from these 

20 refineries that places them at recognized risk of 

21 cancer. Among that group, fully half are from 

22 minority groups and one-quarter of those exposed 
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1 are under the age of 17.

2 Children face unique risks from breathing 

3 polluted air. Children are born with only about 

4 20 percent of the lungs that they will have as 

5 adults, and the vast majority of their tiny lungs 

6 will develop after they are born, all the while 

7 they are learning to sit up, to walk, to kick a 

8 ball, to ride a bike, and just conducting 

9 day-to-day activities. So children are more 

10 active than adults and tend to be outdoors more. 

11 Their lungs will grow until they become 

12 adolescents, and the air they breathe during that 

13 period will shape how their lungs function for 

14 the rest of their lives.

15 Toxic substances may put children more at 

16 risk than adults. For example, the Cal EPA 

17 explored improved methodologies to determine

18 susceptibility to carcinogens in utero and 

19 childhood after finding in 2001 that the existing 

20 approaches did not adequately reflect the risks 

21 to children. Their subsequent research found 

22 that the children generally display greater 
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1 sensitivity to environmental carcinogens than

2 adults. They recommended a more protective 

3 adjustment to risk assessments to reflect that 

4 greater risk.

5 The published risk review estimated that 

6 millions of the people exposed to carcinogenic

7 refinery emissions are those whose income,

8 education, or language makes them likely to be at 

9 greater risk of harm. One in five had incomes 

10 below the poverty line, and one in four adults 

11 lacked a high school diploma. One in 10 had no 

12 one in the household over age 14 who spoke 

13 English.

14 People most at risk of harm from 

15 breathing these air pollutants depend on the EPA 

16 to take action to clean up air pollution from 

17 refineries. In addition to the groups I have

18 mentioned already, people at risk include older 

19 adults, pregnant women, people with asthma and 

20 other lung diseases, those with cardiovascular 

21 disease, diabetics, and even healthy adults who 

22 work or exercise outdoors. We urge EPA to 
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1 examine and use the most current research on 

2 these and other cumulative impacts for children 

3 and adults in setting the standards and

4 developing the ample margin of safety. The EPA 

5 should recognize that many communities are 

6 downwind from more than one source, so EPA

7 should factor in multiple exposures into the 

8 standards.

9 The Lung Association supports the EPA’s 

10 plan to strengthen requirements for refineries to

11 control the emissions of these toxic pollutants. 

12 Stronger requirements will significantly reduce 

13 emissions from storage tanks and other components 

14 of the refineries that today threaten millions of 

15 people.

16 The Lung Association is pleased that for 

17 the first time, the EPA has added requirements 

18 for monitoring refinery emissions at the fence 

19 line to provide greater assurance that the

20 facility is meeting the emission limits. 

21 Accurate measurements of the emissions coming

22 from the facility are essential to ensuring that 
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1 the refinery’s neighbors actually receive the

2 protections they are promised. That is why we 

3 urge EPA to strengthen the monitoring

4 requirements. These data need to be reported in 

5 real time and made publically available as with 

6 other air pollution monitoring. Waiting 

7 passively for the companies to decide when to 

8 report problems is not acceptable and will not 

9 protect public health.

10 The Lung Association is pleased that the 

11 EPA has eliminated exemptions for emission limits

12 during periods of start-up and shutdown and 

13 malfunction at each facility. EPA has finally

14 recognized that these exemptions have created 

15 regulatory loopholes that have historically 

16 undermined the protections that the Clean Air Act 

17 intended the public to have.

18 The Lung Association also supports steps 

19 to reduce the use of flaring. EPA should ban

20 routine flaring and tightly limit other use of 

21 emergency flaring. This all-too-routine burning 

22 of oil and gas wastes valuable fuel and adds air 
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1 pollutants. EPA should require monitoring and 

2 reporting of these flaring emissions to the 

3 public, as well.

4 So, even with the proposed improvements, 

5 EPA should consider the needs to adopt standards 

6 that provide greater protection, including 

7 protection from the risks of accidents. The 

8 EPA’s own assessment estimates that even when the 

9 refineries meet the proposed standards, only

10 about 18 percent more people will be protected, 

11 leaving nearly 4 million people breathing air 

12 that gives them an unacceptable risk of cancer.

13 As the Lung Association will discuss

14 in their formal comments, cancer is far from the 

15 only health risk that many will continue to face.

16 So thank you for the opportunity.

17 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

18 Questions?

19 [No audible response.]

20 MS. LASSITER: All right, thank you.

21 Mr. Mercado?

22 MR. MERCADO: Okay. So my name is Flavio 
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1 Mercado. That's F-l-a-v-i-o. Last name is 

2 M-e-r-c-a-d-o, and I work for Coalition for a 

3 Safe Environment, and I am also a Wilmington 

4 resident. I lived in Wilmington almost all my 

5 life, and I graduated from Cal State-Long Beach 

6 in Geography and GIS Mapping.

7 And what I have learned in these few 

8 years that I have lived, I notice that a lot of 

9 people are visual learners. So what I have here 

10 today is particulate matter. So anybody who 

11 would like to see particulate matter, it ranges 

12 from 1.25 all the way to 10. It ranges, this 

13 particular matter here. It was captured from 

14 Ruben Garcia technology. That is the AMEC's 

15 technology, and we have particulate matter here.

16 And another simple solution in which I 

17 came about in the fourth grade was back at Gulf 

18 Elementary School, I did a report where I took 

19 three jars, and I put Vaseline on those three 

20 jars. I put one inside my home, one outside, and 

21 one as a control. And the jar that was outside, 

22 I was able to capture particulate matter from the 
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1 refineries, so I know that the refineries release 

2 a lot of particulate matter. And I was just in 

3 fourth grade when I did that report.

4 And I also wanted to talk about how the 

5 fence-line monitoring should be enhanced. We 

6 need to provide a webcam feature that we could 

7 actual monitor the refineries real time, just 

8 like Caltrans does. If Caltrans can put webcams, 

9 so we could see how the traffic is flowing, why 

10 can't we do the same for the refineries, so we 

11 can monitor the refinery flare? We could 

12 calculate the dimensions of the flare by 

13 calculating the smokestack dimensions. If we use 

14 those smokestack dimensions, we could calculate 

15 the flare events, and we'll have the date, we'll 

16 have the time, all in real time, which could be 

17 accessible through a website.

18 And I think we need that because a lot of 

19 people put excuses that there is no flaring 

20 events, and once we have a visual, a visual 

21 representation of what's going on in the 

22 refineries, there won't be no more excuses about 
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1 that.

2 If I see flaring here in my community at 

3 midnight, two in the morning when it's raining, 

4 when it's cloudy -- so if we have the capability 

5 of bringing webcam monitors on the fence line, we 

6 could show that, and there will be no more 

7 excuses from the petroleum industry.

8 I also want to talk about how I know a 

9 lot of people in my community who have died from 

10 cancer, and I just really want to do something in 

11 my community where I could step up and make 

12 something out of it. And I know that my skills 

13 of GIS could be of great use, so I am willing to 

14 offer my service to EPA and everyone out there 

15 free of charge, so there won't be no excuses of 

16 why we can't do something about it.

17 I have put my contact information down on 

18 the comments, and if anybody would like to 

19 contact me, my information is out there free of 

20 charge and my service. 

21 So all I say, thank you very much, and I 

22 have the jar here if anybody would like to take a 
46

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1 look at it. But thank you very much. Is there 

2 any questions?

3 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

4 Any questions?

5 [No audible response.]

6 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

7 Okay. Next, I'd like to call Ms. Sofia 

8 Carrillo and Ms. Marbella Carrillo, please. If 

9 you would both proceed to the speakers table.

10 [Mayra Carrillo interprets the following 

11 remarks for Sofia and Marbella Carrillo.]

12 MS. (Sofia) CARRILLO: Good morning. I 

13 am Sofia Carrillo. I am a community organizer 

14 here in the community of Wilmington.

15 I am here to support the new regulations 

16 for the safety of the environment. I know we 

17 have new regulations, but for us, we have 15 

18 points, the most important for regulations.

19 I am not going to say them in Spanish. 

20 She already knows them, and she is going to read 

21 them. 

22 MS. (Mayra) CARRILLO: Number 1. 
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1 Mandatory Flare Reduction Plan.

2 Number 2. Mandatory use of Vapor 

3 Recovery Systems to eliminate and prevent 

4 flaring.

5 Number 3. Mandatory 24/7 real-time 

6 fence-line monitoring all of the chemicals 

7 released by oil refineries.

8 Number 4. Mandatory real-time online 

9 public website reporting of all daily air 

10 pollution and flaring events.

11 Number 5. Mandatory emergency back-up 

12 power to prevent flaring from power outages.

13 Number 6. Mandatory Flare Combustion 

14 Efficiency Standards.

15 Number 7. Mandatory Maintenance and 

16 Parts Replacement Plan to prevent breakdowns and 

17 malfunctions.

18 Number 8. Mandatory Maximum Achievable

19 Control Technology for all air pollution emission 

20 sources.

21 Number 9. Mandatory phase-out plan of 

22 dangerous and toxic chemicals that cause health 
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1 and safety impacts.

2 Number 10. Mandatory public health 

3 exposure limit on all toxic chemicals.

4 Number 11. Mandatory health impact 

5 assessments for oil refineries in addition to 

6 health risk assessments.

7 Number 12. No annual averaging of 

8 emissions data to hide high emissions releases on 

9 flaring days.

10 Number 13. Eliminate all startups, 

11 shutdown, and malfunction emissions releases 

12 reporting exemptions.

13 Number 14. A life-time cancer risk no 

14 higher than 1 in 1 million for a single chemical 

15 or cumulative chemicals.

16 Number 15. Request U.S. EPA sponsor 

17 public health studies of fence-line communities 

18 to oil refineries.

19 MS. (Sofia) CARRILLO: Those are the 15 

20 points, the most important points for us. While 

21 I was sitting here thinking, when somebody 

22 commits a crime, they take them to court and give 
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1 them a sentence. Why the refineries? In our 

2 community, a lot of people have died because of 

3 the emissions, and nothing has happened.

4 I am going to give you an example. I am 

5 sick. I have a pulmonary fibrosis. I have never 

6 smoked in my life. I have chronic bronchitis. I 

7 don't have insurance. I don't have to pay for 

8 the consequences of others getting me sick. I 

9 have to go to Mexico to obtain hospital, 

10 medication, and a doctor. Just like me, there's 

11 thousands of residents that do that.

12 I would like for every barrel of oil that 

13 is sold to report two or three dollars for a 

14 trust, health trust for people like me, because 

15 there is a lot of people that don't have medical 

16 insurance.

17 Thank you.

18 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

19 Are there any questions?

20 [No audible response.]

21 MS. LASSITER: I have one question. I 

22 was trying to write down the 15 points here, and 
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1 I did not get --

2 MS. (Mayra) CARRILLO: We have a copy.

3 MS. LASSITER: Oh, okay, great. Thank 

4 you. I didn't see that. Super, super. Thank 

5 you.

6 Okay. Next, Ms. Marbella Carrillo.

7 MS. (Marbella) CARRILLO: Good morning. 

8 I am Marbella Carrillo. I am a member of the 

9 community here in Wilmington. I am going to 

10 share my experience as a mother.

11 I have a girl that has problems with her 

12 lungs. Nobody in my family smokes. When I took 

13 my daughter to the doctor, he asked if anyone in 

14 the home smoked in the family, and nobody does. 

15 The doctors recommended not to expose her to the 

16 air.

17 Many times, I had to take her to the 

18 emergency room, and the length of time for 

19 recuperation, it's about a month.

20 Now I have to be very careful when I go 

21 outside to take my family. Sometimes I have to 

22 leave her inside alone because I can't take her 
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1 outside with the rest of the kids.

2 I have a window at home, and there is a 

3 couch, and she just sits behind the couch looking 

4 at the kids play outside.

5 Thank you.

6 MS. LASSITER: Thank you. Thank you 

7 both.

8 Okay. Next, I'd like to have Ms. Evelyn 

9 Knight and, I believe it is, Mr. Shabaka Heru. 

10 If you would please come. Thank you.

11 MR. KNIGHT: Good morning. My name is 

12 Evelyn Knight, and I live in West Long Beach in 

13 the site of the flares and the pollution and the 

14 many -- this place. Over the years, I've lived 

15 in West Long Beach since 1968, and I am here to 

16 support the EPA's quality standards and really 

17 ongoing work to address the many needs of our 

18 community to protect it from the ongoing 

19 pollution scourge that has been in our community 

20 for years.

21 My own family suffers from much asthma. 

22 I had a brother to die from lung cancer, who 
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1 never smoked, and many people in my community, 

2 almost every week, there are additional friends 

3 who have been walking around Hudson Park with me 

4 over the years, have come down with cancer in 

5 their bodies.

6 While we appreciate the reduction, this 

7 reduction has gone as a result of the work by EPA 

8 and many other citizens in our community as well 

9 as the environmental groups bringing to bear the 

10 effects of this ongoing attack on our bodies.

11 There will never be a solution until the 

12 perpetrators of the pollutants in our community 

13 take full responsibility and have zero pollution 

14 in our community. Our bodies, our lungs, it is 

15 no match for chemicals that are always being put 

16 there by people who put it there, and all of the 

17 people who put it there are responsible for 

18 making sure that it's not there, that it goes 

19 away, so we can live healthy, healthy qualities 

20 of life as human beings, which we were put on 

21 this Earth to do. So there is no excuse. 

22 We really want EPA to continue the work 
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1 until there is never a need for that work to be 

2 done. We don't need these meetings. We should 

3 not even be here. If people were doing what they 

4 were supposed to be doing in protecting us, 

5 protecting the citizens, protecting the 

6 residents, protecting people's lives and 

7 breathing and body functions, there would not be 

8 a reason for this meeting. So I don't want to 

9 have to come to these meetings anymore.

10 So I think that we should have the 

11 immediate regulations ongoing. The work of EPA 

12 is on the line. As long as -- you know, the 

13 reductions are not enough. We have to stop. We 

14 have to utilize the kind of technology that 

15 ensures that we don't have the problem in the 

16 first place, and that's the only answer.

17 I appreciate sharing this with you, and 

18 every time I come here, I'll say the same thing 

19 until the problem has gone away.

20 And thank you very much.

21 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

22 MR. HERU: Good morning.
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1 MS. LASSITER: Good morning.

2 MR. HERU: My name is Shabaka Heru. I am 

3 the Executive Director of the Society for 

4 Positive Action. We are a part of the L.A. 

5 Environmental Justice Working Group. We meet 

6 every month along with the Coalition for a Safe 

7 Environment and other environmental working 

8 groups throughout the L.A. County Basin.

9 We work from Riverside to the Valley. We 

10 work -- I work particularly in a community 

11 benefits agreement with LAX. We just did a $5 

12 million study about the air quality in the Basin, 

13 the L.A. Basin. One of the outcomes of the air 

14 quality study was that from the beginning, as the 

15 starting point, the air quality in the L.A. Basin 

16 is the worst in the world.

17 I also work on the L.A. Unified School 

18 District's Internal Pest Management. It is a 

19 working group where we survey and we examine and 

20 control all of the chemicals that are used to 

21 eliminate rodents, pests, and to clean up all of 

22 the schools in the L.A. Unified School System.
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1 First of all, I'd like to see a mandatory 

2 Maximum Achievable Control Technology for all air 

3 pollution and emission sources. I would also 

4 like to see a flare reduction plan. There are 

5 many things that haven't been done, and as the 

6 young lady next to me has said before, we had 

7 thought years ago that these things would have 

8 been worked out, that these would be things that 

9 the EPA, the AQMD, and all of the other 

10 regulatory agencies would have done with, would 

11 have had done with.

12 One of the things about working with the 

13 airport that I found is that over the last 10 

14 years, we have had a monitor, control all of the 

15 construction on the new airport, and during that 

16 time, we have seen the evolution of the controls 

17 and the technologies used in vehicles around the 

18 airport. Those technologies are applicable, as 

19 well, to the ports.

20 We would like to see no averaging, 

21 because the averagings hide the individual 

22 account and individual incidents that occur at 
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1 the airport. I don't live here at the airport. 

2 I live in Gardena, between Gardena and Compton. 

3 We just had at a transfer station, a 40,000 

4 barrel container built for ethanol, and we just 

5 see this transfer station as an obstacle, as 

6 well.

7 We would like to see real-time fence-line 

8 monitoring of all chemical releases by oil 

9 refineries. We'd like to see real online public 

10 -- a real online public website reporting all the 

11 daily air pollution and flaring events.

12 Years ago, my colleague, Jesse Marquez, 

13 who is with the Coalition for a Safe Environment, 

14 and I were in Huntington Park at a meeting with 

15 Communities for a Safer Environment, and from 

16 Huntington Park, we could see a flaring incident. 

17 We left the meeting that we were involved in to 

18 get to that flaring incident. 

19 There was very little information. In 

20 fact, I was talking to Jesse just a moment ago 

21 about the incident. There was very little 

22 reporting through the news agencies, through the 
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1 radio press, the TV press, about this flaring 

2 incident. It poses itself as a real hazard and a 

3 danger to our families.

4 We have children that have inflated 

5 incidence of asthma and respiratory problems. 

6 Our seniors are at risk because -- I myself, the 

7 beginning of the year, I had a case of the flu 

8 that turned into pneumonia, that turned into a 

9 heart event. And so I'm just saying I thought I 

10 was perfectly healthy, but we all are at risk, 

11 and we all need to take care and be aware of 

12 what's coming and not just sit back and idle our 

13 time away.

14 Thank you.

15 MS. LASSITER: Thank you. Thank you 

16 both.

17 Next, I'd like to ask Mr. Jorge Madrid 

18 and Mr. Ricardo Pulido if you would please come 

19 to the table to speak.

20 MR. PULIDO: Good morning. Buenos dias. 

21 My name is Ricardo Pulido. I am a Board Member 

22 for the Coalition for a Safe Environment, also a 
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1 Social Justice Vice President for our church, St. 

2 Philomena. Father and grandfather. Here a local 

3 homeowner for the last 30 years and an 

4 environmentalist since mom told me back in the 

5 day when I was a kid that, "You have to protect 

6 and take care of Mother Earth, Ricardo. In 

7 everything and everything you do, you make sure 

8 you remember what I'm telling you now," and I 

9 said, "Why is that, Mom?" And she says because 

10 she came from New York, and when she came to 

11 California, she said, "This is the most 

12 beautiful-est West Cost, you know, ambience and 

13 state that we live in, and you must protect her." 

14 And so I live with that motto every day, and I 

15 believe sincerely with all my heart that all of 

16 us should do the same.

17 And I think that's our intentions, 

18 although there's a few things that I would like 

19 to share with you now. I welcome all of my 

20 commissioners, EPA, and the residents here from 

21 the beautiful South Bay area.

22 My concerns start off with, first, I 
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1 appreciate that we are doing this meeting today 

2 and this hearing, if you will, and that we are 

3 now opening up the doors, if you will, to the 

4 community to make sure that you hear our voice.

5 First of all, I'd like to say we need 

6 stronger regulations for the flaring up at night. 

7 I believe the monitoring systems that are there 

8 should be put out there into the community 

9 through a database collection system and 

10 charting, so that we the residents can see either 

11 online, like my colleague said earlier, like a 

12 website or a hotline like we used to have back in 

13 the day. These were very functional, and the 

14 refineries used to have a CAN Alert. I think 

15 they still might have that, but they are not 

16 utilizing them to their fullest potential, and I 

17 think that's where they have a warning system. 

18 They get it out to the periphery of a 1-mile 

19 radius of any of the six local refineries that we 

20 have here in the South Bay.

21 I believe that we need to have that 

22 system up and around with all of our technologies 
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1 now. We should have that system working now 

2 through our websites and through our computers 

3 and our phone lines, if you will, for folks that 

4 aren't computer savvy.

5 I also believe, and I would suggest, that 

6 we have documentation on the 24/7. You heard it 

7 earlier from some of my colleagues, a real-time 

8 fence-line monitoring system. We have a 

9 LACEENonline.org. This mechanism right now gives 

10 a grassroots opportunity to the community to call 

11 in, just click in if they have a computer. We're 

12 working on the app, and eventually, we'll just 

13 have it so that they will be able to communicate.

14 Our families and friends here in the 

15 South Bay area can call in and let us know when 

16 there is a flare-up, there is an explosion, there 

17 is a chemical release of toxic fumes or whatnot. 

18 The LACEEN is a mechanism now being used as a 

19 demonstration project all over California through 

20 the DTSC agencies.

21 I also believe that we need to tie 

22 together a comprehensive plan with the EPA 
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1 overseeing the AQMD, DTSC, and ARB, and all of 

2 our non-profits working together in building a 

3 finite plan, if you will, that we will be 

4 speaking to each other. We will share data. We 

5 will be able to give each agency information that 

6 is pertinent to what's going on and, of course, 

7 all this data is either in the libraries, the 

8 churches or displayed at our city halls on a 

9 monthly basis on the bulletin boards.

10 I believe we are not giving enough public 

11 information and posting it properly, so we need 

12 to -- the refineries specifically to start doing 

13 their good due diligence in putting this 

14 information out for our communities.

15 I also would like to say -- and Jesse, 

16 our Executive Director, will speak about this 

17 later -- our HRAs and HIAs, the health risk 

18 assessments and health impact assessments, that 

19 that survey, that data collection procedure needs 

20 to be implemented throughout the United States of 

21 America and throughout here specifically in our 

22 region, the South Bay.
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1 These HRAs are the only way we're going 

2 to be able to detect and detract at a baseline 

3 where our children -- as you heard, I have a 

4 child who has a neurological disease. I believe 

5 it is caused partly by the environment, by the 

6 air we breathe, and I believe all of our sinuses 

7 and problems and infections that we're getting, 

8 respiratory-wise, are also caused by these 

9 refineries and the other polluters around here.

10 I know we live in an industrial area, but 

11 we have a beautiful ocean, and we have a 

12 beautiful ambience around here. We need to 

13 protect it, and we need to build on that premise 

14 of the HRAs and HIAs.

15 We can help you with that. At this time, 

16 I don't have enough time to explain how this 

17 could be done, but please contact Coalition for a 

18 Safe Environment, and we will be glad to give you 

19 our summation, about 30 or 40 pages, on how this 

20 could be implemented.

21 Also, the Community Benefits Trust Fund 

22 for our children with the respiratory and 
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1 diseases that are caused by the refineries, we 

2 believe this trust fund, which has been 

3 implemented and utilized here now in the South 

4 Bay as one of the model programs for the United 

5 States, should not only be mandatory by the 

6 refineries, but through the EPA's offices, make 

7 sure that you oversee that we are given funds for 

8 the clinics, for mobile units, so they can go out 

9 into the community here in Wilmington.

10 I live in Carson, and we need to be 

11 showing our communities that there's hope out 

12 there. There's opportunity out there for when 

13 they don't have money.

14 You heard the lady speak about health 

15 care. We need to make sure that those who are 

16 not covered are able to at least get some nurse 

17 or some doctor's intervention for their ailments.

18 I also would like to say that we need the 

19 -- the chemical pollution, the flaring up, the 

20 deadly explosions that we're witnessing here in 

21 the South Bay at times need to be -- again, not 

22 to be redundant -- have to be exposed, and they 
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1 have to be, if you will, displayed at our city 

2 clerk's offices, at our city halls, like I said 

3 earlier.

4 And especially the chemical benzene, I 

5 think that is the one killer of all that is 

6 killing our families and our children, so we need 

7 to regulate and abate the benzene here in our 

8 community.

9 Lastly, I want to say I reviewed some of 

10 the comments that were given here. I think the 

11 coker units that we stopped over here in San 

12 Pedro was a good start, but that is something 

13 that -- that's a deadly element. You saw --

14 Flavio showed you the particulate matters. That 

15 is what we are inhaling. We need to be very 

16 cognizant in not having any coker type of 

17 mountains or mounds sitting anywhere around the 

18 South Bay area or anywhere in our country, for 

19 that matter.

20 Also, I would like to make sure that we 

21 -- the next page in the Federal Register, I read 

22 something that caught my eye. Additional -- the 
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1 fence-line monitoring on page 36923, those 

2 procedures, they're enacted and are talked about 

3 a lot, but let's make them happen now. Let's 

4 you, the Agency, be the caretakers for our 

5 community in making sure that this is going to be 

6 regulated and take heed to implement them now, 

7 real time. 

8 We can help you with that. We have 

9 bought some devices, some dust monitors and some 

10 air monitoring systems that we're putting on top 

11 of our community roofs, so we will show you our 

12 community monitoring data. And we're not 

13 scientists, but we are learning more and more 

14 that we have to be the protectors. We have to be 

15 the voice for our community and for our families.

16 So God bless you. God bless our United 

17 States, and please make sure that we have 

18 stronger, stronger requirements for all our 

19 public health and all of our families. We need 

20 you. We need you to hear us, and we appreciate 

21 you being here today. I thank you for your work, 

22 and we look forward to working more stronger than 
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1 ever with our agencies, specifically, U.S. EPA.

2 Thank you very much.

3 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

4 MS. SHINE: I did have one question. You 

5 mentioned that you had a plan about the health 

6 risk assessments and then --

7 MR. PULIDO: Yes.

8 MS. SHINE: And then I think what you're 

9 talking about is epidemiological studies, studies 

10 in the community, and you said you had a plan.

11 MR. PULIDO: Yes, we do --

12 MS. SHINE: Is that something that you 

13 could submit to the docket or submit to --

14 MR. PULIDO: Yes, we do.

15 I believe, Jesse, you may have that with 

16 you, Jesse, perhaps. 

17 If not, we could submit as a docket today 

18 before eight o'clock. Our office is down the 

19 street. We'll get you that.

20 MS. SHINE: You can submit it anytime up 

21 until August.

22 MR. PULIDO: Oh, okay.
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1 MS. SHINE: Yeah. You can submit it 

2 through the electronic portal, but those are the 

3 kinds of things that would be helpful to us.

4 MR. PULIDO: Yeah. We have that, and we 

5 have been really stressing that throughout all of 

6 our public hearings in the last 5 to 7 years. 

7 And at first, it was a deaf ear, but now the 

8 community, who speaks loudest, of course, has 

9 stand up. And the agencies around us have 

10 realized that that would be a good way to develop 

11 that first baseline, if you will, and we should 

12 -- it's long overdue.

13 So we can start measuring and see who is 

14 really polluting where and what's really 

15 happening to our communities, and not to say, 

16 well, you know, there's been 10 flare-ups this 

17 year, but they were mild or whatnot. We want to 

18 be able to really graph -- and we have the access 

19 now -- and chart to see what is going to affect 

20 our children and giving them the opportunity to 

21 have the HRAs there and go out in the 

22 communities.
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1 We do that. We've done 600. Jesse will 

2 talk about that later, and he will expound on it. 

3 We did 600 ourselves, just walked the streets in 

4 Wilmington, and we spoke to the parents and 

5 families and children. And they did a 

6 comprehensive survey, and we will be glad to 

7 share that info with you. It shows that they 

8 say, "Yeah, we have lung infections," or, "Yeah, 

9 we have sinuses." They just think it is natural 

10 progression of, you know, life, but young kids 

11 are getting respiratory diseases, you know. It's 

12 getting deadly.

13 If we could tie the DMH or the L.A. 

14 County hospitals here locally with their findings 

15 and with our agencies, maybe that would be a good 

16 way to track and see how much this hotspot area 

17 that we live in is affecting our children's way 

18 of life.

19 So thank you for that question, and we'll 

20 get you that information.

21 MS. SHINE: Thank you.

22 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.
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1 MR. MADRID: Hi. Good morning. My name 

2 is Jorge Madrid. I am the Director of 

3 Partnerships with the Environmental Defense Fund.

4 Two quick things before I deliver my 

5 testimony. The first is that I am delivering 

6 comments on behalf of our technical team, which 

7 is a team of scientists and attorneys who are 

8 working on this exact issue, and they are spread 

9 out across the country. They will be delivering 

10 formal remarks in addition to remarks at each of 

11 the hearings that are going to be planned 

12 throughout the state, but I will try my best to 

13 deliver their remarks as with the same 

14 enthusiasm.

15 Secondly, I am here to stand in -- I am 

16 humbled to be here. I am here to stand in 

17 solidarity with the community members here. I 

18 myself am from East Los Angeles. I studied urban 

19 planning at USC. We have a lot of our own air 

20 quality issues, deeper inland to Los Angeles, but 

21 we don't have these big refineries spewing stuff 

22 into our communities every day, and these 
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1 communities do. So I want to say that we want to 

2 serve as a resource to both the EPA and to the 

3 communities here who are fighting this every day 

4 and who are suffering.

5 And I think for me, that's been sort of 

6 the most powerful thing that I'm going to be 

7 taking away from here, and I also have the 

8 remarks that I have submitted earlier, but we 

9 will be submitting formal remarks.

10 We have about 750,000 members nationwide 

11 and over 40,000 in California. We are dedicated 

12 to working towards an innovative, cost-effective 

13 solution to address the most serious public 

14 health and environmental problems, building on a 

15 foundation of science, economics, and law.

16 I thank you for this opportunity to 

17 strengthen refinery air toxic emissions limits 

18 and monitoring equipment to protect health.

19 We support this effort of the agency and 

20 of the communities here to reduce emissions of 

21 carcinogens, neurotoxins, and hazardous metals 

22 from some of California's highest polluting 
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1 facilities. According to the recently release 

2 Cal Enviro Screen, many, if not most, of these 

3 fcs are located within disadvantaged communities, 

4 and by that, I mean communities that already have 

5 a high pollution burden from other pollutants and 

6 that have other socioeconomic challenges, such as 

7 high poverty rates, low access to health care, 

8 low health outcomes for the community. These are 

9 communities that are already bearing the burden 

10 from frankly our addiction to fossil fuels, and 

11 we need to do something about it, because it is 

12 extremely unfair.

13 I am sorry, but to hear from the industry 

14 that there is no danger posed to the community 

15 sounds like a very cruel joke.

16 Every day, millions of Californians are 

17 exposed to toxic air emissions, and they pose a 

18 cancer risk, degrade our air quality, cause 

19 illness and premature death. The facilities 

20 vastly responsible for these pollutions are 

21 petroleum refineries. EPA's proposal to change 

22 the status quo cannot come soon enough.
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1 First, the movement toward better 

2 fence-line monitoring is important for making 

3 sure we have a better understanding of the amount 

4 of benzene entering local communities and, 

5 importantly, to begin the urgent and vitally 

6 important work of holding these facilities 

7 accountable for toxic emissions.

8 If there is indeed no problem, then those 

9 monitors will tell us that, but I suspect that 

10 there is, and we need those kinds of safeguards 

11 in the community, so that we have the right 

12 information and so that we can make this -- and 

13 hold the polluters accountable.

14 I think we heard something earlier about 

15 a webcam to actually visually monitor these. I 

16 think that's important, and I think, again, if we 

17 have nothing to hide, then let's indeed install 

18 these monitoring technologies. EDF is also 

19 pioneering additional monitoring technology with 

20 the company Google, so those cars that drive 

21 around taking pictures of our streets, we have 

22 also been attaching air quality sensors to them 
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1 to measure various pollutants. Right now, we're 

2 focusing on methane, but I personally think that 

3 it's something that could be retrofitted to -- or 

4 the sensors themselves could be used to monitor 

5 other pollutants. That working in tandem with 

6 the fence-line monitoring and other monitoring 

7 systems that have been mentioned today are 

8 important, because we have a right to the 

9 information.

10 Although we recognize that EPA is 

11 proposing to take important steps in many areas, 

12 there remain many open items. For example, we 

13 urge the EPA and California officials to carry 

14 out an up-to-date health risk and impact 

15 assessment, that I think has already been 

16 mentioned, to account for cumulative impacts of 

17 these and other nearby industrial facilities on 

18 children and overburdened in communities. 

19 EPA should also look at safety 

20 investigations for additional insights and 

21 preventative actions and the use of inherently 

22 safer systems.
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1 Further, EPA must look to set limits on 

2 all pollutants, like hydrogen cyanide, and ensure 

3 that all facilities meet the same standards of 

4 performance.

5 Finally, looking into the future, 

6 California refineries, like many others across 

7 the U.S., are being modified to receive different 

8 and oftentimes lower quality crude oil. This is 

9 a problem. EPA must not allow air emissions, 

10 upsets, and accidents that make the community and 

11 the workers less safe because of this new crude, 

12 and this rulemaking is an important part of 

13 making sure that won't occur. Indeed, EPA must 

14 vigorously strengthen safeguards for communities 

15 and neighborhoods afflicted by this pollution.

16 The U.S. EPA, our President Obama has 

17 stated the commitment to put environmental 

18 justice into action. This rulemaking provides a 

19 concrete opportunity to make this happen.

20 We look forward to continuing to work 

21 together with the agency, with the community 

22 members here, to develop protections for all 
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1 Californians that Americans need and deserve.

2 Thank you very much.

3 MS. LASSITER: Thank you. All right. 

4 Thank you.

5 [Pause.]

6 MS. LASSITER: All right. So, at this 

7 point, we are going to take a 15-minute break. I 

8 have got 10:25. So we will be back at 20 minutes 

9 until 11 for our next speakers. 

10 Thank you.

11 [Recess taken from 10:25 to 10:42 a.m.]

12 MS. LASSITER: I'm going to get started 

13 back again. We currently have three more 

14 speakers on our list, and so at this time, is Mr. 

15 Jesse Marquez -- is he here?

16 ATTENDEE: He is outside.

17 MS. LASSITER: He is outside. Okay.

18 All right. So, as Mr. Marquez is making 

19 his way to the table, I would also ask Pastor 

20 Carrillo, if you would also come to the speakers 

21 table, please.

22 MR. MARQUEZ: I have three documents.
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1 MS. LASSITER: Okay, super. Thank you.

2 [Pause.]

3 MR. MARQUEZ: There are six different 

4 maps.

5 MS. LASSITER: Oh, they're different. 

6 Okay, thank you. All right.

7 MR. MARQUEZ: They are six maps of all 

8 six refineries.

9 MS. LASSITER: Okay, good. All right.

10 MR. MARQUEZ: And what it is, is that 

11 it's an overlay of each refinery in the Cal 

12 Enviro screen database, and basically, what it 

13 shows is that all six refineries are in the high 

14 red result.

15 MS. LASSITER: Okay, great. Thank you.

16 All right. So would you like to begin?

17 MR. MARQUEZ: Good morning, and thank you 

18 for this opportunity. My name is Jesse Marquez. 

19 I'm a lifetime resident of Wilmington. I'm also 

20 the Founder and Executive Director of the 

21 Coalition for a Safe Environment. We are located 

22 and headquarters here in Wilmington, but we have 
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1 members in over 25 different cities in the State 

2 of California.

3 We are here to say that all six of the 

4 Los Angeles Oil Refinery Committee support 

5 adoption of stricter oil refinery air pollution 

6 standards and stricter regulation of oil refinery 

7 manufacturing operations.

8 Our communities are in a public health 

9 crisis because regulatory agencies have allowed 

10 oil refineries to release hundreds of tons of 

11 toxic air pollution each year. Our children and 

12 families are suffering and dying from lung 

13 cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, asthma, 

14 COPD, and numerous other health illnesses, 

15 because we are exposed to unsafe levels of toxic 

16 and carcinogenic chemicals every day and every 

17 year.

18 Our children's lives and future are at 

19 stake, and as parents, we must take every action 

20 to assure that the new amendments will 

21 significantly reduce our children's exposure to 

22 toxic air pollution from oil refineries in our 
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1 communities.

2 EPA has a legal responsibility to protect 

3 our rights to clean air and good health. Oil 

4 refineries have no rights.

5 We have thousands of families who live 

6 fence line to major oil refineries who breathe 

7 refinery toxic chemicals every day. There are 

8 equipment failures and malfunctions, power 

9 outages, flaring, fires, explosions regularly at 

10 every oil refinery here in Los Angeles.

11 Even last Sunday, on a Sunday afternoon, 

12 there was a flaring event at Valero, just, you 

13 know, half-a-mile from here. It blew all the way 

14 east, past Long Beach and Signal Hill towards the 

15 605 freeway. It went all the way north to past 

16 the 91 freeway to Paramount and La Mirada, and 

17 that's how far it was going.

18 Our organization reviewed flaring data 

19 for all six major oil refineries in Los Angeles 

20 from the year 2000 to 2011 and discovered that 

21 flaring had increased every year at every oil 

22 refinery, and there was not one investigation by 
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1 the California South Coast Air Quality Management 

2 District, the California Air Resources Board, or 

3 the U.S. EPA, let along any enforcement action.

4 We have reviewed the U.S. EPA proposed 

5 amendments, and we do support them. However, 

6 they are not enough to protect our children and 

7 community's health and guarantee our safety.

8 The amendments do not require any 

9 chemical or emission category to being reduced to 

10 less than significant, and that is important to 

11 us, because without a target date to reduce it to 

12 a safe level, our communities are never safe.

13 Three years ago, my sister called me up 

14 and asked me to go to my parents' house, because 

15 I live in Wilmington where my parents life. My 

16 sister had moved to a job in Brea. My nephew was 

17 diagnosed with lymphoma. She wanted me to be 

18 there with my mother and father, since they're in 

19 their 80s. So she has explained on the phone 

20 that my nephew has lymphoma. My mother started 

21 crying. My mother, after the phone call, looks 

22 at me, and you may not know this, but all 
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1 "Jesses" and all "Jesuses" have a Spanish 

2 nickname, which is "Chuy."

3 So she looks at me, crying, "Chuy, mi 

4 hijo." "Mi hijo" is Spanish for "my son." "You 

5 will go with your sister to every doctor's 

6 appointment. You will save my grandson's life. 

7 Everything that you have learned. Everything you 

8 ever talked about, you do what you can."

9 So I went with my sister to the next 

10 doctor's appointment. Not once -- now, we're 

11 talking about cancer specialist and blood 

12 diseases. Not once did he ask where did you 

13 live, because she grew up in an oil refinery 

14 community. Her husband grew up in an oil 

15 refinery community. Her parents, our 

16 grandparents -- we have four generations now. So 

17 there is even DNA damage that we believe is now 

18 hereditary that makes our immune systems weak. 

19 We believe that the risk -- and I have read in 

20 the EPA document that it says a degree of 

21 uncertainty. Well, the only reason there is a 

22 degree of uncertainty in the different categories 
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1 of risk is because EPA has not required adequate 

2 studies to be performed.

3 If you go right now on the Internet and 

4 you search "air pollution public health problems, 

5 research studies, or abstracts in oil refinery 

6 communities," do you know how many you will find? 

7 You're lucky if you find five or six, and some of 

8 those are out of the country. 

9 However, Ricardo mentioned some of our 

10 studies, and I continue doing more research. And 

11 we have now put together a bibliography of health 

12 studies and abstracts and hospital and agency 

13 reports on refinery emissions, and we can provide 

14 that to you.

15 Also, we have brought up about health 

16 risk assessments. Well, health risk assessments 

17 mean very little to us because they only tell us 

18 how many people might die as a result of exposure 

19 to a chemical or multiple chemicals. But we 

20 support our health impact assessments because a 

21 health impact assessment can include a public 

22 health survey, and in that public health survey, 
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1 it will tell you how many people have asthma or 

2 COPD or leukemia. It will tell you their age. 

3 It will tell you if they're a child or a senior. 

4 It will tell you how long they have been ill, how 

5 serious they have been ill, what medications they 

6 are taking, and what that cost has been.

7 Right now, you have no clue, but in the 

8 600 people that interviewed -- that we 

9 interviewed in our survey, I can tell you 

10 exactly. More than their own personal doctor, 

11 what they -- what is wrong with them, because, 

12 see, we looked at leukemia as our key disease, 

13 and we listed 21 symptoms. Now, actually, there 

14 is more than 21, but the top 21 symptoms of blood 

15 diseases, and we had residents already with 

16 leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, but we were 

17 surprised we also found out some of them had 17, 

18 18, 19, 20 symptoms and had not been diagnosed. 

19 How can that be?

20 So we are here testifying before you. We 

21 are submitting our public comments to you, asking 

22 you, because you do have the legal authority to 
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1 be able to address all of our concerns and 

2 mandate the type of things that we are 

3 recommending, because we know when we are exposed 

4 to benzene, the chances and the risk is very high 

5 for a blood disease. Because if you're a parent 

6 and you tell me your child has been diagnosed 

7 with anemia, which means that there is an iron 

8 deficiency, and if they take vitamins and eat 

9 more vegetables with iron in it, it will be 

10 better, but that doesn't mean that to me or any 

11 member of my organization or staff. If you tell 

12 me a child has anemia, that is the first sign, 

13 number one, that they may have are leading 

14 towards a direction of a blood disease like 

15 leukemia, myeloma.

16 If a parent or an adult tells me they 

17 have just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I 

18 already know right now with 99 percent accuracy 

19 that their home where they are living and have 

20 been living was built on top a refinery, on top 

21 of an oil well, on top of a fuel tank farm, 

22 because we have now learned that after 25 years 
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1 of leaving there, the vapor intrusion from those 

2 facilities and from those shutdown refineries 

3 will rise. And that is a first flag for us.

4 So I thank you for this opportunity.

5 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

6 Any questions?

7 [No audible response.]

8 MS. LASSITER: Okay. Please.

9 PASTOR CARRILLO: My name is Alfred 

10 Carrillo. Carrillo is spelled with two r's and 

11 two l's. I have been a resident in the City of 

12 Wilmington for about 64 years. Within those 64 

13 years, I have been pastor for 35 years, but Jesse 

14 had mentioned so much diseases and sicknesses in 

15 our area. 

16 Our church is located about a half-a-mile 

17 from oil refineries, and within that area, my 

18 congregation is about 130. And about one-third 

19 of our congregation has illnesses of different 

20 diseases. Other than that, the community that I 

21 have been pastoring for these years, for 35 

22 years, I presided many funerals, and the majority 
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1 of those funerals are the diseases that Jesse had 

2 mentioned.

3 Knowing all of this and going to these 

4 parents, sitting down with them, and families, 

5 with these tragedies that happened to their 

6 families, how do you explain it to them? As a 

7 pastor, how do you explain things, knowing the 

8 area that you live and all these illnesses are 

9 exposed to the community, knowing that and trying 

10 to counsel them? Many of those families that I 

11 have sat down with always refer to the refinery, 

12 the area in which we live in, the trucks, 

13 containers. More than ever, I have always told 

14 certain people that one day, East Wilmington will 

15 not exist, either, or be alive or not. East 

16 Wilmington is going to disappear. The harbor is 

17 going to come in and take it.

18 Right now, East Wilmington, we have 

19 wrecking yards, and I think we're the junkyard of 

20 the L.A. County. And that area that East 

21 Wilmington is exposed to, we have trucking that 

22 passes through Alameda, and some of those trucks 
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1 come into our area, which is East Wilmington. 

2 Not only the refinery is causing pollution, we 

3 have a trucking problem. We have rodents 

4 problem. Right across the street from our area, 

5 there is a junkyard, and years back, we fought 

6 against it, which to no avail, they still passed 

7 it.

8 So we are in the middle of that East 

9 Wilmington. We are in the middle of tragedy, and 

10 every time someone comes to me, to my office, and 

11 telling me their diseases and their sicknesses, 

12 me as a pastor, the only solution I have, "Let's 

13 pray," knowing, knowing already where we live, 

14 and it's touching. It's moving, how to sit down, 

15 especially when children are sick. We could say, 

16 "Well, it's the weather." To some phase, maybe 

17 you could say it is the weather, but even my 

18 wife, we've lived in the Wilmington area, like I 

19 said, about 64 years. Now she is suffering with 

20 asthma. I almost lost her in December because of 

21 the asthma that she had.

22 And our family members, congregation 
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1 members, knowing in the back of my mind the only 

2 thing we have in our ministry is "Let's pray." 

3 And I thank God that you're here listening to 

4 these people here, and I just hope and pray that 

5 it's not just words, but there are results, and 

6 the refineries are killing our community. 

7 God bless you, and thank you.

8 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

9 Okay. Next, I'd like to ask Mr. Adrian 

10 Martinez, please.

11 MR. MARTINEZ: Good morning. Welcome to 

12 Los Angeles. My name is Adrian Martinez, and I 

13 am a Staff Attorney with Earth Justice, and I am 

14 based here in Los Angeles.

15 And I'm going to start my testimony by 

16 noting that Earth Justice is going to work with 

17 several groups to file formal comments on this 

18 rulemaking, and that will be forthcoming.

19 And then a second thing I want to talk 

20 about is start from a basic premise of Earth 

21 Justice's comments, and that is everyone has the 

22 right to breathe clean, healthy air and have 
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1 strong protection from hazardous air pollution. 

2 And I think that's something that everyone can 

3 agree on.

4 No child should have to fear the air they 

5 breathe or bear the extra-hitting cost of the oil 

6 industry's pollution. Equal protection is a 

7 basic American value, and we all deserve equal 

8 protection from pollution.

9 At this moment, the right to breathe 

10 healthy air is not equal, and this right is being 

11 denied to millions of Americans, because toxic 

12 substances are being spewed into the air every 

13 day by nearly 150 oil refineries across the 

14 United States.

15 This community is emblematic of this 

16 suffering and these impacts, and so we're happy 

17 that you decided to come and have the hearing in 

18 Wilmington.

19 These Americans living nearest oil 

20 refineries are disproportionately children, lower 

21 income, African American and Latino, and are 

22 breathing in air filled with a toxic soup of 
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1 20,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants, 

2 including cancer-causing benzene, lead, hydrogen 

3 cyanide, arsenic, formaldehyde, and many more. 

4 These are pollutants that people shouldn't be 

5 breathing.

6 The reason these Americans are put at 

7 risk is because the current federal standards 

8 monitoring refinery pollution are out of date, 

9 weak, and fail in their design to protect public 

10 health. These failures include exemptions that 

11 allow for far greater missions of hazardous 

12 pollution during malfunctions and unlimited and 

13 unmonitored flaring.

14 Fence-line communities also have little 

15 or no information on what they are breathing. 

16 People living in these areas just see extreme 

17 flaring light up the sky, smell or learn 

18 pollution spikes, feel unexpected health 

19 problems, and fear accidents and explosions. 

20 Adding to that, studies have shown that emissions 

21 and health risks are vastly underestimated by as 

22 many as 100 times what is being reported to the 
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1 EPA.

2 In fact, the South Coast Air Quality 

3 Management District commissioned a study, and 

4 they found that volatile organic compound

5 emissions from some refineries in the South Coast 

6 were underreported, and we will likely be 

7 submitting that into the record, so you can 

8 review that 2013 report.

9 As a result of all this, EPA was taken to 

10 court for failing to comply with the Clean Air 

11 Act and told they must address these problems 

12 with a more protective standard. The law 

13 requires EPA to prevent unacceptable health risk 

14 and assure that all sources follow the best 

15 practices of the industry to reduce pollution.

16 These new proposed standards are a good 

17 start, but more still needs to be done, and now I 

18 will articulate some of the more that needs to be 

19 done.

20 The new first-time regulations for 

21 fence-line monitoring are a positive step to 

22 finally ensuring refineries measure and report 
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1 toxic air pollution entering local communities' 

2 air and take corrective action when limits are 

3 exceeded. However, before finalizing, EPA must 

4 strengthen them, so they actually protect people 

5 from exposure to toxic pollution.

6 Fence-line monitoring and the related 

7 corrective action standards must mandate the use 

8 of the best current technology to give 

9 neighborhoods a real-time, continuous measure of 

10 pollution, not just a snapshot, and ensure that 

11 refineries must quickly fix all pollution 

12 problems through enforceable corrective action 

13 requirements. 

14 Like fence-line monitoring, the new 

15 monitoring and combustion efficiency requirements 

16 for flaring must be strengthened and finalized. 

17 In addition, EPA needs to ban emissions from 

18 routine flaring and minimize use in other 

19 circumstances to protect people from these 

20 emissions, which currently violated the Act, as 

21 sources of hazardous air pollution in which EPA 

22 has placed no limit.
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1 In addition to removing all unlawful 

2 exemptions, including for startups, shutdowns, 

3 and malfunctions, and other uncontrolled 

4 emissions, and finalizing its proposal to ban 

5 uncontrolled emissions from pressure valves and 

6 bypasses, EPA should not finalize any special 

7 deals for industry that loosen emissions limits 

8 during startups, shutdowns, and malfunctions. 

9 And that's a very important component of what 

10 needs to happen.

11 EPA must also finalize limits for delayed 

12 coker units and storage tanks that are as strong 

13 as possible.

14 EPA must require stronger protection from 

15 wastewater and all other emissions points, rather 

16 than rejecting protections based on distorted and 

17 inappropriate considerations of the cost per ton 

18 of reductions.

19 An up-to-date health risk and impact 

20 assessment that applies the scientific 

21 recommendations of the National Academy of 

22 Sciences must be done to account for the 
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1 cumulative impacts of refineries' toxic air 

2 pollution on children and overburdened 

3 communities, and underreported emissions from 

4 flares, cooling towers, and tanks, including 

5 during upsets. EPA must find that this current 

6 health risk is unacceptable.

7 The findings from investigations of 

8 refinery incidents and other developments in 

9 pollution control must be used to require 

10 preventative action. The use of backup power, 

11 the phase-out of dangerous chemicals, and the use 

12 of all available, inherently safer systems before 

13 emergencies occur, including current leak 

14 detection and repair requirements, such as 

15 leakless valves and monitoring to prevent leaks 

16 of hazardous material.

17 EPA must also set proper limits on all 

18 pollutants, including by reducing hydrogen 

19 cyanide and ensuring limits on all hazardous air 

20 pollutants to require lagging industry members to 

21 catch up with the cleanest sources, instead of 

22 exposing the public to unfair out-of-control 
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1 emissions.

2 And prior speakers have talked about the 

3 remedy in their communities was praying. You 

4 don't need to pray. You have the authority to 

5 regulate and reduce this pollution to protect the 

6 communities, and I think it's important that you 

7 move forward with that.

8 Thank you.

9 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

10 Any questions?

11 [No audible response.]

12 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

13 All right. I don't have any more 

14 speakers who have signed up. If you are 

15 interested in speaking, you can sign up at the 

16 desk outside. We will be here until eight 

17 o'clock tonight. We are going to be taking a 

18 break for lunch from twelve to one, and then 

19 we're going to also be taking a break, I believe 

20 it was, from five to six for dinner, as well.

21 So thank you, and I am going to break, 

22 but as soon as we have anybody else show up, I 
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1 will announce --

2 Francisco, do we have anybody else?

3 ATTENDEE: There is no one else here.

4 MS. LASSITER: No one else right now. 

5 Okay.

6 All right, thank you.

7 [Recess taken from 11:12 to 11:49 a.m.]

8 MS. LASSITER: Okay. So would you like 

9 to go ahead and begin?

10 MS. BABICH: Sure.

11 MS. LASSITER: Okay, all right. Ready?

12 MS. BABICH: Yes, I am.

13 MS. LASSITER: Okay. So if you'll just 

14 state your name and who you're with, and if you 

15 will please spell your name for our reporter 

16 here, because we are taking minutes of the --

17 MS. BABICH: I have already done that.

18 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

19 MS. BABICH: Great.

20 My name is Cynthia Babich. I am Director 

21 of the Del Amo Action Committee, and I am also 

22 the Coordinator for the Los Angeles Environmental 
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1 Justice Network.

2 In 1987, my husband ran his repair 

3 business from a shop two blocks from the 

4 ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance. In the early 

5 afternoon in late November, an explosion at the 

6 refinery nearly knocked him to the ground and 

7 blew out the windows of nearby businesses.

8 We became very concerned about our 

9 day-to-day safety and soon heard the story of the 

10 19-year-old woman who was killed when vapors from 

11 the refinery drifted onto the adjacent highway 

12 causing her car to stall. When she restarted it, 

13 the fumes ignited, engulfing her car and sending 

14 a fireball towards an 80,000-gallon gasoline

15 storage tank. The tank exploded, killing two 

16 workers. The woman died the next day.

17 The road was the cross-street to my 

18 husband's business.

19 A probe found that ExxonMobil had 

20 violated refinery safety rules, and a corroded 

21 pipe was the cause of the vapors engulfing the 

22 road. Refinery practices to only do what the 
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1 bare minimum dictates.

2 They put off for another day whatever 

3 they can get away with. They do not deploy good 

4 leak detection and repair practices. and this 

5 must be fixed right away.

6 It is clear that this industry has great 

7 influence over how they are regulated. Our group 

8 participated in the review of a Title V permit 

9 for ExxonMobil, which was truly an illuminating 

10 experience. After several written requests and 

11 in-person attempts to review documents in 

12 relation to how the refinery was being managed

13 under its permit, we were led to a room which 

14 contained the notices of violations that we 

15 wanted to review.

16 I was shocked beyond belief when the 

17 attendee monitoring our review asked me to put 

18 Post-it Notes on the pages I was copying, so that

19 they could report to ExxonMobil what was reviewed 

20 by us.

21 This is the reality on the ground. We 

22 need strong rules at our disposal to protect our 
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1 communities and make them safer. These 

2 situations and much, much worse in many of the

3 32 states housing 150 refineries are occurring on 

4 a regular basis.

5 We bare the health burden of the 22,000

6 tons of toxins pumped into our air yearly. We 

7 need strong rules, or our communities continue to 

8 be sacrifice zones, where death often is the end 

9 result.

10 And I would like to read in the record an 

11 article from the Daily Breeze dated November 

12 25th, 1987, which is a chronicle of many of the 

13 situations at the Torrance ExxonMobil refinery.

14 The fiery halo that surrounded the Mobil 

15 Oil refinery Tuesday must have been like déjà vu 

16 for longtime neighbors. Fireballs, explosions,

17 and billows of smoke have long been part of the 

18 refinery’s legacy, as many Torrance residents can 

19 attest. One of the earliest explosions at Mobil 

20 was in 1978, when a giant unit caught fire, 

21 spewing layers of thick soot over streets and 

22 houses. No injuries were reported.
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1 The most serious explosion at the 

2 Torrance plant was in the early evening of 

3 December 3rd, 1979, when vapors from the refinery 

4 drifted onto Van Ness Avenue, causing 19-year-old 

5 Cynthia Elizabeth Moore’s car to stall. When it

6 restarted, the fumes ignited and engulfed her 

7 car, a 1973 Camaro, and sent a fireball toward 

8 the storage tank. The tank exploded, killing two 

9 workers. Moore died several days later.

10 A probe found that Mobil had violated 

11 state refinery safety rules. Three months 

12 earlier, a badly corroded and overly patched pipe 

13 was blamed for a fire which ripped through a 

14 gas-processing tower. The spectacular explosion 

15 shattered windows and sent shock waves as far as 

16 10 miles away.

17 Since 1979, Mobil Oil, which employs some 

18 800 workers at the plant, has been riddled with

19 less serious but nonetheless hazardous fires. In 

20 January 1985, flammable liquid butane gas leaked 

21 from a railroad tanker car on Mobil property, 

22 resulting in a vapor cloud and the closure of a 
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1 portion of Prairie Avenue. Firefighters and 

2 Mobil employees were able to contain it. 

3 Investigators later determined that the gas had

4 escaped while it was being unloaded from the 

5 tanker car.

6 A fire in February 1984 caused several 

7 thousand dollars of damage to the Mobil refinery,

8 but no one was injured. The cause of the fire was 

9 a ruptured chemical line, which spewed a

10 combination of kerosene and hydrogen gas into a 

11 furnace.

12 In May 1984, a ruptured pipe at the 

13 refinery sent superheated oil shooting into the

14 air. The greasy mist covered automobiles, homes, 

15 clothing, and other property as it was blown 

16 southeast by winds. At least 2,500 people 

17 reported damage to the company.

18 A pump failure in May 1980 triggered a 

19 minor explosion, breaking a pipe and causing fuel 

20 to spill. No one was injured, but firefighters 

21 battled the blaze for hours.

22 A major modernization program during the 
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1 1960s, the refinery was built in 1929 by General

2 Petroleum Company, was almost completely 

3 reconstructed. It was the most extensive

4 modernization in Mobil’s history. But since that 

5 time, critics contend, Mobil hasn’t kept up with 

6 the times, specifically when it comes to today’s 

7 pollution standards.

8 An engineer testified in 1985 that Mobil 

9 officials delayed needed repairs in air pollution

10 equipment for more than 2 years, despite 

11 warnings. Plant breakdowns, air quality 

12 violations, citations for safety infringements,

13 and citizen complaints mounted between 1981 and 

14 1984, according to state and local documents. 

15 And in 1986, neighbors forced the refinery to 

16 test for explosive vapors. In 1986, neighbors 

17 forced them to test for explosive vapors.

18 We need a strong refinery rule that is 

19 something that is enforceable, because we the 

20 fence-line communities bear the burden of making 

21 sure enforcement happens.

22 Thank you so much for being here.
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1 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

2 Do you have any questions?

3 [No audible response.]

4 MS. LASSITER: All right, thank you.

5 Are you ready? Yes. Robina -- is it 

6 "Suwol"?

7 MS. SUWOL: Yes.

8 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

9 [Pause.]

10 MS. SUWOL: Hi. Good morning. My name 

11 is Robina Suwol. I am the Founder and Executive 

12 Director of California Safe Schools. We are a 

13 children's environmental health and environmental 

14 justice coalition located here in Southern 

15 California.

16 We are very concerned about the releases 

17 of hazardous air pollutants from the refineries 

18 and the impacts of those releases on children's 

19 health and well-being.

20 On our refinery tour this Monday of the 

21 refineries in the South Bay, we noticed -- and 

22 especially I noticed -- that there were really 
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1 dozens of schools and day care centers, and that 

2 these schools and day care centers are located at 

3 the fence lines of these refineries. Yet, the 

4 risk assessment done by EPA does not assess the 

5 special vulnerability of children to these 

6 hazardous air pollution releases.

7 EPA must look at the recommendations of 

8 the National Academy of Sciences, because the NSA 

9 has told the EPA that they need to run risk 

10 assessments, which include the special 

11 vulnerabilities of our children. And without 

12 specific protection provided by the Clean Air Act 

13 and the pollution reduction, which the Act 

14 specifies, children, vulnerable children living 

15 near these refineries, will continue to be 

16 sickened by refinery emissions.

17 Please. Please help us with this and 

18 increase the protection on these rules. Thank 

19 you.

20 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

21 Jane, are you ready?

22 MS. WILLIAMS: I am.
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1 MS. LASSITER: Okay.

2 MS. WILLIAMS: How are you, Ms. Lassiter?

3 MS. LASSITER: Good. How are you, Ms. 

4 Williams?

5 MS. WILLIAMS: Ms. Shine, how are you? 

6 Nice to see you.

7 MS. SHINE: Thank you.

8 MS. LASSITER: So, Jane, if you wouldn't 

9 mind saying who you are affiliated with, so we 

10 can get it on the court reporter's --

11 MS. WILLIAMS: Hello. I am Jane 

12 Williams. I am the Executive Director of 

13 California Communities Against Toxics, which is a 

14 coalition of environmental justice groups here in 

15 California. It was founded in 1989 at the 

16 Resurrection Church in East Los Angeles in Boyle 

17 Heights, and we have worked on refinery pollution 

18 for many, many years with our partner members 

19 here in Los Angeles and are very concerned about 

20 the impacts of the refinery rule on the health of 

21 folks here living in Los Angeles and other parts 

22 of California.
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1 We are one of the plaintiffs that sued 

2 U.S. EPA to force them to set standards on a 

3 deadline for pollution reductions from the 

4 refinery industry.

5 So what I want to talk to you today about 

6 is, recently, Dr. Barry Wallerstein from the 

7 South Coast Air Quality Management District 

8 rented -- or actually leased a LIDAR unit from 

9 one of the Scandinavian countries and brought it 

10 over here and drove around and took a look at 

11 refinery emissions and published a report at the 

12 end of last year, which we will enter into the 

13 record during our formal written comments.

14 What that study found, what that 

15 monitoring data found was that refinery emissions 

16 are much higher than we previously have known. 

17 And I know this must come as a shock to you all. 

18 I know many people in the room would be stupefied 

19 to know that refineries emit more than they 

20 report and emit more than we have been 

21 estimating, and many of those emissions are VOCs, 

22 so we want the agency to be thinking carefully 
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1 about this information and how it changes the way 

2 in which we are thinking about regulating 

3 refinery emissions. Okay?

4 And we understand that the Agency is on a

5 time frame, and, you know, we need to think very 

6 closely about how it may change the risk 

7 assessments, it may change the control 

8 technologies.

9 I also want to bring to the Agency's 

10 attention that because we do not really have a 

11 very good leak detection and repair portion in 

12 this rule that -- and our global LDAR rule 

13 apparently is not going to be happening, we would 

14 like the Agency to seriously consider adding an 

15 anonymous near-miss reporting requirement in 

16 which refinery workers would be able to 

17 anonymously report both pollution leaks, safety 

18 issues at refineries. This has been used 

19 sporadically at refineries across the country. 

20 It has resulted in emissions reductions. It is 

21 currently in use for nuclear workers, for 

22 firemen, for the airline industry, and the 
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1 consensus of a number of safety experts is that 

2 these anonymous reporting systems that encourage 

3 workers to report unsafe conditions at refinery 

4 facilities or chemical manufacturing facilities 

5 or other types of facilities results in the 

6 refineries being run better, not having deferred 

7 maintenance, not as many accidents and kabooms.

8 And so we would definitely like the 

9 Agency to consider adding that to the rule. We 

10 know the rule is currently in its proposed form, 

11 but given the absence of actual specific 

12 requirements for leak detection and repair, we 

13 think that putting in this anonymous near-miss 

14 reporting system would be a very good idea.

15 The center for the anonymous near-miss 

16 reporting for the airline industry is actually 

17 here in California. It's run by NASA. It's up 

18 in the Bay Area, and I know that some of you gals 

19 who were up there recently, it would be great, 

20 maybe you can make it back up there again and go 

21 take a tour of that facility, because as I was 

22 growing up, I remember hearing airlines crashing 
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1 all the time. And we just don't hear about that 

2 too much anymore, and a lot of safety experts say 

3 that the reason is because we have this anonymous 

4 near-miss reporting.

5 So I could go on and on and on with a 

6 number of different comments, but I do want to 

7 thank you for all of your hard work. I know that 

8 many of you here from EPA working on this rule, 

9 making it now for at least a half-a-decade, if 

10 not longer, and you must be getting tired of just 

11 working on refineries. You might think about, 

12 you know, let's see, miracles, have a 

13 miracle-growing contest, you know, or something 

14 else that was a counterforce, like the yin and 

15 the yang of refinery pollution. That might 

16 really be nice.

17 But, of course, we're going to be 

18 submitting written comments, but these are the 

19 two major issues that the agency really should be 

20 thinking about now, because the time frames of 

21 the rulemaking are going to get short. We know 

22 that we have received a request for an extension 
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1 from industry. We will be communicating on that, 

2 as well. We know we've got a request for an 

3 extension of the comment period.

4 So thank you so much for the opportunity 

5 to testify, and I guess I will turn it over to 

6 some of the other folks here who are going to 

7 speak, because I could continue, even though my 

8 red light is on.

9 All right. Thank you for the opportunity 

10 to speak.

11 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

12 Did you have any specific questions?

13 MS. WILLIAMS: Any questions?

14 MS. SHINE: I don't, but let me just 

15 reiterate. You said there were two points. One 

16 is the anonymous reporting system.

17 MS. WILLIAMS: Yeah.

18 MS. SHINE: And the other one, I assume 

19 is the underestimation of emissions.

20 MS. WILLIAMS: Right.

21 MS. SHINE: Okay.

22 MS. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
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1 And we have this new report that we are 

2 going to be giving you. In fact, probably won't 

3 wait to put it in the docket, probably will wait 

4 -- probably won't even wait that long. Put it in 

5 front of you guys when you get back.

6 MS. LASSITER: Okay.

7 MS. WILLIAMS: We'll put it in the 

8 docket, but we'll also put it in front of you, so 

9 that you can start thinking about how you want to 

10 respond.

11 MS. LASSITER: That would be helpful. 

12 Thank you.

13 MS. WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you so much.

14 MS. LASSITER: All right. 

15 [Pause.]

16 MS. LASSITER: We are going to break for 

17 lunch. We will be back here at one o'clock to 

18 start again, so thank you.

19 [Luncheon recess from 12:08 to 1:12 p.m.]

20 MS. LASSITER: All right. Good 

21 afternoon.

22 Since I see some folks that maybe weren't 
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1 here at eight or nine o'clock this morning when I 

2 did the introduction, I am going to go and just 

3 cover a few things before I ask our next speakers 

4 to come forward.

5 So thank you all for coming to this 

6 public hearing. My name is Penny Lassiter. I am 

7 the Group Leader for the Refining and Chemicals 

8 Group, and we're located in EPA's Headquarters 

9 Office in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

10 Joining me here on the panel today are 

11 Brenda Shine, who is also in the same office with 

12 me, as well as we have two representatives from 

13 EPA Region 9. We have Shaheerah Kelly, and we 

14 also have Elizabeth Adams.

15 So we are here today to listen to your 

16 comments on the rule that we proposed for 

17 refineries on June the 30th, 2014. This rule is 

18 based on risk and technology review, and it 

19 covers two standards that we currently have in 

20 place that affect emissions from refineries.

21 We are proposing additional control 

22 requirements in the proposed rule to cover 
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1 additional requirements for storage tanks, for 

2 flares, for coking units, as well as to establish 

3 an air concentration standard at the fence line 

4 of refineries that require fence-line monitoring 

5 as an approach for managing fugitive emissions of 

6 air toxics from refineries along with ensuring 

7 that communities are not being exposed to 

8 unintended emissions.

9 So when the rule is fully implemented, we 

10 anticipate a reduction of 5,600 tons per year of 

11 toxic pollutants and along with that also a 

12 co-benefit of 52,000 tons per year of volatile 

13 organic compounds.

14 We will be accepting oral comments on all 

15 aspects of the proposal today, and we will 

16 prepare a written transcript of the hearing. We 

17 have a court reporter here that will be keeping a 

18 transcript that will be fined in the regulatory 

19 docket.

20 We are also accepting written comments on 

21 the proposed rule until August the 29th of this 

22 year, and if you didn't do so, there are some 
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1 handouts available at the registration desk at 

2 the front that give you information about how to 

3 comment and how to submit those comments.

4 We will be here until eight o'clock 

5 tonight. We will be taking another break for 

6 dinner from five until six, and we are asking 

7 people to limit their testimony to 5 minutes. I 

8 am not being terribly strict on that, because 

9 don't have a whole lot of speakers today, but 

10 just so that you are aware of the time that you 

11 are using to speak, there will be a clock up 

12 here. When you see it turn yellow, you will know 

13 that you are at the 4-minute mark, and when it's 

14 red, you will be on the 5-minute mark.

15 Let's see. I think that's pretty much 

16 it. We do have some people here available who

17 are Spanish-speaking translators. If any of you 

18 need their assistance, please feel free to speak 

19 to either of the two ladies on the front row 

20 here.

21 So, with that, I am going to go ahead and 

22 start back. We have two speakers that have 
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1 registered to speak at this point, so I am now 

2 going to ask Ms. Christine Arquel and Ms. 

3 Florence Gharibian if both of you are available. 

4 If you will please come to the front, and then I 

5 will give each of you an opportunity to present 

6 your testimony.

7 If you would, please state your name and 

8 who you're -- if you're representing any 

9 particular organization, who that is, and you may 

10 want to spell your name, just so we can be sure 

11 to get it correct for our record. 

12 So, with that, are you Ms. Araquel?

13 MS. ARAQUEL: Mm-hmm.

14 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

15 MS. ARAQUEL: I am Christine Araquel, 

16 A-r-a-q-u-e-l, with People's Community 

17 Organization for Reform and Empowerment, People's 

18 CORE.

19 I actually grew up in the South Bay 

20 community nearby the refinery on Wilmington and 

21 223rd, and my family and relatives, we all have 

22 histories that include asthma, heart disease, and 
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1 kidney damage. Many of my relatives that lived 

2 along the fence line, they live nearby the 

3 refineries in Carson and in Wilmington. So these 

4 types of experiences and the health histories, 

5 that is what encouraged me and engaged me to 

6 participate in the work of People's CORE as a 

7 youth.

8 We have worked in the City of Carson for 

9 the past 18 years to assist local stakeholders, 

10 youth, and the larger community through education 

11 and community engagement to participate in 

12 decision-making processes that address local 

13 environmental health. And from the work that we 

14 have been doing, the day care centers, the local 

15 residents, the elementary schools that we work 

16 with have all shown concerns for the high 

17 incidences of asthma attacks and ER visits with 

18 their children and students.

19 With the EPA's enviro screen tool, our 

20 community is classified as a disadvantaged 

21 community, and for many long-term residents, 

22 there's several questions -- many questions and 
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1 growing concerns about local environmental health 

2 and how it will be further affected as a result 

3 of climate change.

4 We support the EPA's new amendments; 

5 however, we feel that it could be strengthened. 

6 It's imperative that flare reduction plans are 

7 implemented for all communities impacted by 

8 refinery pollution.

9 Monitoring of all chemicals released by 

10 refineries must be established on an ongoing 

11 basis.

12 In addition, it would be greatly 

13 beneficial for our communities to be considered 

14 for public health studies by the EPA with the 

15 fence-line communities of oil refineries.

16 And with new generations in our 

17 community, it is an opportune time to make a 

18 shift in how they are going to grow up and what 

19 they will remember about what it is like to play 

20 outside. It is an opportunity for the younger 

21 generation to grow up with a better sense of 

22 health, less hospital visits, and fresher and 
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1 cleaner air for many of us, how many of us might 

2 remember.

3 Thanks for the opportunity to speak, and 

4 we hope that recommendations for strengthening 

5 the new proposed air quality standards will be 

6 considered integrated in the new refinery 

7 standards and requirements.

8 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

9 [Pause.]

10 MS. LASSITER: Ms. Gharibian -- I don't 

11 know if I'm pronouncing your name correctly.

12 MS. GHARIBIAN: "Gharibian."

13 MS. LASSITER: "Gharibian." Okay.

14 MS. GHARIBIAN: And I'm glad to be here 

15 this afternoon and talking with you. My name is 

16 Florence Gharibian. That is spelled 

17 G-h-a-r-i-b-i-a-n. I worked for the federal EPA 

18 in the San Francisco Regional Office for a number 

19 of years in the Library Information Center. I 

20 also worked for the EPA in the Denver National 

21 Enforcement Investigation Center. I transferred 

22 over to the State of California on an IPA 
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1 assignment in Sacramento, where I worked with 

2 communities who were very concerned about 

3 Superfund sites like the Stringfellow acid pits.

4 Then I really changed gears and started 

5 doing field inspections at companies in Los 

6 Angeles, including the refineries. Most of the 

7 rest of my career with the State of California, 

8 where I worked for 26 years, was a Branch Chief 

9 in the Enforcement Program.

10 Toward the end of my career, where I 

11 retired in May of 2011, I did environmental 

12 justice work in the communities of Los Angeles, 

13 Fresno, Imperial County, Oakland, met with the 

14 people that lived there, heard their stories, and 

15 found them compelling -- grandmothers with 

16 grandchildren that have asthma, women that get up 

17 in the middle of the night to take their kids to 

18 the emergency room.

19 Since my retirement, I have been working 

20 with the L.A. Environmental Justice Network, and 

21 you have heard several of their members speak 

22 this morning, Cynthia Babich, Jane Williams, 
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1 Jesse Marquez, and I consider them to be heroes 

2 in the environmental movement. They fight hard 

3 for what they know these communities need.

4 I actually didn't plan to make another 

5 trip down the 110 freeway today to speak to you, 

6 but I woke up this morning, and I honestly -- I'm 

7 not going to do this, but I woke up this morning, 

8 and I thought about the things that I heard at a 

9 meeting yesterday about the refineries.

10 I heard about how I believe the air 

11 district has done some studies where they have 

12 determined that the fugitive issues from the --

13 the fugitive emissions -- I noticed in the 

14 materials that you have presented, unintended 

15 emissions -- from these refineries are actually 

16 the major cause of air pollution from the 

17 refineries from their calculations, and a 

18 fugitive emission means petroleum fumes, which 

19 are flammable.

20 I thought about the fact that we have 

21 several day care facilities that are located 

22 right across the street from refineries and 
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1 people who live there.

2 I went on a bus tour on Monday where we 

3 went to a community that is sandwiched between 

4 the 110 freeway and the Chevron refinery. I've 

5 been to schools that are located on busy 

6 roadways, and people who are living in dangerous 

7 environments, it really matters. These rules 

8 really matter.

9 And I think about the pressure that the 

10 federal EPA is under on behalf of the petroleum 

11 industry. For example, the API, I read their 

12 press release. It feels like they say the same 

13 thing over and over and over again, "It's too 

14 expensive. It can't be done. It's going to take 

15 too long. It's not needed." These rules and 

16 more are needed, and the reason I came here today 

17 is to ask you to have your inspectors go to these 

18 refineries, go with the South Coast Air Quality 

19 Management District, go with the ARB inspectors, 

20 go with the fire department inspectors. Do your 

21 own fence-line monitoring. Do your own 

22 evaluation of these refineries.
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1 And I'm also asking you to organize 

2 meetings with the people who work there and talk 

3 to them about what they see happening at these 

4 refineries every day.

5 I am also asking that that work be done 

6 in the non-eight-to-five work hours, because it 

7 is my experience that these companies know the 

8 inspectors won't show up on Thursday night or 

9 Sunday morning or Saturday night. So I'm asking 

10 for unannounced, not with appointment, surprise 

11 inspections, at least as an initial first step, 

12 so that you get your own data about what's going 

13 on.

14 I am also asking -- your regulations talk 

15 about maximum available control technology. I 

16 want to see that kind of technology in the front 

17 -- in the fence-line monitoring equipment that's 

18 used, and I want to see 24-hour fence-line 

19 monitoring. I want to see that data available to 

20 the public, and I want to see more than benzene, 

21 because these refineries have more than benzene 

22 in their air pollution.
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1 I want to see this flare problem really 

2 understood and tackled, and I don't want to see 

3 an annual average benzene level, because that's 

4 not an accurate way to get a picture of what's 

5 actually happening on these refineries.

6 Please be aware, these refineries, many 

7 of them -- the Chevron refinery in this area was 

8 built in 1912. I want to know these are not 

9 patched-together, Scotch-taped, fitted-together, 

10 piecemeal refineries. I want these to be 

11 state-of-the-art, the best that they can be.

12 The other thing that I will say to anyone 

13 who asks me about environmental protection is the 

14 key to the future, our ability to meet the 

15 climate change challenges that we all face, is 

16 new technologies, nurturing new technologies, 

17 finding ways to not only reduce pollution but 

18 actually clean up our air. And I feel that all 

19 of our regulatory agencies have gotten to the 

20 point where they almost think there's nothing new 

21 under the sun, but I know new technologies will 

22 be the key to solving our environmental problems.
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1 I have dedicated 40 years of my life to 

2 this work, and I will continue to do so, as long 

3 as I can, because it's the most important thing 

4 any of us can do for our children and our 

5 grandchildren and the future children to come on 

6 this planet.

7 So I ask you to feel compelled to 

8 earnestly respond to the concerns that you've 

9 heard today and the comments from the people 

10 who've worked so hard to get us to the place 

11 where we are today in the environmental groups.

12 Thank you very much for listening.

13 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

14 Any questions?

15 [No audible response.]

16 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

17 At this time, I don't have any more 

18 speakers, but we will be hanging around, and we 

19 will be ready to listen when others come in to 

20 testify, so thank you.

21 [Pause.]

22 MS. LASSITER: We have a Mr. Albert 
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1 Castanon. I hope I said that correctly.

2 I think you came in and probably didn't 

3 hear my introduction. I'm not going to go all 

4 the way back through that, but I just wanted to 

5 let you know that we are keeping a record of the 

6 oral comments. We'll put those into the 

7 regulatory record for this rulemaking, and also, 

8 if you want to submit written comments, our 

9 comment period is open until August 29th. And 

10 there is some materials up at the front desk that 

11 explains how or where to send those, if you want 

12 to.

13 So, with that, we are typically asking 

14 people to take about 5 minutes, but obviously, we 

15 don't have a whole lot of speakers, so I am not 

16 really strict about that. But I will put the 

17 timer on.

18 With that, I invite you to come forward, 

19 and if you will -- you can have a seat at the 

20 table. Yes, please. And if you will state your 

21 name and spell that for our person here that is 

22 taking the minutes, and if you are affiliated 
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1 with any particular group or if you're a 

2 resident, if you'll tell us where you're from or 

3 whatever.

4 So, with that --

5 MR. CASTANON: Okay. Good afternoon. My 

6 name is Albert Castanon. I live in the 

7 Wilmington area. My address is 1135 Dominguez

8 Avenue, and I've lived there since '68, 

9 discharged from the Vietnam conflict. I lived 

10 there for a long time.

11 The only thing maybe -- I came late 

12 because I was taking classes with the fire 

13 department this morning, but I haven't read the 

14 brochures yet. And the only complaint that I 

15 have, this oil company that is right here on 

16 Anaheim where Banning is, I know, I realize that 

17 we're having a water shortage, and the biggest 

18 complaint I have there is I don't know if they're 

19 using raw sewage in the air at night. It goes in 

20 the area where I live, and I small nothing but 

21 human feces and urination. And when the wind is 

22 no wind, you can go anywhere outside, and you hit 
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1 pockets of gases. 

2 And I've talked to the neighborhood about 

3 it, and everybody thinks, well, we smell it, 

4 because I worked for the district almost 42 years 

5 for the sanitation, Los Angeles County sanitation 

6 working in the sewage department. And when I 

7 smell that, it smells like I'm in a wet well or 

8 inside a sewer line, and that's not good, 

9 especially when people are sick around here. 

10 That's not good to breathe.

11 And I know there's a lot of methane in 

12 the air, because I -- you can't smell methane, 

13 and it's a deadly gas. 

14 So I know, I realize that if you have 

15 reclaimed water, it doesn't smell like that. So 

16 I don't know if they are tapping into the sewer 

17 line where there is nothing but sludge and raw 

18 sewage, but they are pumping that into the 

19 ground. And I want to know what's going on in 

20 that area.

21 That's not a good air to breathe, you 

22 know, day and night. 
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1 So that's the only thing I have to say 

2 for now.

3 MS. LASSITER: Okay.

4 MR. CASTANON: Maybe one of the companies 

5 can answer that for me.

6 MS. LASSITER: Can you maybe pinpoint the 

7 location a little bit better, so we can 

8 understand where?

9 MR. CASTANON: Okay. The oil company is 

10 right here on Anaheim and Banning and Eubank, and 

11 there's part of the Banning history there in the 

12 corner. And I worked with Salvadore to clean up 

13 Wilmington, and we were planting their plants. 

14 And the odor was so strong, it was coming in like 

15 the wind comes in and moves up and down. And I 

16 told him, "Hey, Salvadore, it is coming from up 

17 here at this plant here. They're using raw 

18 sewage."

19 And I live on the east of that or the 

20 other side, and the closest main street is L 

21 Street, McFarland, and Stanford and Young, and 

22 I'm right there on Dominguez Street.
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1 MS. SHINE: All right, that's good. 

2 Thank you.

3 MR. CASTANON: Is that it?

4 MS. SHINE: Yep.

5 MR. CASTANON: Okay. I'm all done.

6 MS. ADAMS: My other suggestions, too, is 

7 to call the South Coast Air Quality Management 

8 District. They have a hotline number that I can 

9 give you for when you smell things like that 

10 locally.

11 MR. CASTANON: Okay.

12 MS. ADAMS: I'll get it to you.

13 MR. CASTANON: Okay.

14 That's all what I have to say.

15 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

16 MR. CASTANON: Okay.

17 MS. LASSITER: All right. Next, we have 

18 a Ms. Kathleen Woodfield. Ms. Woodfield, if you 

19 would please come to the table. If you would

20 state your name, and also if you would please 

21 spell it for the court reporter.

22 MS. WOODFIELD: My name is Kathleen 
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1 Woodfield. I am the Vice President of the San 

2 Pedro and Peninsula Homeowner's Coalition, and 

3 we're a coalition of over a dozen homeowners' 

4 organizations throughout San Pedro and Rancho 

5 Palos Verdes and Wilmington. 

6 First, I'd like to say that I had no idea 

7 that this hearing was happening. I was on my way 

8 to the doctor, and I looked at my phone, and I 

9 saw a message from Jesse Marquez, Coalition for a 

10 Safe Environment, and so it is only through that 

11 process that I got notification, even though 

12 we're a homeowners group that is on the record 

13 for giving many comments on issues related to our 

14 exposure as residents in the area to these types 

15 of impacts. So that would be my first comment, 

16 is to find a way to communicate with the 

17 grassroots organizations. I'm sure that industry 

18 has had very direct notification, and I am also 

19 sure they get paid to write very comprehensive 

20 comments. We do not. So all the help we can get 

21 in terms of being educated and being notified is 

22 very significant to us in our capacity to 
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1 communicate with you.

2 I'd like to say, because I am not 

3 prepared -- however, our coalition supports the 

4 comments submitted by Jesse Marquez, Coalition 

5 for a Safe Environment.

6 I would also like to say that we are very 

7 concerned when we see the black soot, the flare 

8 releases in the sky that sometimes looks like it 

9 covers miles and miles and miles of skyline, and 

10 then it sits there for a long period of time.

11 We only know what we see. We can only 

12 imagine what goes on in the night, but when we 

13 make attempts to notify AQMD, it takes them a 

14 long time to come out here, if they do, and their 

15 policy is that if they don't see it, it hasn't 

16 happened.

17 And I know from working with people in my 

18 organization that there is a lot of frustration 

19 about the EPA following up with its regulations 

20 and being strict with the regulations that exist, 

21 and we feel that the regulations are not 

22 stringent enough.
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1 We are also particularly concern about 

2 the Rancho facility, which is actually a storage 

3 facility. So I don't know if you're taking 

4 comments about storage facilities, but it is 

5 directly related because it is a byproduct of the 

6 refining process. It's butane and propane 

7 storage, 25 million gallons of storage located 

8 right next to homes in San Pedro.

9 We are working on trying to shine the 

10 light on that facility because we feel it is 

11 wrongly sited. We feel it went in without 

12 permits that it was supposed to have. It was 

13 sort of rushed in. The infrastructure is old, 

14 and it's inappropriate for containing, if there 

15 is a release. That is our opinion. So we are 

16 looking to have more oversight on that site, and 

17 I know we have contacted EPA.

18 The violations that we find tend to be 

19 sort of like not overarching. It is almost like 

20 you see something that isn't right as a community 

21 person, and then if the EPA gets involved, it's 

22 for like someone didn't cross a "t" or dot an 
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1 "i," when really the issues are much more 

2 overarching.

3 Just on an anecdotal basis, I'd like to 

4 tell you a story. We have in San Pedro a rather 

5 famous artist who is moving to the area, a 

6 studio, and he has been working on his studio for 

7 a couple of months. And he's on Facebook, so I 

8 see his postings.

9 He posted recently a picture of a huge 

10 black cloud covering the sky. Of course, he had 

11 never seen it before because he's not from around 

12 here, and he has friends all over the country. 

13 And people were appalled to see it. We see it 

14 all the time. So, to some extent, it's not that 

15 we're dis-sensitized, but it's interesting to see 

16 what kind of response he got from his friends who 

17 have never seen anything like that. 

18 And we do see it as an environmental 

19 justice issue. We are exposed to a 

20 disproportionate amount of toxins, pollutants. 

21 We are always looking for ways that we can draw 

22 mitigation to this area because we feel that we 
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1 have been overlooked. We know we have been 

2 referred to in Sacramento as the "environmental 

3 sacrifice zone," but I did not bring my child 

4 into this world to be a sacrificial lamb for any 

5 industry.

6 So as much as I can press upon you to be 

7 as diligent as possible with these industries 

8 that just seem to run the world. That's all. 

9 Thank you very much.

10 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

11 Let me ask you a question. We are taking 

12 comments specifically on the petroleum refining 

13 rule that we put out on draft form on the 30th of 

14 June, but the facility that you mentioned in San 

15 Pedro, is that a storage facility, or can you 

16 tell me specifically what it is?

17 MS. WOODFIELD: It's called Rancho LPG 

18 LLC, I believe. It's an LLC, and it's Rancho. 

19 It's on Gaffey Street. It's located near 

20 schools, homes. It has the capacity to store 25

21 million gallons of butane and propane. It also 

22 has, I think, five bullet tanks located on the 
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1 site. It's right close to the street. It 

2 doesn't meet many, many requirements that would 

3 now be part of a design.

4 Matter of fact, we've been told that it 

5 would never be sited where it is if it were to be 

6 built now. It also would be built very 

7 differently. There's been a lot of variances, 

8 and we don't understand why so many variances --

9 how this facility got in and why it got in 

10 without having to meet certain requirements. 

11 The risk management report is something 

12 that we are concerned about. We're concerned 

13 about the fact that it went from a pipeline 

14 operation to a rail truck operation, without any 

15 change in the risk management report, without any 

16 change in the EIR.

17 We know that the rail line moves through 

18 the Port of Los Angeles, and if there's a blast 

19 zone associated with each inch of that rail 

20 movement, and we believe that not only our homes 

21 and schools are vulnerable, but the Port of Los 

22 Angeles itself, which is the economic engine of 
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1 this state and in many ways of the nation, that 

2 the port is vulnerable, therefore. So we are 

3 particularly concerned and have been advocating 

4 for change with this facility for many years.

5 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

6 MS. WOODFIELD: Thank you.

7 MS. LASSITER: Do you have any questions?

8 [No audible response.]

9 MS. LASSITER: Okay. Thank you for your 

10 time.

11 MS. WOODFIELD: Thank you very much.

12 I don't have any additional speakers at 

13 this time, but we will stay on standby. We're 

14 going to be here for the while.

15 [Recess taken from 2:10 to 2:47 p.m.]

16 MS. LASSITER: Okay. We have another 

17 speaker, a Mr. Joaquin Amador. Okay.

18 If you will, please come to the table. 

19 If you will state your name and if you are 

20 affiliated with any particular organization, and 

21 I will start the time clock, and just so you can 

22 kind of keep track of your time. If you will 
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1 state your name for our recorder here, because 

2 this will become part of the public record, so 

3 thank you.

4 MR. AMADOR: Great. Thank you.

5 Good afternoon. My name is Joaquin 

6 Amador, and like Mr. Castanon, I am also a 

7 resident of Wilmington.

8 I see that we have it being put on the 

9 record, so I decided to go ahead and say my 

10 piece, since it's going to be on the record. I 

11 don't know how far it will go, not expecting it 

12 to be any value, but at least I'll be able to 

13 vent, because I back Mr. Castanon.

14 He has stated some of the problems that 

15 we have in the Harbor area. not just in 

16 Wilmington, but in San Pedro and Harbor City. I 

17 have lived in all three towns. I grew up here. 

18 I went to school, a graduate of San Pedro High 

19 School, summer of 67. So I grew up in the days 

20 of the smog, and I remember the smog and how bad 

21 it was.

22 I don't know how, if it affects me now, 
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1 but now I have a lot of health issues. I have a 

2 lot of personal loss because of our lifestyle 

3 nowadays.

4 I just recent lost a very close cousin of 

5 mine, Danny Hernandez, who worked for 76 Union in 

6 Unical and whatever they've named that now. He 

7 put in his 30 years, and he was getting retired. 

8 Within a year, he died of cancer. He just passed 

9 January. Great guy.

10 My little sister can't sell her house. 

11 She lives in the section that borders the 

12 Carousel section in Carson, off of Lomita 

13 Boulevard. They have condemned that land because 

14 the Shell refinery, they used to sit on it. It 

15 contaminated the land, and now all those people 

16 who are coming up with health problems, they 

17 can't sell their homes. And my sister can't sell 

18 her home. So this has hit me pretty personal, 

19 pretty deep.

20 As far as I go, I'm a Vietnam veteran, 

21 like Mr. Castanon too. I wasn't a grunt out in 

22 the field, but I was a supply clerk. I did my 
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1 year at a base camp humping parts for the 

2 division, the 25th Infantry Division, Customer 

3 Chi. And I did my tour of a year and came home.

4 And when I came home, I got out of the 

5 army, I went to work just as a regular 

6 warehouseman and worked in a factory making the 

7 floor tile, and it seems that all that kind of 

8 labor stuff got me involved with the chemicals 

9 there too, asbestos and the radiation, because 

10 when I was a warehouseman, I handled supposedly 

11 safe radioactive material, but it appears it 

12 wasn't, because the VA has suspicions that now 

13 I've got leukemia, bone marrow cancer, on top of 

14 my diabetes and my heart problems. God knows 

15 what else will pop up.

16 So like I said, this has hit me very 

17 personal all the way around, and all I wanted to 

18 say is that I've got nieces and nephews, 

19 grand-nieces and -nephews, and I hope that 

20 someday, our government will finally realize in 

21 order to save our people that they've got to get 

22 rid of oil and all these chemicals. That's all 
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1 there is to it.

2 We must find something else that can 

3 clean-burn it. I know there is something. I 

4 mean, we as humans, walk around burning sugar and 

5 air to get around, and I can't understand why 

6 they don't go and try to find that for our 

7 machinery that burns clean and doesn't pollute.

8 I remember how in the '70s, they kept 

9 blaming the hairspray for polluting the air up in 

10 the stratosphere, but they never mentioned the 

11 jets that fly at that altitude dumping their air 

12 exhaust. But everything -- like I say, bottom 

13 line is money, so I can't see where there's going 

14 to be any change.

15 But I still hope for my little ones that 

16 someday maybe they will have a better chance. 

17 Better chance.

18 Well, also for the record, I lived at 

19 1332 West Sandison Street, Wilmington, and it 

20 looks like it will be my last place to live. 

21 That's all right. I just hope that someday the 

22 authorities will finally wake up and realize they 
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1 just can't keep gambling with people's lives in 

2 order to maintain the status quo.

3 That's all.

4 MS. LASSITER: Thank you for speaking.

5 [Pause.]

6 [Recess taken from 2:55 to 3:15 p.m.]

7 MS. LASSITER: Okay. We have another 

8 speaker this afternoon. We have Ms. Fe Koons.

9 MS. KOONS: Yeah. My name is Fe Koons. 

10 I live at 1631 Balard Street, Carson, California. 

11 I live about less than a mile from this oil 

12 refinery.

13 I'm very close to Wilmington Avenue where 

14 there is probably about five refineries. We have 

15 Rhodia, Shell behind us -- well, Shell is not a 

16 refinery. They're tank farms. But we have 

17 ConocoPhillips. So along Wilmington Avenue, we 

18 have a bunch of refineries, small and big ones, 

19 and Wilmington Avenue is also a source of 

20 particulate matter, because there's a lot of 

21 trucks that come from warehouses in Carson that 

22 comes right along that road.
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1 But the bigger problem is that I'm a 

2 teacher, so I teach preschool. Within Dolphin 

3 Park -- Dolphin Park is about two blocks from 

4 Wilmington Avenue, and probably three blocks from 

5 where Tesoro Refinery is, and so really our 

6 concern is about the children and the health risk 

7 that the children are exposed to.

8 You know, it's not fair that you say, 

9 okay, there should be 101 million lifetime cancer 

10 risk. There should be zero. There should be 

11 zero risk. Nobody should be allowed to die of 

12 cancer at all. Nobody. Zero.

13 We're also talking about the seniors. A 

14 lot of old people in our area also live very 

15 close to the refinery, and as you know, as you 

16 get older, your system breaks down.

17 And then I would like to talk about 

18 flaring. The problem with flaring is that, you 

19 know, there's really -- it says here that the 

20 monitoring is being done, but if you -- we do 

21 monitor Tesoro, and most of the time, when people 

22 are asleep, we see the flaring being done. This 
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1 is usually past 10 p.m., and you would know. You 

2 don't have to be a scientist to know this because 

3 you smell it. It's like burning tire, rotten 

4 egg, so we know that there is flaring that goes 

5 on usually after 10 p.m. and past midnight and 

6 also sometimes on weekends.

7 You know, there is vapor recovery 

8 systems, technologies that you can use. These 

9 should be done, but the point is you can always 

10 search for new technologies, but the point is 

11 there should be no flaring done at all -- at all 

12 -- if it's going to be a health risk for the 

13 children and the families within the area.

14 There should also be a strong community 

15 education on flaring. So if you guys give 

16 grants, you know, we can put up new technologies, 

17 but if the people understand the health risk of 

18 flaring, then they're the ones that will tell us, 

19 the community organizations, or they themselves 

20 will know. Again, it's not a matter of getting 

21 new technologies. It's a matter of just telling 

22 people that they shouldn't flare.
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1 The businesses have responsibilities. 

2 They should have social responsibilities. You 

3 know, you have no other choice but to buy gas. 

4 If I had choices, I would never buy gas. There 

5 should be no fossil fuel, because, you know, the 

6 climate change is here. We need to move on. We 

7 need to think of ourselves, because we are 

8 causing our own death, and most of those 

9 businesses and the executives, they don't live in 

10 Carson. They don't live in Wilmington. They 

11 don't suffer the way that children suffer, so now 

12 is the time. Now is the time to do it. There 

13 should be zero. Nobody should die of cancer. 

14 Nobody.

15 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

16 [Recess taken from 3:20 to 3:24 p.m.]

17 MS. LASSITER: Okay. So we have another 

18 speaker, Mr. Dan Hoffman.

19 MR. HOFFMAN: That was very quick.

20 MS. LASSITER: Yeah. So if you'd like to 

21 have a seat, and if you will -- we are keeping 

22 the minutes with a court reporter. So if you 
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1 would state your name and the spelling of your 

2 name and if you are affiliated with any 

3 organization or whatever you want to kind of tell 

4 us about yourself.

5 MR. HOFFMAN: Good afternoon. My name is 

6 Dan Hoffman. My last name is H-o-f-f-m-a-n, and 

7 I am the Executive Director for the Wilmington 

8 Chamber of Commerce, so I absolutely have an 

9 affiliation. However, I am here this afternoon 

10 as a resident. I have been a resident of 

11 Wilmington for the last 40 years, almost 41 

12 years, and I really wanted to share what I've 

13 observed over that time, particularly the last 37 

14 years in the neighborhood I live, which is on the 

15 1300 block of West I Street.

16 So if you're familiar with Wilmington, 

17 the 1300 block of I Street, if you go straight

18 down it, it is the on-ramp to the Harbor Freeway. 

19 If you go to Figueroa and make a short left and a 

20 short right and go three blocks down, you are at 

21 the front door of Phillips 66.

22 So in that period of time, my wife and I 
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1 have seen our own girls grow up. I have seen my 

2 neighbors' kids grow up, and so I think that I 

3 have a good relationship with most of my 

4 neighbors and have a real sense of what's going 

5 on in the community there. I can assure you that 

6 none of our own children have suffered any ill 

7 effects from being there.

8 Having said that, if I knew then, that 

9 is, when we purchased our house, what I know now, 

10 perhaps I would have selected a different 

11 location. And my neighbors' children haven't 

12 suffered any ill effects that I'm aware of, 

13 except for one that does have asthma. And none 

14 of my neighbors that I'm aware of -- and 

15 certainly, I'm sure you could delve into it --

16 have suffered ill effects, at least from the 

17 refinery itself. 

18 I have lost two neighbors in the last 

19 several years. Each of those neighbors, I can 

20 assure you, it had nothing to do with the air 

21 they were breathing.

22 Having said that also, do I think --
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1 well, let me share what I have observed in terms 

2 of how things have improved. When I was growing 

3 up in the '60s -- and I grew up in Redondo Beach 

4 and then I went to school and high school in 

5 Torrance, the air was horrible. I graduated in 

6 '67, and I remember many days where my eyes 

7 burned, and it hurt to breathe.

8 I don't notice that today. I notice that 

9 I see the mountains more days than I ever did. I 

10 know, statistically, our environment has improved 

11 dramatically.

12 Am I saying that everything is okay and 

13 we don't need to do anymore? I don't think that. 

14 I don't believe that for a moment. I believe 

15 global warming is real, and we have to address 

16 it, but I also feel that we have to be cautious 

17 about how we go about it.

18 I can share with you that I've talked to 

19 one of my members who has some heavy equipment, 

20 diesel equipment, who is thinking seriously about 

21 importing fuel from China, and when I asked why 

22 fuel from China, his response was, "Because I can 
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1 get fuel from China that meets our standards, our 

2 California standards, and save money." I think 

3 that's a legitimate concern and something that we 

4 ought to put into perspective.

5 My sense is as fuel prices will rise, 

6 which is likely to happen, that is going to 

7 become a more lucrative proposition.

8 Currently, as I'm aware, we don't have 

9 the storage capacity to do a lot of that. 

10 However, if it becomes profitable enough, 

11 certainly that is a reality that could happen.

12 I just hope that we can take that into 

13 consideration. I think there are a lot of 

14 standards that our California refineries meet now 

15 that are better than most of the nation and most 

16 of the world, for that matter. That's my 

17 personal opinion in some of the things that I've 

18 gathered from talking to some refinery managers 

19 and people in the industry. So I understand that 

20 that's somewhat biased.

21 But these jobs that they bring are pretty 

22 good-paying jobs. I know at Phillips 66, because 
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1 we just recognized them recently, it's 600 

2 full-time jobs, averaging somewhere around the 

3 $100,000, which is certainly more money than I 

4 make, and they have great benefits. 

5 And so I will hope that you take these 

6 things into consideration, in addition to the air 

7 monitoring. I know there was a monitor put in at 

8 Phillips a few months ago. I haven't been able 

9 to get any data out of it. I know that there's a 

10 study that's just been completed by the Harbor 

11 Community Benefit Foundation or through a grant 

12 they had on asthma and its effects. I think we 

13 need to know what those answers are, but I've 

14 heard testimony at so many of these meetings 

15 about asthma and the ill health effects, and what 

16 I would like is some real facts. And I think 

17 that study for the first time at least in regards 

18 to asthma will give us some of those answers, and 

19 then I think we need to take that into 

20 consideration.

21 But I would welcome any questions that 

22 you might have of me.
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1 MS. LASSITER: Yeah. I will ask you, Can 

2 you repeat the name of that study?

3 MR. HOFFMAN: Oh. It was a grant that 

4 was funded through the Harbor Community Benefit 

5 Foundation, and it was a study that was -- it's 

6 done through the County Medical Office, which is 

7 at the corner of Broad Avenue and N Street, as in 

8 Nancy. And it should be just -- if it hasn't 

9 been completed, it should be completed very, very 

10 soon.

11 And I mentioned that specifically because 

12 when I took a tour with the Harbor Community 

13 Benefit Foundation, when we stopped there at that 

14 medical facility, I asked the doctor what are the 

15 facts about asthma, and he said, "That's really 

16 our concern because, statistically, asthma is 

17 unreported here." Now, logically, I think we 

18 should be at least average, or if you consider 

19 all of the industry around us and the trucks and 

20 everything, above average. But the reality at 

21 least at that facility, that was below average.

22 But I really appreciate you taking the 
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1 time to come here to Wilmington and letting us 

2 have this opportunity to talk to you, so thank 

3 you.

4 MS. LASSITER: Okay, thank you.

5 MR. HOFFMAN: You're welcome.

6 [Pause.]

7 [Recess taken from 3:31 to 4:42 p.m.]

8 MS. LASSITER: All right. So we have 

9 another speaker this evening, and let me just 

10 mention for some of you who may have joined us a 

11 little bit later here, just as a reminder, this 

12 is a public hearing on the Petroleum Refinery 

13 Sector Risk and Technology Review and New Source 

14 Performance Standards proposed rule that was put 

15 out on June the 30th. We are in the public 

16 comment period. Public comment period closes on 

17 August 29th of this year.

18 We do have a court reporter. So 

19 everything that is presented today will become 

20 part of the public record.

21 If you would like to submit written 

22 comments, we encourage you to do that, and at the 
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1 registration desk where you checked in, you 

2 should have received information on how to submit 

3 those comments.

4 So, with that, I will ask Mr. William 

5 Koons to please come to the table. Sir, yes, if 

6 you will take a seat there, please.

7 We are asking people to take about 5 

8 minutes. Obviously, we don't have a lot of 

9 speakers at this point, so I'm not terribly 

10 strict on that, but I will have a small time 

11 clock up here. So when it turns yellow, you will 

12 know that you are at the 4-minute mark, and it 

13 just will help you kind of keep tabs of where you 

14 are at.

15 So, with that, please, if you would speak 

16 into the mic. Give your name, the spelling of 

17 your name, and if you are affiliated with any 

18 particular organization, if you would tell us 

19 that.

20 [Technical interruption.]

21 MR. KOONS: My name is William -- I think 

22 you just wanted name and address. You want 
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1 address? You want affiliation?

2 MS. LASSITER: No, no, no. We just need 

3 your name, and if you will please spell your last 

4 name and if you are affiliated with any 

5 organization or neighborhood group or whatever --

6 MR. KOONS: Okay.

7 MS. LASSITER: -- please share that with 

8 us.

9 MR. KOONS: My name is William Koons. 

10 That is spelled K-o-o-n-s. I am a retired 

11 engineer. I am affiliated with -- I am on the 

12 Carson Beautification Committee, which is a City 

13 of Carson committee. I am also affiliated with 

14 the Philippine Action Group for the Environment

15 and a few other environmental groups that I 

16 attend occasionally.

17 Like I said, I am a retired engineer, and 

18 one of the companies I have worked for in the 

19 past, I was a quality engineer and a reliability 

20 engineer. The company I worked for was stood for 

21 "vapor recovery." At the time I worked for them, 

22 it was owned by Whessoe, and then it was Whessoe 
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1 Varec. And then later on after I left, it was 

2 bought out by a company in Texas. I've forgotten 

3 the name, but it's still in existence, and it's 

4 making vapor recovery.

5 So the main thing I'd like to talk about 

6 to start off is I think there should be mandatory 

7 vapor recovery systems in all these refineries to 

8 eliminate and prevent the flaring from going on.

9 One thing that we made when I was there 

10 at Varec was we made a valve, a spring-loaded 

11 valve that sat on the roof of the tanks, any kind 

12 of tank, actually. Some of them were used in the 

13 milk industry, but they sat on most chemical and 

14 petroleum tanks. When the tank gets filled, it 

15 pushes the product up into the air space, 

16 although nowadays, they have the floating roofs. 

17 But it still pushes the air in the roof of the 

18 tank, and then which increases the pressure, and 

19 so that the tank does not explode, you open a 

20 valve, which is what we provided, spring-loaded 

21 valve with certain pressure. It opened it, and 

22 it would release that air and reduce the 
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1 pressure.

2 You could release it to the outer air, 

3 which is not what we want. We don't want more 

4 pollution into the air, but you did a pipe-away 

5 to another tank, which was there for recovery of 

6 that air.

7 Then when the product is going out of the 

8 tank, it's got the possibility of imploding. The 

9 pressure goes inward.

10 So it was a two-way spring-loaded valve 

11 that allowed air or this escaped gas back into 

12 the tank. So it's -- and it was designed in the 

13 '60s. It's not new technology, although they 

14 have newer versions that will do much better 

15 jobs, I'm sure, of what's needed. And now they 

16 have, some, I understand, that have vacuum that 

17 not only by pressure-release it but vacuum it 

18 out.

19 So I am strongly supportive of mandatory 

20 use of the vapor recovery systems, and what do we 

21 want to do that for? We want to get rid of the 

22 flares. So, again, going along with that is to 
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1 have mandatory flare reduction. If we have this 

2 pipe-away from a valve, we don't need the flare, 

3 because that is what the flare is there for.

4 When there is a situation where you have 

5 a problem of any kind -- I am already at the 

6 yellow -- you pipe it away.

7 Now, the industry says it is safer for 

8 the workers to have flares. Well, that to me is 

9 false. Anything going to a flare from that tank 

10 and from what the product is in the top of the 

11 tank, for example, it is not safer than piping it 

12 away.

13 And why is it not safer? We made another 

14 thing. The flare sometimes can go back to the 

15 tank. There's been cases where the flare 

16 followed the line that's leading the flare back 

17 to the tank or back to the source. So what we 

18 made, we made a flame arrester. It fit in the 

19 line. It was a big piece of aluminum, and when 

20 the flame hit that, it cooled it down so much, it 

21 stopped the fire. And I know particularly, I've 

22 seen one of these where this actually saved an 
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1 explosion. We got one of these flame arresters 

2 back, and it actually was melted down.

3 It had done the job -- and my time is up. 

4 I hope I can go a little longer.

5 Anyway, the flame arrester had done the 

6 job. It had protected the flame from getting 

7 back to the tank or the source and causing this 

8 explosion. So the flames, actually if they had 

9 gotten through the arrester, that would have been 

10 an explosion of that tank or that source. So I 

11 still say it is not safer to flare and have a 

12 flame than it is to pipe-away or use vapor 

13 recovery system.

14 And a second case is at lowering cost. 

15 That is the other comeback. It is lower in cost 

16 to flare. Well, to me, dollars and cents, we 

17 made a very low-cost device and building another 

18 little tank to have all these. Some tanks are 

19 empty. So, to me, it is not a lower -- it is 

20 actually a lower-in-cost price to have the vapor 

21 recovery. So those two are not sufficient 

22 reasons to say, "I've got to continue flaring."
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1 Now, the other thing that's related to 

2 the flaring is, well, when we have a power outage 

3 our power goes down. We have emergency 

4 situation. We have to flare, because we have all 

5 these processes that are in place, and we have to 

6 do something with the product.

7 Well, again, a pipe-away system with a 

8 vacuum or some advanced -- which is available, 

9 why not use that? Why do we have to burn up 

10 what's in process just because we had a power 

11 failure?

12 And along with that, why not make 

13 mandatory backup generators? Cogeneration is 

14 what some of them call it, where they make their 

15 own product, their own gasoline to run 

16 generators. So if you have a generator that is 

17 your backup, then a power outage is not a 

18 problem. You can continue running your 

19 processes.

20 So those are the three things we want --

21 I want mandatory, or I would like to see us to 

22 mandatory vapor recovery, and I would like to see 
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1 mandatory flare reduction plans from all the 

2 refineries. I want mandatory emergency backup 

3 power to prevent us from even having to do 

4 flaring or vapor recovery. Why not have total 

5 backup on your power if it is going to go out 

6 that much?

7 Our one plant here has a cogeneration 

8 plant here, ConocoPhillips. It does not have 

9 enough cogeneration. So, when it goes down, it 

10 still has to again flare because the -- so you 

11 have to have capable --

12 And now with the onset of -- what do they 

13 call it? Solar panels? We can now do it without 

14 generators. We can do it with -- if it's a 

15 daytime occurrence, we could do it with batteries 

16 or the solar panels, probably enough power to 

17 drive most of the processes.

18 Other things that I am for in this new 

19 plan is to -- another thing I am critical of is 

20 we do annual averaging. This is absurd. My 

21 statistics background, we never do annual 

22 averaging of anything. You select it by 
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1 statistics -- I can hardly say it now. 

2 Statistics. You select -- government is the 

3 typical example. They don't take the average 

4 family income; they take the median family 

5 income. Why do they do that? Because you have 

6 billionaires, and you have the very poor. If you 

7 took an average, what would happen? The 

8 billionaires would bring everybody's income up. 

9 See, you can't do income averaging that way. You 

10 do it by the median: What is the middle income 

11 of the people that are earning?

12 So, in the same regard, they do annual 

13 averaging. You take the 365 days. To me, you 

14 would use some other statistics. You would use 

15 the standard deviation, unheard of by some 

16 people, but the standard deviation gives you a 

17 range from the high and the low point or a range 

18 even. Give us a range amount. Give us a shorter 

19 amount. If you want to stay with averaging, give 

20 us a 1-week amount of averaging. Give us some 

21 smaller amount that we can see what happened in 

22 that week, but a year averaging, it's pathetic. 
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1 It is not a statistical valid measurement at all 

2 to me.

3 Like I said, I like the median, and I'd 

4 like a shorter period of time, and I would like 

5 to see some kind of range. What is the range? A 

6 high, low point, standard deviation. If you want 

7 to get into it deeper than a Six Sigma, which is 

8 3 plus and minus --- well, 99 percent of the 

9 happening. I won't get into statistics.

10 But give me a second here. 

11 Another thing is the flares that are in 

12 use, especially the candle flares, we made 

13 another device at the company I worked for. Part 

14 of it was a flare inside the cylinders that you 

15 are seeing now. I don't know what they call them 

16 now, but we always said it was a cylinder with a 

17 flare inside.

18 But the efficiency of them is much 

19 higher, and why is efficiency higher than a 

20 candle flare? Well, the candle flare, you 

21 sometimes have surges in the product. So the 

22 surge will come, and it will burn nice and good, 
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1 and then the surge will stop the product. So it 

2 doesn't come in a steady flow always. It 

3 sometimes surges. So the flare will go out, and 

4 sometimes you have products spewing out, and 

5 there is no flare there. There is no light, so 

6 they have automatic restart devices. That's the 

7 first thing that should be there.

8 The second thing is you have tremendous 

9 gusts of wind blowing. So the product doesn't 

10 burn evenly because the wind is scattering the 

11 product, and it is not getting to the fire 

12 always. So that's why a regular flare burns very 

13 poorly, and so what they came up with years ago 

14 -- this is the '90s or even earlier -- they come 

15 up with these cylinders and the flares inside the 

16 cylinder, and it blocks the air, the air current, 

17 and they try to keep a steady flow of product. 

18 And they have automatic igniters and these other 

19 things.

20 So making more efficient, if we must 

21 flare, let's make them much more efficient, 

22 mandatory efficiency. We don't want open flares 
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1 that you can see. Well, you can see them too, 

2 but they burn very 50, 75 percent efficient, 

3 where these enclosed flares, at least they are 

4 enclosed on the side mostly, they are 95 percent 

5 or higher efficient. So that causes -- again, 

6 gives you less pollution, and that's what we're 

7 after.

8 So mandatory where we have to flare. If 

9 we can't get rid of it with a vapor recovery 

10 system, then a flare control system would make it 

11 much more efficient. And the technology is 

12 there, both to do the vapor recovery and the 

13 flare efficiency increase.

14 My time is way over, and I am supporting 

15 other things that I like to see in this plan. Do 

16 I have more time? I'm probably boring you to 

17 death.

18 MS. LASSITER: No, that's okay. You can 

19 take a couple more minutes.

20 MR. KOONS: But other things I would like 

21 to see, I think the real-time fence monitoring is 

22 very good for people to know what's going on. In 
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1 case of an emergency, hopefully, the word gets 

2 out and people can vacate the premises, or if 

3 it's other circumstances of testing, they do have 

4 some capture now in fence lines where they have 

5 capture sticks, I believe. So I do support 

6 mandatory fence-line monitoring.

7 Again, industry says it's too costly. 

8 The Coalition for a Safe Environment here has 

9 done one for $5,000, just one that they are 

10 putting together. Approximately 5,000, he told 

11 me. That to me doesn't sound that expensive. So 

12 even if you just put one on each of the four 

13 sides of a square box, it still would help in a 

14 lot of ways.

15 Again, the flares should have efficiency 

16 standards, make them more efficient. If you have 

17 to have flares, can't do the vapor recovery, make 

18 the flares more efficient. Right now, very 

19 inefficient, most of them.

20 I think that's about it. Again, I thank 

21 you for your time. Do you have any questions for 

22 me?
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1 MS. LASSITER: Okay. Do you have any 

2 questions, Brenda?

3 [No audible response.]

4 MS. LASSITER: Okay.

5 MS. SHINE: Thank you.

6 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

7 MR. KOONS: Thank you.

8 Did the sound come through all right? 

9 All right. Thank you again.

10 [Pause.]

11 MS. LASSITER: Okay. So it's 5 p.m. We 

12 are going to break 1 hour for dinner and 

13 reconvene at six. And we will be here until 

14 eight o'clock tonight in case any other people 

15 show up. So we will see you back, and if not, 

16 have a good evening.

17 [Dinner recess taken from 5:03 to 6:13 

18 p.m.]

19 MS. LASSITER: Good evening. Thank you 

20 for attending the public hearing. My name is 

21 Penny Lassiter, and I am the Group Leader for the 

22 Refining and Chemicals Group. We are with the 
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1 United States Environmental Protection Agency's 

2 Air Office. We are a Headquarters Office located 

3 in North Carolina.

4 And with me this evening is Brenda Shine, 

5 who works in the office with me, as well as 

6 Elizabeth Adams, who is with our EPA Region 9 

7 office out of San Francisco.

8 So we are here this evening to listen to 

9 your comments on the rule that we propose for the 

10 Petroleum Refinery Risk and Technology Review and 

11 New Source Performance Standards. The rule was 

12 proposed in the Federal Register on June 30th, 

13 2014.

14 We are in the public comment phase of 

15 that rulemaking, and the public comment period 

16 ends on August 29th of this year.

17 So we're here to listen to your comments. 

18 We do have a court reporter. So everything will 

19 be recorded and will become part of the official 

20 record for this rulemaking.

21 You may also submit written comments, and 

22 you can do that up through August the 29th. If 
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1 you would like to do that, there is information 

2 of the materials at the registration desk on how 

3 to submit comments on this rule.

4 So this rule proposes additional emission 

5 control requirements for storage tanks, flares, 

6 and coking units at petroleum refineries. We are 

7 also setting a standard at the refinery fence 

8 line as a way to require refineries to manage 

9 their emissions from fugitive emission sources 

10 and to ensure that the surrounding communities 

11 are not being exposed to unintended toxic air 

12 emissions.

13 When the rule is fully implemented, we 

14 project a reduction of approximately 5,600 tons 

15 per year of toxic air pollutants and about 52,000 

16 tons per year of volatile organic compounds.

17 I will be calling the speakers up to this 

18 table here. You will have approximately 5 

19 minutes to make your presentation. There is a 

20 light here. When you see the yellow light you 

21 will know that you have approximately 1 minute 

22 left. If you have to run over a little bit, 
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1 that's fine, since we don't have a number of 

2 people speaking at this point.

3 I will ask that when you begin to speak, 

4 if you will state your name, and please spell 

5 your last name, so that we can be sure and get it 

6 correct for the record, and if you are here 

7 representing a particular organization or group 

8 or community, if you would let us know that, we 

9 would appreciate it.

10 We are scheduled to be here until eight 

11 o'clock tonight, so thank you for that. With 

12 that, I am going to go ahead and call Mr. Jose 

13 Luis Muntoz as well as, I believe it is, Ms. 

14 Silvia Nunez. If you will both please come to 

15 the table.

16 [Veronica Hernandez translates the 

17 following remarks by Jose Luis Muntoz and Sylvia 

18 Nunez.]

19 MR. MUNTOZ: My name is Jose Luis Muntoz. 

20 I am here to talk about the toxic gases emitted 

21 by the refinery. My case is my grandson, my 

22 older daughter, and my son have problems 
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1 breathing. My grandson needs an inhaler to 

2 breathe.

3 I constantly have to watch my garden 

4 because of the toxic substances emitted by the 

5 refineries. It is an ash dust. It damages my 

6 plant. It just causes too many problems.

7 I think it's not fair for the refineries, 

8 gasoline stations to make money, because us that 

9 are sick and poor -- I just think it's not fair.

10 At night, I don't open my window because 

11 the odor is so strong. It's all the time. I 

12 live three houses down from the refinery.

13 Now that we have new regulations, it 

14 makes me happy, but what I need you to do, make 

15 it happen. Make good on your word.

16 One of the examples is that I see my 

17 children try to breathe, and it hurts. He tries 

18 to breathe, and he has to breathe with the 

19 inhaler.

20 Thank God that I have the health 

21 insurance. Without the insurance, I wouldn't 

22 know how to pay for it, for the benefits of my 
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1 grandchild.

2 Thank you for what you're doing. I hope 

3 that all this stops harming us, and that 

4 something worse could come of it, like cancer or 

5 any other illness.

6 That's all I have to say.

7 MS. LASSITER: Okay. Thank you for 

8 testifying.

9 [Technical interruption.]

10 MS. NUNEZ: My name is Silvia Nunez. I 

11 have been living in Wilmington for 11 years. We 

12 have been dealing with allergies, and the same as 

13 this gentleman, we always have to be cleaning.

14 My plants won't grow. Actually, my dogs 

15 have allergies too. Not only is it me, it's also 

16 my daughter and my husband that are dealing with 

17 allergies.

18 Now it's been like a month that I have 

19 problems breathing. Sometimes when I blow, I get 

20 like black substance. Just like the gentleman 

21 here, I have health insurance, but I have to 

22 constantly be seeing the doctor.
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1 Just like the gentleman here, I would 

2 like to see the proposal go through, and that you 

3 guys make good on your word for the benefit of 

4 the community.

5 That is all. Thank you for listening to 

6 me.

7 MS. LASSITER: Thank you for your 

8 testimony.

9 Next I would like to call Mr. -- I think 

10 it's Mr. -- Onofre Torres.

11 MR. TORRES: Good afternoon. My name is 

12 Onofre Torres. I live in 2130 Del Amo Boulevard 

13 in Torrance. 

14 My home is close to ExxonMobil Refinery. 

15 I live there, I think, around 15 years. I am 

16 concerned when there was an issue about the 

17 benzene leakage in that area. My neighbors have 

18 been relocated at that time by ExxonMobil, but 

19 the unfairness is they only relocate 10 homes.

20 I called the manager of ExxonMobil and 

21 talked to him, and I asked him for relocation for 

22 the safety of my family. I have three kids and a 
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1 wife. Sometimes I am worried in that area, 

2 because when I found out the history in Del Amo 

3 Boulevard, in 1987 there was an explosion, and 

4 one died in that area between Van Ness and Del 

5 Amo Boulevard, which is not far from my home.

6 I did my own research about benzene and 

7 the history of that area on Del Amo Boulevard 

8 about benzene, and also I asked my neighbors on 

9 that area. That a lot of people there, the old 

10 ones, died in cancer, and I don't know if the 

11 cause is the benzene or the pollutants that 

12 spewed out of the refinery. I am not a 

13 physician, but I think because this is a chemical 

14 known to cause cancer, which is benzene. 

15 This leakage of benzene is not far from 

16 my home. I know maybe I've been exposed to 

17 benzene without my knowing, because when I arrive 

18 for work, I park in that area next to this house 

19 where the underground benzene was leaking. I was 

20 expecting that ExxonMobil management will give me 

21 chance to relocate like my neighbor does, but 

22 until now, I have no news from them.
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1 So I am worrying about my family and 

2 their safety. I know that ExxonMobil is an aging 

3 refinery, and anytime there could be -- another 

4 accident could happen, and this is why I am also 

5 worrying. The safety of my family is my concern, 

6 not only for that but the health.

7 I don't want in the future something is 

8 going to happen to our health, because a little 

9 dose, if you breathe that chemical, when you know 

10 it can cause cancer, little doses every day, if 

11 you breathe in, it goes through your body, and 

12 you don't know in the future what will happen to 

13 your health.

14 I want to live long, and I want to get 

15 out from that area, but the problem is because of 

16 the history in that area, the value of the houses 

17 there goes down, and I maybe have a hard time to 

18 sell my house because I cannot hide to the buyer 

19 about the history in that area, because I will be 

20 honest to him. And I am going to tell him. If 

21 there is a buyer, I will tell them the history 

22 about that area. Then I don't think I can sell 
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1 my house. They will back off if they know the 

2 history that it is a benzene-exposed area.

3 So until now, I hope ExxonMobil will hear 

4 my voice about relocation for my safety, but none 

5 up to now after many years already. That is all 

6 I can say to all of you. Maybe someday, you guys 

7 can help us out there.

8 Thank you very much, Elizabeth Adams, 

9 Penny Lassiter, and Brenda Shine. Thank you, and 

10 God bless you.

11 MS. LASSITER: Thank you for your 

12 testimony.

13 Okay. At this point, we don't have

14 anyone signed up, but again, we will be here 

15 until eight o'clock. So if anyone else shows up, 

16 we will reconvene again, so thank you.

17 [Recess taken from 6:32 to 6:37 p.m.]

18 MS. LASSITER: Okay. So we have another 

19 person who would like to testify, Mr. Drew Wood. 

20 If you would please have a seat at the table.

21 MR. WOOD: I have a problem walking, so 

22 --
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1 MS. LASSITER: This is the public hearing 

2 for the proposed refinery -- and your testimony 

3 is being recorded, so it will be part of the 

4 official public record for this rulemaking. We 

5 are in the public comment period on the 

6 rulemaking, which closes on August the 29th of 

7 this year, and so if you would like to submit 

8 comments in writing, we would encourage you to do 

9 that. And if you want to do that, there is 

10 information on how to submit comments to us on 

11 the papers available at the desk where you 

12 registered this evening.

13 So, with that, we are asking people to 

14 talk about 5 minutes. I have a clock here. So 

15 when you see it turn yellow, you have about a 

16 minute left. Since we don't have people waiting, 

17 I am not going to call time real close there.

18 So I think that's it, and for those of 

19 you who may have joined us since I first reopened 

20 this evening, we will be here until eight o'clock 

21 tonight.

22 So, with that, Mr. Wood, if you will, 
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1 please tell us if you are representing any 

2 organization or if you are a citizen here or 

3 whatever, we would appreciate knowing that. SO, 

4 sir, I will turn it over to you.

5 MR. WOOD: Yes. I have broken teeth, why 

6 I'm swearing a mask. I work for community groups 

7 in Wilmington area, and very familiar with 

8 refineries. And my belief is that the -- I am 

9 not exactly sure about the fence-line monitoring 

10 that they are talking about, and I couldn't get 

11 answers from the EPA in Washington or San 

12 Francisco, rather the specifics as to what the 

13 fence-line monitoring incorporates and then who 

14 actually performs it, whether the refinery does 

15 or somebody else does. And so I am uncertain 

16 about that, except that I feel that the 

17 fence-line monitoring needs to be wind 

18 specifically surrounding the refinery property. 

19 And in this area, normally the wind comes 

20 out of the northwest at Phillips 66, as an 

21 example, and so you would need to monitor the 

22 fence line on the upwind side at the ground level 
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1 and then also at stack emission level to 

2 determine what was coming into the refinery 

3 property from upwind sources, which I know there 

4 are. And then also, the same thing downwind of 

5 the Phillips 66 place specifically, from the 

6 stack and then fence-line stack and at fence-line 

7 ground, and this would be at the Anaheim Street 

8 juncture or line.

9 So at the property line, as it approaches 

10 Interstate 110, you would know what was coming 

11 into the property and what they were adding to 

12 PM-wise and VOC-wise as it heads out of the 

13 property, and the VOCs, of course, would include 

14 the toxics, and the PM would include a full range 

15 of -- through PM10.

16 And then what I want to include is on the 

17 south side of the 110 Freeway, the same type of 

18 monitoring at ground level, so we can determine

19 what the freeway is adding to the mix as it heads 

20 towards Hawaiian Avenue School and sort of inland 

21 in the Wilmington communities, and then a means 

22 to also measure -- like yesterday, the wind was 
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1 coming directly out of the west, and so you would 

2 need a means of measuring the same on actually 

3 four quadrants. I'm not exactly sure how to do 

4 that, except that I feel that the refinery is 

5 producing some pollutants, and they need to be 

6 determined.

7 I couldn't find this out either from the 

8 AQMD, and I was told that the AQMD does 

9 continually in-stack monitoring, but I haven't 

10 been able to find out anything about that in my 

11 inquiry. So we need to know what they are 

12 producing on a daily basis and 24/7 and what is 

13 coming into their facility at ground level, stack 

14 level, what is going out at stack level and 

15 ground level in their operation on the ground, to 

16 the fence line, and then add to that fence line 

17 what I-10 is producing, so you have an idea of 

18 what Hawaiian Avenue Early Education Center, the 

19 Hawaiian Avenue School, and the Boys and Girls 

20 Club next door there, what they are being 

21 subjected to that you can quantify as being 

22 generated by the refinery and what is coming in 
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1 above the refinery and what is being produced by 

2 the 110 Freeway.

3 MS. LASSITER: Okay. Thank you.

4 MR. WOOD: And I am developing a program 

5 just like that, because I think that -- and it's 

6 the same with Tesoro, but this is specific to 

7 Phillips 66 or all refineries. Okay. 

8 Well, let's bring in Tesoro over at West 

9 Long Beach. I was in a meeting there a couple 

10 months ago, and people are not well informed. 

11 The West Long Beach community is more affected by 

12 the Port of Long Beach pollutants and everything 

13 that is coming from that area heading eastward 

14 into West Long Beach, paralleling Alameda and 

15 710. And that if you did the same thing at 

16 Tesoro Refinery, you would be able to quantify 

17 that fact that the refinery really is not the 

18 main contributor of pollutants to the West Long 

19 Beach community.

20 And I don't believe a refinery is 

21 producing a lot of ground-level emissions. What 

22 they have as being produced elevated in the top 
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1 gases, and I was told by San Francisco that there 

2 aren't many left because of the 2,000 degree 

3 temperature.

4 So I believe that we need to have a 

5 quantitative measuring mechanism to show what the 

6 refinery is producing and where it is going and 

7 who is it affecting. In order to do that, you 

8 need to have things at different elevations, and 

9 that is why I mentioned the fence-line upwind and 

10 downwind and stack level upwind and downwind and 

11 so forth.

12 So I think that the Hawaiian Avenue Early 

13 Education Center would be a good example for 

14 Phillips 66, and that the West Long Beach between 

15 Pacific Coast Highway and up towards Willow would 

16 be another good area for plotting. And you would 

17 show which way the wind is blowing over a period 

18 of time, and then what the pollutants are to 

19 different elevations and determine to what degree 

20 these communities are affected by the two 

21 refineries.

22 In West Long Beach, I am very sure of the 
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1 outcome, and I am also quite sure of the outcome 

2 with Hawaiian Avenue as an example. And benzene 

3 and toluene and all the other things are not only 

4 produced by the refinery, but also burning fossil 

5 fuels. Trucks and everybody that's in that 

6 vicinity running any kind of an engine is 

7 producing the same types of products, and that's 

8 why I say what I did about Tesoro and West Long 

9 Beach and the Port of Long Beach and all of those 

10 operations. That's all ground level, and it 

11 stays at ground level. Whereas, the gas 

12 phase-type pollutants are up higher and need to 

13 be mapped and chartered as to how they flow and 

14 what they are mixing with and what degree they 

15 get down at ground level, and everything at 

16 ground level, it is negatively pressurized, 

17 unfortunately, which means that you living in 

18 West Long Beach or Hawaiian Avenue School, in 

19 that area, your house is pulling in the outside 

20 pollutants to add to what you are already 

21 producing inside your home. 

22 And when you're cooking on a gas stove, 
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1 you might as well be at the top of the stack at

2 Tesoro because of the pollutants, and those homes 

3 are not properly ventilated.

4 So we need to quantify what is being 

5 subjected to those homes and the indoor 

6 environments, schools, and so forth, and where 

7 it's coming from. 

8 And I don't believe that the new rules of 

9 refineries -- I think that needs to be expanded 

10 to cover all the communities that are affected by 

11 the refineries, whether it is Chevron or whether 

12 it's Phillips 66 or Tesoro or any other one. 

13 You've got to track the wind, ground level, 

14 upwind levels, and what's in it and where is it 

15 going and to what degree is it falling and 

16 getting into the community. And after all, the 

17 people are not living outdoors. They are living 

18 indoors, and the pollutants that are emitted by 

19 the refineries and so forth will be affected to 

20 some degree, which nobody seems to know, going 

21 into those indoor environments. 

22 My belief is that we should be more 
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1 concerned with the ground level from freeway, 

2 truck, terminals, and all the traffic that's 

3 going on right here in this port and so forth. 

4 It is more ground level, and it's heavier 

5 product, and it tends to stay that way. So 

6 that's how I view the new rule situation, that it 

7 is not specific enough to the ground-level 

8 monitoring and what is coming into the refinery 

9 boundary, what is going out of the refinery 

10 boundary to determine what the refinery is adding 

11 to that ground-level mix and what it is adding to 

12 the other stack-level mix and the direction it is 

13 traveling in and to what degree it mixes with the 

14 ground level.

15 Hopefully, that makes some sense. I've 

16 done all the measurements myself that involve --

17 that have been shown for 20 years, and the indoor 

18 environment is where the problem is. People live 

19 indoors. They don't live outdoors, and that 

20 needs to be focused on, and it's not. I've been 

21 preaching it all over the continent.

22 So they need to do some modeling, and 
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1 what the refinery is producing at the different 

2 levels, where it's going, and also the indoor 

3 environments, what is being generated inside, 

4 what is being pulled out -- from the outdoors to 

5 inside to add to that factor.

6 And none of these places have proper air 

7 ventilation, air filtration situations, and the 

8 Title 24 in the State of California should be 

9 flushed because it says that Hawaiian Avenue 

10 School needs to ventilate with outside air. It 

11 says nothing about checking the outside air to 

12 see if it's polluted, and if it is, filter it 

13 properly. And that is not being done nay any 

14 school in California.

15 MS. LASSITER: Okay.

16 MR. WOOD: All right.

17 MS. LASSITER: Thank you for your 

18 testimony.

19 Do you have any questions?

20 [No audible response.]

21 MR. WOOD: Thank you.

22 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.
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1 [Recess taken from 6:51 to 6:59 p.m.]

2 MS. LASSITER: Good evening. Thank you 

3 for joining us.

4 Before I ask the next speakers to come 

5 forward, my name is Penny Lassiter. I am the 

6 Group Leader for the Refining and Chemicals Group 

7 out of the federal EPA. We are a Headquarters 

8 Office located in North Carolina.

9 On the panel with me are Brenda Shine, 

10 also with the office with me, along with 

11 Elizabeth Adams, who is here representing our 

12 regional office out of Region 9 in San Francisco.

13 So we are here this evening to hear your 

14 comments on the rule that we proposed for 

15 refineries on June 30th of this year, and we did 

16 propose a rule that is called a Risk and 

17 Technology Review of two of the refinery rules 

18 for toxic air emissions that have been around for 

19 a while.

20 The draft rule that we put out on June 

21 the 30th proposes additional emission control 

22 requirements for storage tanks, flares, and 
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1 coking units at petroleum refineries.

2 We are also proposing a fence-line 

3 standard and requiring facilities to monitor the 

4 perimeter of the fence line as an approach to 

5 manage their emissions of fugitives, fugitive 

6 toxic emissions, and to also ensure that the 

7 communities are not being exposed to toxic 

8 emissions from fugitives.

9 When fully implemented, we project that 

10 this rule will result in approximately 5,600 tons 

11 per year of toxic air pollutant reductions and 

12 about 52,000 tons per year of reductions of 

13 volatile organic compounds.

14 We are in the public comment phase of 

15 this proposed rule, and the comment phase ends on 

16 August 29th. So anytime between now and then, 

17 you may submit written comments to the agency, if 

18 you would like, and there are directions for 

19 doing that on some of the papers that are 

20 available up at the front desk when you checked 

21 in.

22 We do have a court reporter, so there is 
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1 going to be a transcribe of all of the testimony 

2 presented today, and it will become part of the 

3 official record for this rulemaking.

4 So I will call you to come up to this 

5 table to speak. I will ask that you take about 5 

6 minutes to make your presentation. There will be 

7 a light. When it turns yellow, you will know 

8 that you are at the 4-minute point.

9 Also, when you come forward, if you would 

10 please state your name, and if you would spell 

11 your last name, and if you are representing a 

12 particular group or organization or community or 

13 whatever, if you would indicate that.

14 So, with that, I am going to ask Mr. 

15 Abraham Cabrera and Mr. Victor Fuentes if you 

16 would both come to the table, and I will ask that 

17 each of you make a presentation.

18 MR. CABRERA: It will be just me, if 

19 that's okay.

20 MS. LASSITER: Okay. Nice to see you. 

21 Thank you for coming.

22 MR. CABRERA: Sit right here?
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1 MS. LASSITER: Yep.

2 MR. CABRERA: Excuse my hair.

3 Talk into this? 

4 I mean, I really appreciate what you guys 

5 are doing. This is good. I mean, born and 

6 raised in Wilmington. As a kid, I did have to 

7 use inhalers and all that stuff. Thankfully, not 

8 no more.

9 I have friends that have had cysts 

10 growing in weird spots because of the refineries. 

11 I mean, it is a good thing that you are a trying 

12 to keep the community clean. I represent 

13 Wilmington, not fully, but that is where I'm 

14 from. That's my home. If I do so happen to have 

15 one feature here, I would like the neighborhood 

16 to be nice and clean. If all of a sudden, 

17 something happens where I decide to have a 

18 family, I wouldn't want my young ones growing up 

19 in a polluted neighborhood. Same goes for, I'm 

20 pretty sure, everybody else.

21 I think it's good thing. I have nothing 

22 against the refineries. They are jobs, but I 
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1 think it's good that there are some regulations, 

2 and people are stepping their foot down to help 

3 lower whatever missions are going on. I don't 

4 work there. I don't know what's going on, but it 

5 would be nice to have someone step in and do 

6 something about it.

7 So I don't really have much to say. I 

8 just would really like that to happen. It would 

9 be a positive thing for the whole community, and 

10 I'm pretty sure a bunch of people will be happy. 

11 You know what I'm saying?

12 MS. LASSITER: Mm-hmm.

13 MR. CABRERA: So I feel bad for those who 

14 have a hard time breathing and would like to go 

15 out and skateboard or go for running or can't be 

16 in shape because every time they are running and 

17 like gasping for air, they can't really keep up. 

18 They can't exercise long enough. So it would be 

19 nice to fix that.

20 And I'm here talking, because if my voice 

21 counts, then I'm all for it. That's all I have 

22 to say. I'm sorry, guys.
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1 MS. LASSITER: No, don't be sorry. Thank 

2 you for coming and making your testimony.

3 MR. CABRERA: Thank you, guys. Pleasure 

4 talking.

5 [Applause.]

6 [Recess taken from 7:06 to 7:17 p.m.]

7 MS. LASSITER: Okay. We have another 

8 speaker this evening. So I'll ask Mr. Sam 

9 Reveles, if you would please come to the table.

10 So, if you would please, Mr. Reveles, if 

11 you would please state your name and spell it for 

12 our court reporter, and then if you would please 

13 take about 5 minutes to present your testimony.

14 Thank you.

15 MR. REVELES: Good evening. My name is 

16 Sam Reveles, as you've seen in the paper. I have 

17 been living in the Wilmington area for about 50 

18 years, and I'm wondering if I chose the right 

19 place to live, because I see my family having 

20 problems. 

21 My daughter, my granddaughter, they have 

22 problems breathing. Myself, I have been several 
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1 times to a doctor because I can't breathe, and 

2 they tell me it's an allergy, but they never tell 

3 me I'm allergic to what. What am I allergic to?

4 Now, first of all, forgive me, but excuse 

5 my English, okay? I'm not very fluent in it. 

6 But I always said to doctors, "What's my 

7 problem?" and he says, "You have allergy." 

8 Allergy to what? From where? Why? They give 

9 medicine. It works for a while, and after a 

10 while, it is the same thing again.

11 Now I'm wondering about all these 

12 refineries. We are surrounded by them. One 

13 year, I was working in Needles, California, and 

14 one of the refineries blew up. And they 

15 evacuated the people out of the Wilmington area, 

16 the surrounding areas, and 300 miles away. Good 

17 thing we found somebody that took my family out 

18 of Wilmington. 

19 And what's going on? One day, we're 

20 going to blow up? The whole town is going to 

21 blow up? I think we need more safety established 

22 in these refineries. You see those big clouds 
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1 coming out of the stacks. What is all that? A 

2 flare-up, they claim? We don't know. They don't 

3 tell us. That is one of the biggest problems. 

4 We have nobody to let us know what is all that. 

5 We cannot find the protection. We don't have any 

6 protection against that.

7 I'm sorry. I'm not very good speaking in 

8 public, so I think I am going to finish with 

9 that, okay?

10 MS. LASSITER: Thank you very much.

11 MR. REVELES: Thank you very much.

12 MS. LASSITER: Thank you. Appreciate 

13 your testimony.

14 MR. REVELES: One more thing, please. 

15 I'm sorry.

16 In the area, in the area that we built 

17 our house, there's 19 houses. They are like an 

18 area with just 19 houses. I built my house right 

19 across the road from an oil well, which I was 

20 building, and they -- after we start building, 

21 they kept the oil well, but they wouldn't say 

22 what oil deposits there. There were tanks there 
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1 to haul oil. I guess oil was coming out of the 

2 oil wells, but they had tanks there. I've been 

3 digging my house sometimes to put a plant or 

4 something, and the little black things coming out 

5 of the ground, like little stone, like a little 

6 something out of the ground. What is it? No 

7 idea. But I don't think it's no good. It looks 

8 like asbestos or something like that.

9 Thank you.

10 MS. LASSITER: Thank you.

11 [Recess taken from 7:30 to 8 p.m.]

12 MS. LASSITER: All right. I'd like to 

13 thank everybody for attending today's hearing, 

14 and this officially closes out our hearing. Good 

15 night.

16 [Whereupon, at 8 p.m., the public hearing 

17 concluded.]

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