After almost two years of stonewalling by the Los Angeles and Torrance fire departments, the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance has filed suit to compel the release of crucial reports on the last two California refineries that still use dangerous hydrofluoric acid in their refining process.
While the manner of stonewalling differed between the two, the end result was the same: state-mandated reports, due in 2022, were illegally withheld from public disclosure under California’s Public Records Act. By law, the reports, known as HCAs (Hierarchy of Hazard Control Analysis), must include analysis of risks and safer alternative processes, which TRAA has been advocating for since the 2015 Torrance Refinery explosion, which came within five feet of producing a mass casualty event threatening thousands of lives.
“Unfortunately,” TRAA said in a press release, “the administration of both cities seems to be collaborating with these refineries to keep these documents secret, begging the question, ‘Why? What are they hiding?’”
Perhaps they’re hiding analysis showing that safe alternatives are quite feasible. Or perhaps they’re hiding that they never performed the analysis at all, as required by law. We simply don’t know.
“A properly conducted HCA report would reveal both inherent dangers of the current alkylation units, with their tanks of hydrofluoric acid and refill deliveries being trucked in, as well as the fact that safer, commercially viable options exist and are in use at other refineries,” TRAA’s public records specialist Ian Patton explained. “In other words, if their HCA reports were in compliance with the law, they would require the refineries to admit these facts, which they otherwise will not publicly admit.”
It’s hardly the first time regulators have sided with the refineries against the public interest. In 2019, the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District derailed a regulatory plan developed by its staff over two years in favor of a last-minute promise from the refineries to make voluntary safety improvements.
At the time, Supervisor Janice Hahn, who voted against the move, called it “a sad excuse for the agreement that I thought we were working towards.” TRAA board member Steve Goldsmith said the AQMD board “caved into the pressure by the oil industry” and this “leaves South LA County residents exposed to catastrophic danger.”
The fire departments have regulatory responsibility for the refineries, including for HCAs, and while both of them stonewalled in apparent collusion with the refineries, they did so in different ways.
In the Los Angeles case, collusion with the refinery is clearly documented, as noted by Patton. After the Los Angeles Fire Department denied TRAA’s initial request for the HCA, they filed a broader public records request, including staff communications, which revealed an email, sent shortly after that 2023 request, from LAFD inspector Alvin Dong to the Valero Wilmington Refinery operations manager, Michelle Doran:
“Just a random question—as far as I remember, your facility was on schedule to have completed all your HCAs as required under Program 4?
you may just call me with an answer—if you don’t want to write it down.
As Patton explained, “Not only did this email reveal that Dong had failed to ensure that the HCA report was completed on time, he also invited Doran to take their communication off email (‘if you don’t want to write it down’) so that there would no longer be a documentary record, obtainable via the Public Records Act or otherwise.”
Torrance, on the other hand, did release the HCA after some delay, but with “a hundred percent Epstein file-type redaction” as Goldsmith described it, while Patton called it simply “a joke.” Not only were all the analyses and all the recommendations redacted, but even the number of recommendations were redacted. The bulk of the report — more than 200 pages — was contained in appendices, one of which was heavily redacted (with only questions asked visible and no responses), while four others were entirely missing, and even the names of two of them were redacted.
But prior to releasing the redacted version, Torrance initially refused to release it, Patton noted, “by citing the justification that, ‘Disclosure of the Record would also significant harm the Refinery’s privacy and financial interests, which greatly outweigh any public interest in disclosure.’”
The message was loud and clear, Patton said, “To us, that sounded a lot like an admission that the refinery’s financial interests trump public safety, as far as the City of Torrance was concerned.”
A subsequent public records request exposed more evidence of that, it “revealed that a small MHF release had actually been detected at the refinery and that the refinery had requested that it not be classified as a ‘major incident,’” Patton said.
“The 2015 incident garnered public awareness and led to the creation of TRAA,” he explained. “The 2023 minor incident was successfully shielded from public view before our request for internal communications.” Perhaps the two incidents combined “put a bit more pressure on the City of Torrance,” leading to its eventual release of the redacted report, he said.
The LAFD took a different approach, arguing that it didn’t have a copy of the HCA, so it wasn’t a public document, and thus, they couldn’t turn it over. But, as TRAA’s attorney, Kelly Aviles, noted in a January 2024 letter to LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, “The fact that the City claims to have not taken possession of a copy of the HCA report (and possibly others) intentionally to avoid public disclosure requirements is alarming.
“However, it has no bearing on whether the document is a disclosable public record.”
Aviles went on to explain, “Since the City has oversight obligations of the Refinery and has admitted to reviewing the inspection reports, including the HCA Report, its actual possession of the record is irrelevant to whether the record is a public record.”
What’s more, she explained, “The CPRA defines the term ‘public records’ to include ‘any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.’” [emphasis added]
The information in the HCAs could be very useful, Goldsmith explained. “It isn’t just that we want to know it for the sake of knowing, or putting it on our website or something. We want to use this in court and in federal legislation.”
In court, TRAA is hoping to be added to a federal lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council to require the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a regulation to eliminate unreasonable risks from hydrofluoric acid at refineries. A hearing on the EPA’s motion to dismiss that case was held on June 10, the results of which Random Lengths will report in the near future.
Legislatively, there’s a bill by Maxine Waters, co-authored by all local representatives, which would prohibit the use of hydrofluoric acid at petroleum refineries, and for other purposes. With the GOP in control of the House, the bill is stalled, but if Democrats win the midterms, it will be very much alive.
Meanwhile, the MAGA majority on Torrance’s city council has been solidly defeated, though the mayor’s race remains too close to call. As a result, Goldsmith said, there’s a good chance the new council could order the release of the unredacted HCA. A new LA City Attorney could produce similar results after the November election, but TRAA is hoping for a much quicker result in court.
Summing up, Goldsmith said, “This is all smokescreen to hide the fact that there are vastly safer commercially proven alternatives to the use of the exceptionally deadly HF used in a highly dense environmental justice burdened community, in a facility subject to human error, fires and explosions, natural disasters like earthquakes, and intentional acts by bad actors.”