Four local congress members have sent a letter to EPA administrator Michael Regan in support of the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance’s effort to require a phase-out of the use of hydrofluoric and modified hydrofluoric acid.
The Feb 10 letter from representatives Nanette Barragán. Karen Bass, Ted Lieu and Maxine Waters praised the EPA’s January 2017 strengthening of risk management plan rules, but said, “We believe the EPA should go further and strengthen RMP rules by phasing out the use of HF and MHF in the alkylation process, in order to improve safety at and near petroleum refineries around the nation.”
“The next step will be to get other Congress Members and Senators that have HF in or near their jurisdiction to produce similar letters or sign on to this one,” TRAA President Steve Goldsmith said in an email announcing the letter. There are 40 such facilities across the country.
On Feb 15, Supervisor Janice Hahn introduced a motion to send a letter “to Governor Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta asking that the State take all possible actions to require refineries in California to convert from MHF to safer alternatives.” The motion passed unanimously. It also called for a range of other actions, including other pathways to achieve the conversion and a report on how to enhance the protection of endangered communities in the meantime.
One alternative alkylation process, developed by Chevron and licensed to Honeywell, uses an ionic liquid as the catalyst as opposed to sulfuric or hydrofluoric acid. The process “was proven in the US at a demonstration unit at Chevron’s Salt Lake City refinery for five years,” according to a May 5, 2021 report in The Chemical Engineer. “The commercial-scale unit has now become operational.”
February 18 marks the seventh anniversary of the explosion at the Torrance Refinery—owned by Exxon-Mobil at the time—that injured four people and came close to releasing thousands of pounds of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid, which could have formed a vapor cloud, spreading for miles. The Torrance Refinery Action Alliance formed shortly afterward and has been organizing ever since to replace the acid with safer technology.
A 2017 report by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) concluded that the explosion could have been prevented and could have been catastrophic. A similar explosion occurred at a Husky refinery in Wisconsin on April 26, 2018. A year later, after investigating that explosion, CSB wrote to the EPA strongly encouraging a review and update of risk management plans and exploration of safer refining technologies.
“We are proposing two possible routes,” Goldsmith told Random Lengths. First is “amendments to the risk management plan rule which is a slow process that will take at least another year at least plus Court battles. Second, “On the advice of people that have been at this for 30 years on the national level, we are also calling for the invoking of the ‘general duty clause’ which is I’m much faster process.” This provision of the Clean Air Act gives the EPA broader latitude and was also referenced by CSB.
Seven years after the Torrance Refinery explosion, the time for action is long overdue.
