Shell Oil paying millions for tank violations

Shell Oil Co. will pay $19.5 million in civil penalties and fees to settle a state complaint involving hundreds of environmental violations at its California gas stations.

A state investigation found problems with leak detection and monitoring of underground storage tanks, as well as hazardous waste handling at Shell gas stations across the state, according to the attorney general's office. One of the gas stations was next door to the office of the Contra Costa County hazardous materials program.

An Alameda County Superior Court order released today also requires the company to improve its spill and alarm monitoring.

Leaking underground tanks can be a significant source of pollution, contaminating groundwater supplies.

--Bettina Boxall  

Photo: A Shell station in Northern California. Credit: Los Angeles Times / Bob Chamberlin  

   

California enacts law to encourage stormwater reuse

During the wet season, the city of L.A. sends 100 million gallons of stormwater into the Pacific each day. That water had, for many years, been handled as pollution, since the water produced in rainstorms picks up various effluents that then flush into the ocean.

But a new California law seeks to expand the role of stormwater management to incorporate strategies that will use it as a resource. The Stormwater Resource Planning Act, SB 790, allows municipalities to tap funds from two of the state’s existing bond funds and use the money for projects that reduce or reuse stormwater, recharge the groundwater supply, create green spaces and enhance wildlife habitats. SB 790 was signed into law Sunday and takes effect Jan. 1, 2010.

"I was proud to carry 790," said Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), who wrote the bill. "It uses existing funds to create new water supplies out of water that in the past was simply treated and dumped. This bill helps create a significant new source of water for our always water-short state."

With California in the throes of a budget crisis and a water crisis – the state is currently enduring a third year of drought – the competition will likely be fierce among the many government agencies that manage the state’s stormwater. SB 790 allows agencies to apply for and, if approved, draw on remaining funds from Prop. 50, the $3.44-billion water security bond passed by California voters in 2002, and Prop. 84, the $5.4-billion safe drinking water bond passed in 2006. Exactly how much money is left over from those bonds is unclear.

L.A.’s Bureau of Sanitation, which has already received $22 million in bond funds from the state for various stormwater projects, is likely to apply for even more funds through SB 790. According to Wing Tam, assistant division manager for the bureau’s watershed protection division, the money will fund an expansion of the city's rainwater harvesting projects and green infrastructure, including large cisterns, stream restoration, biofiltration and downspout disconnections.

"It's important for us to capture stormwater and use it as a resource," said Tam, who noted that the city's paradigm shift from viewing stormwater as pollution to stormwater as a resource has been a gradual process born through 10 years of pilot projects. "Not only does that help us with water quality but quality of life. A wetland park deals with water quality, but it also creates a park for people to use. It's multi-use. That's our future."

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Bruce Huff / Los Angeles Times

Catching Malibu's dirty runoff

Surfers and Malibu City Council members broke ground today on the city’s Legacy Park, which will keep polluted urban runoff and stormwater out of the ocean. See the post on L.A. Now. 

-- Bettina Boxall 

 Photo: Legacy Park groundbreaking. Credit: City of Malibu

Judge bars new Lake Tahoe piers

A federal judge is blocking construction of new boating facilities on Lake Tahoe while he resolves an environmental lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed by the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Club, challenges new regulations that would allow more than 100 new private piers, 10 new public piers, new boat ramps, mooring buoys and hundreds of slips.

The regulations were adopted last year by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency after years of controversy. Environmentalists argue that new piers and ramps will increase motorized boating and the pollution that goes with it.

In a Thursday ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence K. Karlton issued a preliminary injunction. It bars construction of the new piers and ramps but allows the planning agency to move ahead with processing permits for the facilities.

Still, boaters might want to hold off.

"The court notes that its independent review indicates that plaintiffs have shown some likelihood of success," Karlton wrote.

-- Bettina Boxall

Photo: Lake Tahoe. Credit: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

 

Company will clean up San Gabriel Valley contamination

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to spend $21 million to clean up polluted groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley.

Under a consent decree settlement announced this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the company will pump contaminated water from beneath the City of Industry, La Puente and Walnut; build pipelines; and construct and operate a treatment plant.

The area is one of four federal Superfund sites in the San Gabriel Valley, where more than 30 square miles of the water table are polluted with solvents and degreasing agents used for decades by business and industry.

The pollution, first detected in 1979, has affected the primary source of water for more than 1 million valley residents, forcing the closure of wells and spawning a long cleanup battle.  

The plastic sea

It can be hard to find what you're looking for in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But scientists on an August research cruise had no problem tracking down their subject.

“We did observe a lot of plastic out there in the ocean about 1,000 miles from anything" said Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX). "It's pretty shocking."

A group of doctoral students and research volunteers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Project Kaisei spent nearly three weeks on the research vessel New Horizon taking samples and exploring the plastic garbage patch floating in the North Pacific.

Over the next several months they will analyze samples to learn more about its toxicity and how it affects ocean life and food webs. Are invasive species getting a ride on the plastic? To what degree is the plastic interfering with ocean feeding?

Fish in streams across U.S. tainted with mercury

Researchers found mercury in every fish tested in a nationwide stream survey, with some of the higher concentrations showing up in mining areas of the West.

In about a quarter of the fish, levels of the toxic metal exceeded federal standards for people who eat an average amount of fish.

“This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds, and many of our fish in freshwater streams,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a press release.

The study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, sampled 34 fish species at 291 stream sites across the country from 1998 to 2005.

The most contaminated sample came from smallmouth bass in the Carson River in Dayton, Nev., a historic gold mining area.

Corps gives go-ahead to Alaska's Kensington gold mine

The controversial Kensington gold mine in southeast Alaska has won an important go-ahead from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which approved an amended permit that will allow the mine to dump millions of tons of waste into a nearby lake.

The project has been the subject of a national environmental fight over whether navigable lakes and rivers can be used as repositories for toxic mine tailings.

The Corps announced it is extending the time limit on Coeur Alaska's permit until 2014 and reiterated that the permit includes authorization for the company to construct its tailings storage facility in Lower Slate Lake, below the mine.

The U.S. Supreme Court this year upheld the project, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency in July urged the Corps of Engineers to take a second look at the lake disposal plan. The EPA and several conservation organizations have advocated that mine operators think about turning the waste into a paste and depositing them on land on the other side of the mine.

Guilty plea in San Francisco Bay oil spill case

 

The operator of a tanker that spilled 53,000 gallons of fuel oil into the San Francisco Bay pleaded guilty Thursday to two criminal charges and will pay a $10 million fine, according to federal officials.

Hong Kong-based Fleet Management Ltd. pleaded guilty to violating the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990. The company also pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of justice and false statement charges in the spill’s aftermath.

On Nov. 7, 2007, the Cosco Busan sideswiped the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the dense fog. The incident fouled 26 miles of shoreline and delayed the start of crab season.

At least 2,000 migratory birds died in the spill, including brown pelicans, a federally endangered species, and marbled murrelets, which are on the California endangered species list.

“In pleading guilty, Fleet admitted that after the ship hit the Bay Bridge, it concealed ship records and created materially false, fictitious and forged documents with an intent to influence the Coast Guard’s investigation,” the said U.S. Department of Justice in a written statement.

Marc Greenberg, Fleet’s attorney, declined to comment on the agreement Thursday because he said it has yet to be accepted by the court. Two earlier pleas were turned down. A hearing is set for Dec. 11.

In March, the ship’s pilot pleaded guilty to two counts of breaking federal environmental laws.
John Joseph Cota of Petaluma acknowledged negligence and was sentenced to 10 months in prison, a year of supervised release and 200 hours of community service. He is scheduled to surrender to authorities on Sept. 18.

-- Maria LaGanga

Photo: Crews clean up oil on Rodeo Beach in Marin County in November 2007, after spill by the Cosco Busan. Credit: Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times

 

ExxonMobil pleads guilty to killing birds, pays fine

ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to charges that it killed 85 protected birds, including hawks, owls, and waterfowl. The company violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in five states over the past five years, according to the Department of Justice.

The company, which reported over $4 billion in earnings for the second quarter of 2009, will pay $400,000 in fines and $200,000 in community service fees to waterfowl rehabilitation and preservation programs. It will be placed on probation for three years and must implement a plan to minimize bird deaths during that time.

Most of the birds died following exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas pits, oil tanks, and waste water facilities at ExxonMobil drilling and production plants in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, court documents state.

Open pits and tanks often attract waterfowl and other birds, which may land in the chemicals and attempt to feed, according to the documents.