More than 900 people have sought medical treatment following a massive fire at a Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California. Tens of thousands of area residents were ordered to stay in their homes with the windows and doors closed after a series of blasts Monday sparked blazing fires that sent huge plumes of smoke. Chevron now says the situation is under control. We talk with Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a member of the Green Party, who is seeking a full investigation into the blaze. “We have a community that has been fighting Chevron for a long time, and I’m proud to and honored to stand for that community,” McLaughlin said. We’re also joined by Andres Soto, the Richmond organizer for Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental justice group that has previously sued Chevron over what it says was a shoddy environmental impact report. “They refuse to sit at the table, they refuse to negotiate in good faith with the community over a wide range of issues, whether it’s fair taxation or whether it’s environmental safety and environmental justice,” Soto said
Chevron occupies over 13% of Richmond’s land, and according to the California Air Resources Board, emits more greenhouse gas pollution than any other facility in California. Many who grew up in the refinery’s shadow have memories of illnesses caused by spills. Community activists have also accused Chevron of using its local economic clout to minimize taxes and skirt environmental regulations. Chevron, however, says it is a good neighbor that bolsters the economy of Richmond and its surroundings.
Mayor Gayle McLaughlin of Richmond talking:
This situation is totally unacceptable that every few years we have these disastrous situations with fires and impact on the health of our community. Last night, Chevron held a town hall meeting in response to residents’ concerns, concerns about the fact that they had to shelter in place for hours, through the night, and Monday evening and into Tuesday morning. The meeting showed that people were extremely upset. People were voicing their empowerment, stating they needed to hear from Chevron what are the causes — what were the root causes of the situation and how they were going to implement a more safe refinery and how the community warning system could work better. So, what I am calling for, and this is something I have been calling for throughout this process, is a full transparent investigation not only by Chevron, but by independent sources so that we can get a full analysis of what caused this fire and how we can assure the safety of our community that has suffered for decades from environmental and injustice. So, our efforts are going to be strong, continuous, and as a progressive elected official along with a couple of other progressives on the City Council, we are there to stand for the residents. We have this big one-percenter in our community, and it is clear that we are still in battle with them, and will continue to be until they understand that they can’t make these — they have to do better by our community and make sure that our community is safe from any harm.
We have a predominantly people of color community. We have about, almost 40% of our community is Latino, close to 30% African-American. We have an Asian population, Native American. Particularly around the refinery, we have people of color, low-income community. We have a community that has suffered social injustice, economic injustice, racial injustice, environmental injustice. So, we have a community that’s been fighting Chevron for a long time. I am proud and honored to stand for that community.
Andres Soto talking:
This was a very dramatic and shocking event, particularly in Richmond and San Pablo, and the areas that were subject to the shelter-in-place-order. It started out with these explosions, and then a huge mushroom cloud over the city. At first, there was no news coverage. At least locally, the Bay Area, the media hadn’t gotten aware of it. Then, all of the sudden, it was on all the television, radio stations everybody was paying attention. By then, that cloud started to spread to the eastward and over the hills going northward and eastward , blanketing neighboring communities. This is one of the most serious environmental disasters that’s happened to the Bay Area. We have seen a number of them like the Cosco Busan shipping disaster and other environmental disasters, but this one with the sirens, when they finally went off, it was like living in a war zone where you have this toxic cloud overhead and sirens going on. It was a very scary place to be. Many people, then, started showing up at the hospitals locally, as you reported. So, it is a major trauma to the community.
Last night at the dog and pony show that Chevron put on at the Richmond Auditorium, it was clear the emotions, the anger that the community was feeling really boiled over. The Chevron people heard that voice loud and clear. From moving forward now, they are trying to get approval of their so-called plant upgrade and they have to go through an approval process of the city of Richmond or that includes the Planning Commission and the City Council. In the past, when they did it, they tried to push through their approval with an inadequate EIR. Communities for a Better Environment went to court. The judge upheld the action against Chevron’s desires, and they now have to deal with the city and a new and different fashion. They have also attempted to influence local politics and have influenced local politics for a century. Just in the most recent election, 2010, they spent $1 million alone on three candidates. All three of those candidates lost. They have a very difficult public relations problem with the community of Richmond. We’re going to hold their feet to the fire as we move forward.
The history of Chevron actually predates the incorporation of the City of Richmond by a few years. So, it has always been a specter looming within the city; largest tax payer, largest employer, but right now as it exists, Chevron employs less than 5% of its employees are actually local Richmond residents. It is a misnomer that they’re a solution to the local job situation. Realistically, what we have seen is nothing but spin out of the refinery. On the one hand they apologized to the community is how they always lead their statements off. But, realistically, they came out and they were blaming the same community and the environmentalists for them not being able to modernize and upgrade their operations there at the Richmond refinery when in fact, we know that this unit, the crude unit that actually caught on fire and blew up, it was never part of that upgrade program. They could have ensured the safety of this thing in general. But it is that mendacity, the misrepresentation of the truth that Chevron is engaging in that makes it very difficult to deal with them. They refuse to negotiate in good faith with the committee over a wide range of issues, whether it is fair taxation or whether it’s environmental safety and environmental justice. They’re an international corporation.
What I understand from the people who study these science, it’s a whole range of hydrocarbons. We suspect that this is some of that high sulfur content dirtier crude from the Canadian tar sands that may have been involved with this. So, you know, there is exotic metals. It’s a whole toxic stew of chemicals that were released into the broad environment, and not just in our local community, but throughout the region.
this is one of the biggest international, multinational corporations. We have seen how they have dealt with the people in Nigeria. In fact, their mouthpiece in Richmond, Heather Kulp, was assigned to Nigeria before they assigned her to Richmond. Where they have actually used the Nigerian army to kill people. We know in Ecuador, they bought the processing of the oil there, the wells there, and the extraction and have left a toxic mess that was started by Texaco and they are ignoring the fine that the Ecuadorian government has imposed. Down in Brazil, we see them taking action where they have actually indicted Chevron executives for offshore oil drilling accidents and spills. Looking at that, that is actually a role model. Unfortunately over here, nobody is talking about arresting Nigel Hearne and his crew for the Chevron experience the other day, the environmental disaster we suffered.
Earlier this year, Ecuadorean plaintiffs launched a new effort to recoup the $18 billion in damages that Chevron has refused to pay for polluting Ecuador’s rainforest since the 1970’s. Amazonian residents won the judgment last year after a long-running case seeking damages for Chevron’s dumping of toxic oil waste. Chevron has helped to avoid the fine by dissolving its assets inside Ecuador. In late June, the plaintiffs filed suit against Chevron holdings in Brazil in a bid to target Chevron worldwide. A similar lawsuit was filed in Canada in May. Juan Pablo Saenz, a lawyer in the case, said Chevron’s actions had left the plaintiffs with with no choice but to pursue the company around the globe.
Chevron is behaving as an international criminal corporation. In fact last night and in Richmond, that is what some folks were calling them. This kind of behavior, this irresponsible corporate behavior is, in our community, masked by giving chump change out to local nonprofits to keep them quiet, to remove them from the debate, you know, community leadership. But, at the same time, they’re not fooling everybody. We see this reckless behavior of avoiding these judgments in other countries while right and our own county, they have been appealing their property taxes and actually were found to owe more taxes than they actually paid. We have seen where they try to evade revealing their energy usage to avoid paying the utility user’s tax locally. They had reach a settlement on that. And still they have millions of dollars to spend on influencing local politics. This kind of corporate criminal behavior is not fooling the people of Richmond.
Mayor McLaughlin talking:
We have been fighting Chevron since I was elected, and by efforts of a council member before I was elected, we have a progressive movement in the city of Richmond. Since our efforts, the progressives on the council, Chevron has no longer dominated City hall. We have two new progressives running this particular election, and we need to get them on board because we have two continued council members in the pockets of chevron. We’re in so many ways a leading environmental City based on our initiatives. So, with a stronger voice, with a super majority of progressives through the Richmond Progressive Alliance on the City Council, we will be able to hold Chevron totally accountable by our votes, by regulating them, by not giving them a permit for their new proposal unless they put in the highest safety precautions and the highest assurance that they won’t be refining this dirty, heavy crude that can cause more explosions and cause more harm to our community. So we have the political muscle and we want to keep it moving.
– source democracynow.org