The
Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club consists of over 25,000 members.
The Chapter spans the entire state of Texas, excepting El Paso, which
is part of the Rio Grande Chapter.
Located in Austin, the Lone Star Chapter's State Conservation Office
serves Sierrans as their grassroots communications center. We also provide
Sierrans with a full time professional activist staff employed to represent
Sierrans as we fight at the state level to protect and conserve Texas'
diverse and valuable natural heritage.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday July 22, 2009
CONTACT: Dr. Neil Carman 512-663-9594 cell Suzie Canales (at work till after 5:00 p.m., please call Dr. Carman)
Citizens for Environmental Justice and Sierra Club seek expanded Federal probe of CITGO refinery alkylation unit accidents
Citing specific concerns over Impacts of Toxic Hydrogen Fluoride
in accidents, Groups call for switch to safer catalyst sulfuric
acid
Corpus Christi, Texas -- Sierra Club (SC) and Citizens for
Environmental Justice (CFEJ) requested in a letter this week
to Chairman John Bresland that the U.S. Chemical Safety Board
(CSB) conduct an expanded probe of CITGO’s alkylation unit accidents back to 1990 and assess the toxic airborne releases of hydrogen fluoride gas based on serious concerns of public health impact.
The SC/CFEJ letter describes serious public health concerns over CITGO’s
egregious failure to notify and evacuate the nearby community
as well as attempting to downplay fence-line community impacts
of its toxic refinery pollution, in particular hydrogen fluoride.
“Corpus Christi has one of the highest concentrations
of oil refineries in the U.S. using hydrogen fluoride (hydrofluoric
acid), an extremely dangerous chemical as a catalyst in the
alkylation units, a chemical which poses the single worst-case
accidental release scenario and makes it even more hazardous
for citizens living along refinery row,” said Dr. Neil Carman, chemist and Clean Air Program director for Sierra Club. “CITGO
has failed to report any of its potential toxic environmental
releases of hydrogen fluoride to the U.S. EPA for the last
five-years, and may be fudging as badly as it did with its
benzene tank releases it was criminally convicted of under
the federal Clean Air Act.”
The letter to CSB Chairman Bresland includes a June 1997 letter to EPA raising a set of similar concerns with CITGO’s
irresponsible actions that the groups seek to address:
1. SC/CFEJ request the CSB conduct a thorough investigation
of the July 19-20 alkylation accident including a list of
questions posed in this letter, because this is a very serious
incident with potential for hydrogen fluoride community air
pollution impacts that CITGO has had a tendency to under
estimate and downplay in other incidents involving this extremely
hazardous chemical;
2. SC/CFEJ urge the CSB to recommend that local refineries
implement a permanent solution by switching to sulfuric acid
as an alkylation catalyst and stop using hydrogen fluoride
catalyst, because it is too dangerous to the community and
because refineries like CITGO continue to ignore the need
to evacuate community members during serious HF accidents;
3. SC/CFEJ requests the CSB return to Corpus Christi when
its investigation is complete of the root cause analysis
of CITGO’s fire July 19 and hold a public meeting with CITGO
and local officials to release its recommendations and allow
public input. The key findings, root causes and recommendations
by the CSB can have a crucial beneficial impact of shifting
away from HF use in Corpus Christi and make the community
safer from these kinds of toxic exposures and accidents;
and
4. Attached for CSB’s review, as part of the current investigation,
is a June 26, 1997 letter sent to EPA Region 6 to emphasize
that CITGO has had serious prior incidents at the East Refinery
and it’s
unacceptable for CITGO to place the community at risk of
toxic HF exposures when it reveals the company is not operating
the alkylation unit in a safe manner to prevent such accidents
and fires. Offsite HF impacts were obvious, based on independent
investigation in 1997.
“CITGO responded to this serious event in typical
fashion, they attempted to minimize this event to the local
community,” said Suzie Canales, Executive Director of Citizens for Environmental Justice. “This
event supports our position for the need of a buffer zone
- to relocate, at a fair price, the people that want to move.
It is too dangerous to live adjacent to CITGO, a repeat offender
and convicted criminal.”
“We are asking for a thorough investigation of the
serious event from last Sunday. We are concerned that negligence
on behalf of CITGO led to the serious injury to the employee
and put a whole community in needless risk.” added
Canales.
