In Martinez, More Residents Want to Hold the Refinery Accountable

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay. Local News to Keep You Rooted. Martinez is just one of a few cities in the Bay Area that you could call a refinery town. The Martinez Refining Company, owned by PBF Energy, is a huge facility, just a little bigger than Central Park in New York, and it’s been around for over a hundred years.

Will McCarthy: Now today, it employs between 600 to 700 hundred people. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That’s Will McCarthy, a reporter for the Mercury News. 

Will McCarthy: Many of those people live in Martinez and the surrounding communities. So it’s been a part of this community for literally generations. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And it’s not just jobs. The refinery sends money to the city’s Chamber of Commerce. You’ll see signs of their brand around town at community events like this annual fun run that the refinery hosts. 

Will McCarthy: So they’re definitely a presence in the community beyond just being an employer. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: But that presence is being met with more and more skepticism these days. Residents are raising the alarm after several instances of ash and dust coming out of the refinery and raining down on the city. And they’re starting to push for some change. So today we’re going to talk with Will about a shift that’s happening in Martinez and why more residents want to hold the refinery accountable. Stay with us. 

Will McCarthy: It’s kind of amazing that it all started on Thanksgiving night. It feels really sort of like poignant in that way. 

Heidi Taylor: And we were super excited to host all of our friends and family for Thanksgiving dinner. 

Will McCarthy:  Heidi Taylor moved to Martinez about a year ago. 

Heidi Taylor: And unbeknownst to us, as they were leaving, they were being showered with heavy toxic metals. 

Will McCarthy: After people sort of went to bed after a pair of Thanksgiving dinners. The refinery emitted about 28 tons of metal laden dust called Spent Catalyst, which is a material that’s created during the refining process. It’s this white dust that people woke up to this sort of fine white layer of white sand blanketing their cars and porches and windowsills. You know, people were sort of confused as to what this was, obviously. And some folks started reaching out to the refinery and asking about it. The day after Thanksgiving, the refinery posted on Facebook and said they’d received calls about the dust, but that it was okay. And at least for some people, it just didn’t really think about it again for a while. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Okay, so there’s this ash that was raining down from the sky. Residents are told that everything is okay. But then what happens next? 

Will McCarthy: So within a week after that release, the county health department learned about it, actually not from the refinery, but from social media reports and from resident concern. And they alert residents within a week of the spent catalyst being released that it’s actually contains metals. 

Heidi Taylor: Honestly, I didn’t even know what these metals were. And then you start Googling things and you’re like, Oh my God, this is serious. 

Will McCarthy: Aluminum, barium, chromium, exposure to heavy metals like this has been linked to nausea, vomiting, respiratory issues, immune system concern, dysfunction, cancer. 

Heidi Taylor: The next morning after Thanksgiving, there was an antique dresser in my front yard that I asked my husband and son to move over to the neighbor, and my son swiped his hand across the top and aerosolized all that dust. And I just had this recurring flashback of that that him doing that. And it just freaked me out that he breathed that in, that my husband breathed it in and that I was touching and disturbing that dust without ever knowing that it was there. 

Will McCarthy: And it was also a concern because nobody knew exactly what the extent of the release was still or whether the soil was affected. In March, the Contra Costa County Health Department told residents living near the refinery that they shouldn’t eat any food grown in their gardens just until they were able to determine that the soil was not unsafe. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Geez, March. They mean that’s like months later. I would be pissed if I lived in Martinez, to be honest. 

Will McCarthy: Yeah, I think people were pissed because I think that they felt like they had maybe already been failed by the refinery. Now they’re like, Wait, what? How are we hearing about this potential soil problem this much later? It definitely, I think, was like a tenuous time. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: You talked about how this refinery has always just kind of been like in Martinez. Like, no one really questioned it. How exactly does that start to change after all this? 

Will McCarthy: I think that there had been over, you know, this 100 year history. There had been times that people were concerned about the safety conditions working in the refinery or where, you know, people spoke up. But I think there was also a sense that the refinery was a responsible partner. And I think that’s sort of been one thing that’s really changing in the immediate aftermath of this bank catalyst release, a group of, you know, really just five, five or six friends who were just trying to figure out what was going on. And this is something that Heidi Taylor talks about. 

Heidi Taylor: There was a city council meeting after the event in early December, and there were a number of us who went in person and spoke. And outside of that meeting, I approached many people and just thanked them for speaking as they did to me. And a small group formed. And then we kind of found each other online. 

Will McCarthy: People messaging back and forth, some who knew each other and some who, you know, just sort of knew each other through social media, asking what they could do and what the next steps were, but also asking how can we feel safe moving forward? How can we feel safe, you know, with our families? I think as that group has sort of grown and gained momentum and as people have become increasingly aware of the ways in which the refinery failed to notify them and sort of this safety record that they feel like is getting worse and worse, that has led to the group growing to now roughly, you know, roughly 100 people. It’s also changed, I think, the way that a lot of residents are interacting with the city and interacting with the refinery. 

Heidi Taylor: We show up at city council meetings, we show up at the Board of Supervisors, Industrial Safety ordinance meetings. We show up at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District meetings. We are there to speak up and fight for Martinez. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I mean, well, what do the people at Healthy Martinez want? 

Will McCarthy: They have a list of demands that include that Martinez are finding company, installs a wet gas scrubber and make any other necessary improvements in order to reduce daily emissions. Another one is to pay for the installation and maintenance of state of the art independent air monitoring systems within the community. 

Heidi Taylor: So that we can access that data and know what we’re breathing. 

Will McCarthy: Another big one is improved public communication and transparency from the refinery and then also for the refining company to reimburse residents, the city and the county for all expenses related to this bank that was released in November. 

Heidi Taylor: That shouldn’t fall on us taxpayers. That should fall on the Marcy Martinez refining Company. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Going back to the release in November. I mean, are residents safe? Is everything okay now with that incident? Like, have we closed the book on that? 

Will McCarthy: I don’t think that they’ll ever completely know, you know, what the effect was in the moment. I’ve talked to residents who said that they have developed asthma after this exposure, but the soil was proven safe. And I think they announced that and do so, at least in that regard. It feels like this episode has, you know, a lid put on it. I think now it’s really more concerns about continuing the releases.

Just a few weeks after the county health department declared the soil safe, the refinery released Coke dust into the surrounding neighborhoods, which is this black dust, which is sort of chemically similar to charcoal. They ultimately said, you know, this is not a concern. The chemical composition of that Coke dust is not such that people will have any long term health effects. But there are still questions that remained about, you know, at the time the amount of time it took for the refinery to to report those had happened. They still took a few hours before the county health department heard about it. And so the whole story almost started again where people were like, wait, how is this still happening? 

Heidi Taylor: Is this like normal? I’m just supposed to accept being dumped on every single day. I will never allow that to be normal. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, I want to talk about what now? There are these five demands from healthy Martinez. Have any of them been met at this point? 

Will McCarthy: As of now, no. That man’s have not been met. And these investigations are still ongoing. So about, you know, a couple of weeks after that original release, I know the health department recommended the DEA conduct independent investigation of the refinery. I’m not sure exactly what the what the status of that now is. If the DEA is expected to file charges soon or not at all. In May, the FBI and the EPA announced that they were investigating these hazardous chemical releases as well. Those investigations are still ongoing to, you know, overall that the refinery, I do think, has taken a more proactive approach in communicating with the community. They’re definitely not combative. You know, I think that there is this real olive branch that’s being extended, but those words have to be backed up with the actions. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And what about this city, Will? Has this city done anything to help address residents’ concerns? 

Will McCarthy: Definitely. I think that Mayor Brianne Zorn, the relatively new mayor of Martinez, our sort of entire tenure has been marked in part by this release because she was sworn in not long after it happened. 

Mayor Brianna Zorn: From my perspective, the county is holding them accountable for these actions. I think everyone has to understand that being held accountable under our legal system takes a little bit of time. 

Will McCarthy: And I do think that she’s represented a change in perspective from the city as well in terms of what their expectations from the refinery are. She said that we’re essentially having to reestablish our relationship with the refinery. 

Mayor Brianna Zorn: We’re all aware, as we, you know, get off the freeway and go to our homes that we live in a refinery town and we’re very aware of how much a shell previously and now MRC has contributed to our community with donations and sponsorships and all of that. And I think that’s why members of the public are so frustrated because of this event. 

Will McCarthy: The city is sort of taking matters into their own hands and just saying we want to know what’s going on there. Regardless of whether the county thinks it’s dangerous or not. We’re the ones who are actually living here. 

Mayor Brianna Zorn: And I walked out the next morning and I saw a thin film of dust on my car. And my Cammy is expecting to be notified when things like this happen. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, looking forward. Well, what questions are you going to be kind of asking and looking out for as you continue to watch what happens in Martinez? 

Will McCarthy: The biggest things are what are what are the results of these sort of swirling investigations? Are there going to be real penalties or is it going to be a slap on the wrist? And I think that will sort of launch this next phase of the relationship between the town and Martinez Refining Company. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: We talk about the shift that you see happening in Martinez between the community and its relationship with the refinery. From your reporting, what’s your sense of why that shift is happening? Why now? 

Will McCarthy: There definitely is still an old guard who has lived there for a really long time and sort of has used the refinery. And now I think that they’re also new people who have moved to Martinez in part due to its relative relative affordability, because as this beautiful historic downtown and there’s a lot about Martinez that is really wonderful and has this really rich history and community. This is something that Heidi Taylor talks about. 

Heidi Taylor: I spoke to a young woman who was pregnant when they just moved here from Berkeley, and she was lamenting that decision. And I said, no, no, no, don’t lament that decision. Join us and help us make this a healthier, safer community. 

Will McCarthy: People coming there are, you know, not willing to necessarily make that compromise that other people have made long ago and are asking for changes. 

Heidi Taylor: I think we are attracting people who want to stay here, who want to make it better and to hold the refinery accountable and make them do better. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah, there are things about Martinez, it sounds like that they feel are worth fighting for. 

Will McCarthy: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s a good way to put it. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Will. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Will McCarthy: Yeah, thank you for having me. 

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Will McCarthy, a reporter for the Mercury News. This 40 minute conversation with Will was cut down and edited by producer Maria Esquinca. I pitched and produced this episode and interviewed Heidi Taylor. Allen Montecillo is our senior editor. Thanks also to KQED’s Forum for the tape you heard from Mayor Brianne Zorn. The Bay is a production of member supported KQED in San Francisco. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Talk to you next time.