P.S. This marks the start of my Wednesday columns. So I'll be trying to write for Wednesday AND Sunday. Shwew!



The ground beneath the Rosedale refinery is shifting.  

And I’m not just talking about the toxic soup pooling dangerously close to drinking supplies.

There’s a new sheriff in town, so to speak, and pollution is Public Enemy No. 1.

That’s too bad for refinery owner Big West of California, now seeking to expand.

While state regulators, in a kind of Rip Van Winkle haze, have (until recently) all but ignored millions of gallons of MTBE, benzene, gasoline and diesel spilled or leaked at the refinery, Kern County regulators are now wide awake.

Kern County planners are reviewing Big West’s environmental study on its expansion and have become keenly interested in The Californian’s recent revelations of past spills and lackadaisical cleanup and enforcement efforts, said Planning Department head Ted James. That includes the unfinished efforts of previous owner Shell Oil.

Meanwhile, the most recently discovered toxic leak continues to flow and no one knows where it’s coming from or when it will stop, according to Matt Constantine, director of Kern’s Environmental Health Department.

Thirty-five feet of crude oil (Big West says it was oil dating from the 1980s) was floating on top of the groundwater when it was caught by monitoring wells in June, Constantine said, a tinge of outrage in his voice.

“And they continue to pull significant amounts” from the same area, he said.

The leak is under the state Regional Water Quality Control board’s jurisdiction. But when Constantine learned of it, he got the California Environmental Protection Agency, Big West and the water board on the phone and demanded answers. He says he’s going to stay in the loop.

Add to that airborne chemical releases, including 3,700 pounds of potentially lethal hydrogen sulfide last October, and Constantine has real concerns. He did say Big West has been responsive to the county.

But the refinery has had “significant environmental failures,” and the question of whether it can ensure safe operations for future expansions is up in the air.

“I am unsure we’re able to say ‘yes’ based on their practices previously,” he said.
That does not bode well for Big West’s expansion hopes.

It does bode well for Kern County.

In years past, local regulators, chiefly Environmental Health, shuffled their feet and looked the other way as companies illegally turned Kern into their own private dumping ground.

Since Constantine has taken over, Environmental Health has jumped on a number of high-profile polluters.

• At the beginning of this year, the department ordered EnviroCycle Inc. to stop taking piles of contaminated soil and oily liquids and clean up its property near McKittrick.

• Hondo Chemical, stockpiling fly ash and petroleum contaminated soils and oily liquids over or near the Kern Water Bank, was ordered to clean up its property in May or face fines. To date, it owes the county $12,000 in fines and has complied to a degree, Constantine said.

• Composting facility Community Recycling near Lamont earlier this month was told to clean up farmland layered with trash-filled compost.

In each of these cases, Constantine noted, the trash, tainted dirt and toxic liquids, almost exclusively came from outside Kern County.

“Talk about NIMBY,” he scoffed. “This is my front yard. And I’m not going to stand for this.”

Refreshing words to a community beleaguered by a reputation as the state’s outhouse. But what happens when the offender is one of our own, the oil industry, a major part of Kern’s economy?

“So what?” he said.

The rules are the same and large corporations have an even greater responsibility to lead by example, he said.

“And they haven’t been.”

No kidding.

Here’s hoping the county keeps up the pressure. It’s only our health we’re talking about here.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Comment on this column at http://people.bakersfield.c... or e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.