Saw the Chevron ad this am, so as the 59% majority voted in my poll recently, here's a bit of news on Chevron.
The Chevron Richmond Refinery in Richmond, California, (map) just north of Berkeley, is one of the oldest and largest refineries in the United States. Built in 1902, (wonder how much it's been updated since...) the refinery sits on nearly 3,000 acres of land. To refine its capacity of 87.6 million barrels of crude oil per year – 240,000 barrels a day – the refinery produces over two million pounds of waste a year. These stats are from the Chevron website.
And what else?
Here's what the EPA has to say about the Richmond refinery:
290 pollutant spills in two years, June 2001 to May 2003.
In these 2 years: 2001 pounds of known or suspected carcinogens (suspect carcinogens are those that have been shown to cause cancer in animals) released into the air.
THe EPA lists the Richmond refinery as being in "significant noncompliance" for air pollution standards.
The EPA criteria for air pollution noncompliance are:
* Failure to obtain a PSD permit
* Violation of an air toxics requirement
* Violation by a synthetic minor of an emission limit that affects the source's regulatory status
* Violation of an administrative or judicial order
* Substantial violations of a sources Title V obligations
* Failure to submit a Title V permit application within 60 days of the deadline
* Testing, monitoring, record keeping or reporting violations that substantially interfere with enforcement or determination of a facility's compliance requirements
* Violation of an allowable emission limit detected during a source test
* Chronic or recalcitrant violations, or
* Substantial violations of 112 (r) requirements
Thanks to author Antonia Juhasz for these sources.
Nice to know that Chevron cares so much about clean, healthy energy!