Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public the data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would expand the application of these provisions to any covered facility, defined to include refineries that produce gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, lubricating oil, asphalt, petrochemical feedstock, or other similar products, and to include facilities with operations related to a refinery that are located on contiguous or adjacent properties. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be updated or installed on or before January 1, 2028, after a 30-day public comment period, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of covered facilities to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of covered facilities to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of specified pollutant thresholds. The bill would require the owners or operators of covered facilities, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance of those thresholds, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of covered facilities to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law, a violation of requirements for stationary sources or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of covered facilities engaging in other types of refining processes and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of covered facilities, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public the data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would expand the definition of a refinery for these purposes to include related facilities located on contiguous or adjacent properties and to include refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock. the application of these provisions to any covered facility, defined to include refineries that produce gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, lubricating oil, asphalt, petrochemical feedstock, or other similar products, and to include facilities with operations related to a refinery that are located on contiguous or adjacent properties. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be updated or installed on or before January 1, 2028, after a 30-day public comment period, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries covered facilities to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of specified pollutant thresholds. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, covered facilities, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance of those thresholds, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries covered facilities to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law, a violation of requirements for stationary sources or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries covered facilities engaging in other types of refining processes and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, covered facilities, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, to maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public those the data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would extend the above requirements to expand the definition of a refinery for these purposes to include related facilities located on contiguous or adjacent properties and to include refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock, and to auxiliary facilities. feedstock. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be updated or installed on or before January 1, 2026, 2028, after a 30-day public comment period, and would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system to be updated, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of the lowest available one-hour average reference exposure levels set by the office or the United States Environmental Protection Agency. specified pollutant thresholds. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, those thresholds, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law law, a violation of requirements for stationary sources, sources or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, as defined, processes and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, to maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public those data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would extend the above requirements to refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock, and to auxiliary facilities. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be installed on or before January 1, 2026, after a 30-day public comment period, and would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system to be updated, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of the lowest available one-hour average reference exposure levels set by the office or the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law a violation of requirements for stationary sources, or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, as defined, and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, to maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public those data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would extend the above requirements to refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock, and to auxiliary facilities. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be installed on or before January 1, 2026, and after a 30-day public comment period and those systems period, and would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system to be updated, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of the lowest available one-hour average reference exposure levels set by the office or the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law a violation of requirements for stationary sources, or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, as defined, and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, to maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public those data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would extend the above requirements to refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock, and to auxiliary facilities. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be installed on or before January 1, 2026, and after a 30-day public comment period and those systems to be updated, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of the lowest available one-hour average reference exposure levels set by the office or the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law a violation of requirements for stationary sources, or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, as defined, and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, to maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public those data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would extend the above requirements to refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock, and to auxiliary facilities. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be installed on or before January 1, 2026, and after a 30-day public comment period. period and those systems to be updated, as specified. The bill would require the appropriate air district to establish pollutants for the monitoring systems to monitor and would include certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would authorize the air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at those monitoring systems, as provided. The bill would require air districts, on a 5-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and would authorize the air districts to revise the list, as provided. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of the lowest available one-hour average reference exposure levels set by the office. office or the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance, exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law a violation of requirements for stationary sources, or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, as defined, and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Existing law requires a refinery-related community air monitoring system to be installed near each petroleum refinery that meets certain requirements. Existing law requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery to develop, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance developed by the appropriate air quality management district or air pollution control district. Existing law requires the air districts and the owners or operators of refineries to collect real-time data from those monitoring systems, to maintain records of that data, and, to the extent feasible, provide to the public those data in a publicly accessible format.

This bill would extend the above requirements to refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, including those using noncrude oil feedstock, and to auxiliary facilities. The bill would require the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system to be installed on or before January 1, 2026, and after a 30-day public comment period. The bill would require the monitoring systems to monitor certain pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The bill would require the air districts and the owners and operators of refineries to maintain records of the data collected from those systems for at least 5 years and would require the owners and operators to post online, and to notify the public of the availability of, quarterly reports containing certain information. The bill would require owners and operators of refineries to notify the air district and the public, as provided, as quickly as possible of any exceedances of the lowest available reference exposure levels set by the office. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries, within 24 hours of a fence-line monitoring system detecting an exceedance, to initiate a root cause analysis and to determine appropriate corrective action, as provided. The bill would require the owners or operators of refineries to conduct third-party audits of its fence-line monitoring system, as provided, to ensure the accuracy of the system. Because the bill would impose additional duties on air districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Under existing law a violation of requirements for stationary sources, or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of an air district is a crime.

Because this bill would impose the monitoring systems requirement on owners or operators of refineries engaging in other types of refining processes, as defined, and would impose additional requirements on owners and operators of refineries, a violation of which would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

 VETO  

Bill No: SB 674

Author: Gonzalez (D), et al.

Enrolled: 8/9/24

Vote: 27

SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY COMMITTEE: 4-2, 3/29/23

AYES: Allen, Gonzalez, Menjivar, Skinner

NOES: Dahle, Nguyen

NO VOTE RECORDED: Hurtado

SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: 10-1, 4/18/23

AYES: Umberg, Wilk, Allen, Ashby, Caballero, Durazo, Laird, McGuire, Min, Wiener

NOES: Niello

SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: Senate Rule 28.8

SENATE FLOOR: 31-6, 5/22/23

AYES: Allen, Archuleta, Ashby, Atkins, Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer, Gonzalez, Laird, Limón, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Newman, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Smallwood-Cuevas, Stern, Umberg, Wahab, Wiener, Wilk

NOES: Dahle, Grove, Jones, Nguyen, Niello, Seyarto

NO VOTE RECORDED: Alvarado-Gil, Hurtado, Ochoa Bogh

SENATE FLOOR: 28-8, 8/8/24

AYES: Allen, Archuleta, Ashby, Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer, Gonzalez, Laird, Limón, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Smallwood-Cuevas, Umberg, Wahab, Wiener, Wilk

NOES: Alvarado-Gil, Dahle, Grove, Jones, Nguyen, Niello, Ochoa Bogh, Seyarto

NO VOTE RECORDED: Atkins, Hurtado, Newman, Stern

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 47-15, 7/1/24 - See last page for vote

SUBJECT: Air pollution: covered facilities: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

SOURCE: Earthjustice

East Yards Communities for Environmental Justice

DIGEST:

This bill makes several changes to the fence-line monitoring program for communities and covered facilities, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional pollutants, applying to contiguous or adjacent refinery-related facilities as specified, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

ANALYSIS: Existing law requires, under AB 1647, the owner or operator of all petroleum refineries in California to, on or before January 1, 2020, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate district, as specified. (Health an Safety Code §42705.6)

This bill is called the Refinery Air Pollution Transparency and Reduction Act, and amends the code section created by AB 1647, to:

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to apply to “covered facilities,” defined as either: A refinery that produces gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, lubricating oil, asphalt, petrochemical feedstock, or other similar products through the processing of crude oil or alternative feedstock, redistillation of unfinished petroleum derivates, cracking, or other processes; or a facility with operations related to a refinery, including storage tanks, sulfur recovery plants, port terminals, electrical generation plants, and hydrogen plants, that is located on a property that is contiguous or adjacent to the refinery.
2. Requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the covered facility, except when it is infeasible based on substantial evidence or a portion of the fence-line is not within 5 miles of any area that is zoned for residential, commercial, business, industrial, recreational, or open-space use.
3. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the covered facility-related community air monitoring system.
4. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data.
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system under specified circumstances.
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering specified information.
      
5. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, as specified.
6. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format, as well as archived and made available to the public.
7. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a notification threshold (as specified) of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action.
   1. The owner or operator of the refinery must prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within fourteen days of the exceedance explaining the root cause and corrective action performed by the facility.
   2. The root cause analysis must include a visual inspection to determine the cause of the exceedance, as specified.
8. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.
   1. Allows a covered facility to rebut this presumption by providing evidence that the covered facility was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.
9. Requires, no later than July 1, 2027, implementing air districts to provide notice to the appropriate policy committees of the Legislature regarding their progress towards meeting the January 1, 2028 implementation date in the bill.

Background

1. Living near a petroleum refinery. California is home to nineteen refineries, which separate crude oil into a wide array of petroleum products through a series of physical and chemical separation techniques. The refining industry supplies several widely used everyday products including petroleum gas, kerosene, diesel fuel, motor oil, asphalt, and waxes.
   
   According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2022 Report Card, all nineteen of those refineries are in counties with a failing grade for PM pollution, and eighteen of the nineteen are in counties with failing grades for ozone pollution as well. According to the US EPA’s EJScreen tool, the communities within 5 miles of those refineries are on average over 70% people of color, with some being as high as 95% people of color. Taken together, these communities (according to the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 tool) are, on average, among the most pollution-burdened communities in the state.
   
   In short, the air pollution from refineries is predominantly harming people of color in communities that currently suffer the greatest air pollution harms in the state. The racial inequity of that pollution burden deserves particular attention when evaluating changes to pertinent laws and regulations, such as this bill.
   
2. Implementation across three air districts. The nineteen refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the ten refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.
   

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from 5 to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in this bill either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

Comments

1. Purpose of Bill. According to the author, “Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow-up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.”
2. A technical bill for a technical issue. This bill takes the roughly one-page text of AB 1647 and expands it to over five pages by including prescriptive details on chemicals to monitor, technical capabilities of monitoring equipment, and data quality assurances, among other things. Typically the Legislature does not codify this level of detail—and indeed even here some details may be better left to the implementing regulations of the affected air districts—but given the problem the author is seeking to solve, the approach is reasonable here.
   
   It is worth emphasizing that the provisions of this bill come from a report based on five years of communities and advocates engaging with the implementing air districts. AB 1647 took the more traditional approach of broadly delegating technical decision making to the regulators. This bill gets into the weeds not because the author is seeking a “one size fits all” solution, but because the last five years of implementing AB 1647 have shown that doing so may be necessary to achieve the desired policy outcomes.
   
3. Whose fencelines are monitored? Amendments taken on the Assembly Floor refine the scope of the bill to “covered facilities,” defined as either, “A refinery that produces gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, lubricating oil, asphalt, petrochemical feedstock, or other similar products through the processing of crude oil or alternative feedstock, redistillation of unfinished petroleum derivates, cracking, or other processes; or a facility with operations related to a refinery, including storage tanks, sulfur recovery plants, port terminals, electrical generation plants, and hydrogen plants, that is located on a property that is contiguous or adjacent to the refinery.” (Emphasis added). A question arises as to how “contiguous or adjacent” is intended to apply.
   
   It is the intent of the author to include any covered facility that expands the fence-line of the facility, but not to require further monitoring for anything that falls entirely within the existing refinery footprint. This clarification could be important in certain cases, such as—for example—a hydrogen plant that is entirely within a refinery. Any fence-line monitoring around the refinery should capture any pollutants released from the plant contained within it, so it would be of negligible value to monitor air pollutants along the fence-line of the hydrogen plant.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: Yes

SUPPORT: (Verified 8/21/24)

350 Bay Area Action
350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley
Action Now
Active San Gabriel Valley
Air Watch Bay Area
Asian Pacific Environmental Network
Azul
Bay Area-system Change Not Climate Change
Biofuelwatch
Breast Cancer Prevention Partners
California Communities Against Toxics
California Environmental Justice Alliance
California Environmental Justice Alliance Action
California Environmental Voters
California Interfaith Power & Light
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Climate Change and Health
Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment
Central California Environmental Justice Network
Central Valley Air Quality Coalition
Clean Water Action
Cleanearth4kids.org
Climate Action California
Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley
Coalition for Clean Air
Comite Pro Uno
Communities for A Better Environment
Del Amo Action Committee
Democrats of Rossmoor
Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences
Earthjustice
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Working Group
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
Good Neighbor Steering Committee of Benicia
Indivisible CA Statestrong
Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County
Mono Lake Committee
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern California Recycling Association
Open Environmental Data Project
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
Regional Asthma Management and Prevention
Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee
Sacramento Area Congregations Together
San Francisco Baykeeper
Sierra Club California
Sunflower Alliance
Sustainable Rossmoor
Torrance Refinery Action Alliance
Union of Concerned Scientists
West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

OPPOSITION: (Verified 8/21/24)

California Alliance of Small Business Assoc.
California Business Roundtable
California Chamber of Commerce
California Fuels and Convenience Alliance
California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce
California Independent Petroleum Association
California Manufacturers & Technology Association
Carson Chamber of Commerce
Central Valley Business Federation
Central Valley Latino Mayors and Elected Officials Coalition
Colab Ventura County
Econalliance
Garden Grove Chamber of Commerce
Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce
Greater Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce
Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce
Harbor Association of Industry & Commerce
Industrial Association of Contra Costa County
Inland Empire Economic Partnership
Kern Citizens for Energy
Kern County Taxpayers Association
Latin Business Association
Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
Los Angeles County Business
Los Angeles Latino Chamber of Commerce
Moorpark Chamber of Commerce
Murrieta Chamber of Commerce
Orange County Business Council
Port Hueneme Chamber of Commerce
Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association
Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce
Si Se Puede
South Bay Chambers of Commerce
Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce
Valley Industry and Commerce Association
Ventura County Taxpayers Association
West Ventura County Business Alliance
Western Independent Refiners Association
Western States Petroleum Association

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: According to a coalition of environmental justice, health, civil rights, and environmental and equity organizations in support, “…The goal of AB 1647 was to create a statewide standard for refinery fence‐line monitoring, and to achieve this objective, AB 1647 tasked regional air quality districts − the agencies responsible for regulating refinery emissions ‐ with developing the rules that would dictate the program in their respective jurisdictions. It has been almost six years since the passage of AB 1647 and it is clear that there are serious flaws in the implementation of the statute’s requirements.

“SB 674 will address and remedy these flaws by requiring refineries, as part of their fence‐line monitoring obligations, to: conduct third‐party audits of their monitoring systems; identify the root cause of excess emissions and perform corrective action; ensure proper facility coverage; provide adequate public notification when emission thresholds are exceeded; and make data from the fence‐line monitors readily available to the public.”

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION: According to a coalition of business, and petroleum groups in opposition, “Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and like any other business, should only be responsible for monitoring and managing emissions from operations under their ownership and control. SB 674 expands the existing fence line monitoring program beyond the property boundary of a refinery and would now require that refineries install, pay for, and respond to fence line monitors on facilities that are not even owned or operated by the refinery. By forcing refineries to pay for another companies’ costs, SB 674 will only likely increase the cost of refining transportation fuel in California, which may ultimately be borne by California drivers.

“… Unfortunately, SB 674 requires the entire perimeter of a refinery to have fence line monitors installed regardless of site-specific conditions, topography, or even if there are no receptors downwind of the emission source. This redundant and unnecessary requirement in SB 674 could lead to higher costs for refinery operations and higher costs for California drivers.”

GOVERNOR'S VETO MESSAGE:

This bill would make several changes to the refinery fence-line air monitoring program, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional pollutants, applying the program to contiguous or adjacent refinery-related facilities, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing new processes for notifying local communities.

California has some of the most stringent refinery air monitoring and pollution standards in the world. These standards have been developed and implemented by the state's local air quality management districts, and each of these districts possess the authority and technical expertise to update, expand and modify these standards according to the best available science.

While I share the author's desire to protect communities from air pollution, local air quality management districts are already carrying out the necessary action to do just that. Additionally, because this bill mandates these districts to implement highly prescriptive measures, it might be found to require state reimbursement of implementation costs at a time when we just recently closed a $44.9 billion shortfall for the 2024-25 fiscal year. There is no state funding identified or available in the state budget to support these efforts.

For these reasons, I cannot sign this bill.

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 47-15, 7/1/24

AYES: Addis, Aguiar-Curry, Alvarez, Arambula, Bauer-Kahan, Bennett, Berman, Boerner, Bonta, Bryan, Calderon, Wendy Carrillo, Connolly, Mike Fong, Friedman, Gabriel, Garcia, Grayson, Haney, Hart, Holden, Irwin, Jackson, Kalra, Lee, Low, Lowenthal, Maienschein, McCarty, McKinnor, Muratsuchi, Ortega, Pacheco, Papan, Pellerin, Petrie-Norris, Reyes, Luz Rivas, Santiago, Schiavo, Ting, Ward, Wicks, Wilson, Wood, Zbur, Robert Rivas

NOES: Alanis, Chen, Megan Dahle, Davies, Dixon, Essayli, Flora, Gallagher, Hoover, Lackey, Jim Patterson, Joe Patterson, Sanchez, Ta, Wallis

NO VOTE RECORDED: Bains, Juan Carrillo, Cervantes, Gipson, Jones-Sawyer, Mathis, Stephanie Nguyen, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Rendon, Rodriguez, Blanca Rubio, Soria, Valencia, Villapudua, Waldron, Weber

Prepared by: Eric Walters / E.Q. / (916) 651-4108

8/21/24 16:12:36

**** END ****

 UNFINISHED BUSINESS  

Bill No: SB 674

Author: Gonzalez (D), et al.

Amended: 6/27/24

Vote: 21

SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY COMMITTEE: 4-2, 3/29/23

AYES: Allen, Gonzalez, Menjivar, Skinner

NOES: Dahle, Nguyen

NO VOTE RECORDED: Hurtado

SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: 10-1, 4/18/23

AYES: Umberg, Wilk, Allen, Ashby, Caballero, Durazo, Laird, McGuire, Min, Wiener

NOES: Niello

SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: Senate Rule 28.8

SENATE FLOOR: 31-6, 5/22/23

AYES: Allen, Archuleta, Ashby, Atkins, Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer, Gonzalez, Laird, Limón, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Newman, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Smallwood-Cuevas, Stern, Umberg, Wahab, Wiener, Wilk

NOES: Dahle, Grove, Jones, Nguyen, Niello, Seyarto

NO VOTE RECORDED: Alvarado-Gil, Hurtado, Ochoa Bogh

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 47-15, 7/1/24 - See last page for vote

SUBJECT: Air pollution: covered facilities: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

SOURCE: Earthjustice

East Yards Communities for Environmental Justice

DIGEST:

This bill makes several changes to the fence-line monitoring program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional pollutants, applying to contiguous or adjacent refinery-related facilities, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

Assembly Amendments

reframed the scope of the bill to affect “covered facilities” as defined, allowed fence-line monitoring to not cover a portion of a covered facility’s perimeter that is not within five miles of certain populated areas, and made other minor, technical, and clarifying changes.

ANALYSIS: Existing law requires, under AB 1647, the owner or operator of all petroleum refineries in California to, on or before January 1, 2020, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate district, as specified. (HSC §42705.6)

This bill is called the Refinery Air Pollution Transparency and Reduction Act, and amends the code section created by AB 1647, to:

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to apply to “covered facilities,” defined as either: A refinery that produces gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, lubricating oil, asphalt, petrochemical feedstock, or other similar products through the processing of crude oil or alternative feedstock, redistillation of unfinished petroleum derivates, cracking, or other processes; or a facility with operations related to a refinery, including storage tanks, sulfur recovery plants, port terminals, electrical generation plants, and hydrogen plants, that is located on a property that is contiguous or adjacent to the refinery.
2. Requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the covered facility, except when it is infeasible based on substantial evidence or a portion of the fence-line is not within 5 miles of any area that is zoned for residential, commercial, business, industrial, recreational, or open-space use.
3. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the covered facility-related community air monitoring system.
4. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by OEHHA, including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data.
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system under specified circumstances.
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering specified information.
      
5. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, as specified.
6. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format, as well as archived and made available to the public.
7. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a notification threshold (as specified) of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action.
   1. The owner or operator of the refinery must prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within fourteen days of the exceedance explaining the root cause and corrective action performed by the facility.
   2. The root cause analysis must include a visual inspection to determine the cause of the exceedance, as specified.
8. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.
   1. Allows a covered facility to rebut this presumption by providing evidence that the covered facility was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.
9. Requires, no later than July 1, 2027, implementing air districts to provide notice to the appropriate policy committees of the Legislature regarding their progress towards meeting the January 1, 2028 implementation date in the bill.

Background

1. Living near a petroleum refinery. California is home to nineteen refineries, which separate crude oil into a wide array of petroleum products through a series of physical and chemical separation techniques. The refining industry supplies several widely used everyday products including petroleum gas, kerosene, diesel fuel, motor oil, asphalt, and waxes.
   
   According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2022 Report Card, all nineteen of those refineries are in counties with a failing grade for PM pollution, and eighteen of the nineteen are in counties with failing grades for ozone pollution as well. According to the US EPA’s EJScreen tool, the communities within 5 miles of those refineries are on average over 70% people of color, with some being as high as 95% people of color. Taken together, these communities (according to the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 tool) are, on average, among the most pollution-burdened communities in the state.
   
   In short, the air pollution from refineries is predominantly harming people of color in communities that currently suffer the greatest air pollution harms in the state. The racial inequity of that pollution burden deserves particular attention when evaluating changes to pertinent laws and regulations, such as this bill.
   
2. Implementation across three air districts. The nineteen refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the ten refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.
   

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from 5 to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in SB 674 either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

Comments

1. Purpose of Bill. According to the author, “Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.”
2. A technical bill for a technical issue. This bill takes the roughly one-page text of AB 1647 and expands it to over five pages by including prescriptive details on chemicals to monitor, technical capabilities of monitoring equipment, and data quality assurances, among other things. Typically the Legislature does not codify this level of detail—and indeed even here some details may be better left to the implementing regulations of the affected air districts—but given the problem the author is seeking to solve, the approach is reasonable here.
   
   It is worth emphasizing that the provisions of this bill come from a report based on five years of communities and advocates engaging with the implementing air districts. AB 1647 took the more traditional approach of broadly delegating technical decision making to the regulators. This bill gets into the weeds not because the author is seeking a “one size fits all” solution, but because the last five years of implementing AB 1647 have shown that doing so may be necessary to achieve the desired policy outcomes.
   
3. Whose fencelines are monitored? Amendments taken on the Assembly Floor refine the scope of the bill to “covered facilities,” defined as either, “A refinery that produces gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, lubricating oil, asphalt, petrochemical feedstock, or other similar products through the processing of crude oil or alternative feedstock, redistillation of unfinished petroleum derivates, cracking, or other processes; or a facility with operations related to a refinery, including storage tanks, sulfur recovery plants, port terminals, electrical generation plants, and hydrogen plants, that is located on a property that is contiguous or adjacent to the refinery.” (Emphasis added). A question arises as to how “contiguous or adjacent” is intended to apply.
   
   It is the intent of the author to include any covered facility that expands the fence-line of the facility, but not to require further monitoring for anything that falls entirely within the existing refinery footprint. This clarification could be important in certain cases, such as—for example—a hydrogen plant that is entirely within a refinery. Any fence-line monitoring around the refinery should capture any pollutants released from the plant contained within it, so it would be of negligible value to monitor air pollutants along the fence-line of the hydrogen plant.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: Yes

According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, no direct state costs.

SUPPORT: (Verified 7/2/2024)

350 Bay Area Action
350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley
Action Now
Active San Gabriel Valley
Air Watch Bay Area
Asian Pacific Environmental Network
Azul
Bay Area-system Change Not Climate Change
Biofuelwatch
Breast Cancer Prevention Partners
California Communities Against Toxics
California Environmental Justice Alliance
California Environmental Justice Alliance Action
California Environmental Voters
California Interfaith Power & Light
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Climate Change and Health
Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment
Central California Environmental Justice Network
Central Valley Air Quality Coalition
Clean Water Action
Cleanearth4kids.org
Climate Action California
Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley
Coalition for Clean Air
Comite Pro Uno
Communities for A Better Environment
Del Amo Action Committee
Democrats of Rossmoor
Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences
Earthjustice
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Working Group
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
Good Neighbor Steering Committee of Benicia
Indivisible CA Statestrong
Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County
Mono Lake Committee
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern California Recycling Association
Open Environmental Data Project
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
Regional Asthma Management and Prevention
Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee
Sacramento Area Congregations Together
San Francisco Baykeeper
Sierra Club California
Sunflower Alliance
Sustainable Rossmoor
Torrance Refinery Action Alliance
Union of Concerned Scientists
West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

OPPOSITION: (Verified 7/2/24)

California Alliance of Small Business Assoc.
California Business Roundtable
California Chamber of Commerce
California Fuels and Convenience Alliance
California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce
California Independent Petroleum Association
California Manufacturers & Technology Association
Carson Chamber of Commerce
Central Valley Business Federation
Central Valley Latino Mayors and Elected Officials Coalition
Colab Ventura County
Econalliance
Garden Grove Chamber of Commerce
Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce
Greater Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce
Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce
Harbor Association of Industry & Commerce
Industrial Association of Contra Costa County
Inland Empire Economic Partnership
Kern Citizens for Energy
Kern County Taxpayers Association
Latin Business Association
Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
Los Angeles County Business
Los Angeles Latino Chamber of Commerce
Moorpark Chamber of Commerce
Murrieta Chamber of Commerce
Orange County Business Council
Port Hueneme Chamber of Commerce
Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association
Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce
Si Se Puede
South Bay Chambers of Commerce
Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce
Valley Industry and Commerce Association
Ventura County Taxpayers Association
West Ventura County Business Alliance
Western Independent Refiners Association
Western States Petroleum Association

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: According to a coalition of environmental justice, health, civil rights, and environmental and equity organizations in support, “…The goal of AB 1647 was to create a statewide standard for refinery fence‐line monitoring, and to achieve this objective, AB 1647 tasked regional air quality districts − the agencies responsible for regulating refinery emissions ‐ with developing the rules that would dictate the program in their respective jurisdictions. It has been almost six years since the passage of AB 1647 and it is clear that there are serious flaws in the implementation of the statute’s requirements.

“SB 674 will address and remedy these flaws by requiring refineries, as part of their fence‐line monitoring obligations, to: conduct third‐party audits of their monitoring systems; identify the root cause of excess emissions and perform corrective action; ensure proper facility coverage; provide adequate public notification when emission thresholds are exceeded; and make data from the fence‐line monitors readily available to the public.”

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION: According to a coalition of business, and petroleum groups in opposition, “Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and like any other business, should only be responsible for monitoring and managing emissions from operations under their ownership and control. SB 674 expands the existing fence line monitoring program beyond the property boundary of a refinery and would now require that refineries install, pay for, and respond to fence line monitors on facilities that are not even owned or operated by the refinery. By forcing refineries to pay for another companies’ costs, SB 674 will only likely increase the cost of refining transportation fuel in California, which may ultimately be borne by California drivers.

“… Unfortunately, SB 674 requires the entire perimeter of a refinery to have fence line monitors installed regardless of site-specific conditions, topography, or even if there are no receptors downwind of the emission source. This redundant and unnecessary requirement in SB 674 could lead to higher costs for refinery operations and higher costs for California drivers.”

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 47-15, 7/1/24

AYES: Addis, Aguiar-Curry, Alvarez, Arambula, Bauer-Kahan, Bennett, Berman, Boerner, Bonta, Bryan, Calderon, Wendy Carrillo, Connolly, Mike Fong, Friedman, Gabriel, Garcia, Grayson, Haney, Hart, Holden, Irwin, Jackson, Kalra, Lee, Low, Lowenthal, Maienschein, McCarty, McKinnor, Muratsuchi, Ortega, Pacheco, Papan, Pellerin, Petrie-Norris, Reyes, Luz Rivas, Santiago, Schiavo, Ting, Ward, Wicks, Wilson, Wood, Zbur, Robert Rivas

NOES: Alanis, Chen, Megan Dahle, Davies, Dixon, Essayli, Flora, Gallagher, Hoover, Lackey, Jim Patterson, Joe Patterson, Sanchez, Ta, Wallis

NO VOTE RECORDED: Bains, Juan Carrillo, Cervantes, Gipson, Jones-Sawyer, Mathis, Stephanie Nguyen, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Rendon, Rodriguez, Blanca Rubio, Soria, Valencia, Villapudua, Waldron, Weber

Prepared by: Eric Walters / E.Q. / (916) 651-4108

7/2/24 15:16:52

**** END ****

SENATE THIRD READING

STR Bill Id:SB 674

Author:(Gonzalez)

As Amended Ver:June 27, 2024

Majority vote

SUMMARY

This bill makes several changes to the fence-line monitoring program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional pollutants, applying to contiguous or adjacent refinery-related facilities, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

Major Provisions

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries.
2. Replaces the term "refinery" with "covered facility."
3. Requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover all areas of the covered facility property line that are within five miles of any area that is zoned for residential, commercial, business, industrial, recreational, or open-space use, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
4. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
5. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data;
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and non-routine operations at the refinery; and,
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
6. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans, as specified.
7. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format. Requires monitoring data to be archived and made available to the public online for download.
8. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of the specified notification threshold, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action. Requires the owner or operator of the refinery to prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within 14 days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
9. Specifies the notification threshold as the lowest available one-hour average of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, California Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the acute reference exposure levels as assessed by OEHHA, or, if not established, the historical concentration of any measured pollutant, if historical data is available.
10. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. Authorizes a refinery to rebut this presumption by providing evidence that the refinery was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.
11. Establishes a January 1, 2028 deadline for update or installation of community and fence-line air monitoring systems.
12. Require an air district, no later than July 1, 2027, to provide notice to the Legislature regarding its progress toward meeting the January 1, 2028 deadline.
13. Require all fence-line and community air monitoring systems installed before January 1, 2025 to continue in operation during the implementation of any additional requirements added by this bill.

COMMENTS

There are approximately 19 petroleum refineries in California. The largest refineries producing transportation fuels are clustered in the Los Angeles County cities of Carson, El Segundo, Torrance, and Wilmington; Richmond, Martinez, and Rodeo in Contra Costa County; and Benicia in Solano County. There are also smaller refineries in Los Angeles County and near Bakersfield. The large refineries are among the largest stationary sources of criteria pollutants, toxic air contaminants, and greenhouse gases in the state. In recent years, outages, fires, and other accidents have heightened community concerns surrounding the refineries.

On August 6, 2012, a substantial fire occurred due to a hydrocarbon leak at a crude oil processing unit at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond. The fire resulted in a large plume of black smoke and visible emissions from a refinery flare. The Contra Costa County Health Department issued a community warning and ordered a shelter-in-place for approximately five hours in Richmond and San Pablo. Thousands of residents sought medical treatment, with most suffering respiratory and/or eye discomfort. The incident prompted the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) to identify a series of follow-up actions to enhance the district's ability to respond to similar incidents, including convening a panel of air monitoring experts and ultimately developing air monitoring guidelines for refineries, which were adopted in 2016.

On February 18, 2015, a major explosion occurred at the Torrance oil refinery, injuring four workers and shutting down the refinery for more than a year. The explosion also caused an 80,000-pound refinery component to land just a few feet away from a tank filled with hydrofluoric acid (HF), a highly toxic chemical used as an alkylation catalyst by only two refineries in California. Since the 2015 explosion, there has been growing public concern not only over HF, but also a series of fires, accidents, and unplanned and extensive flaring that has occurred at the Torrance refinery.

In 2017, the Legislature passed AB 1647 (Muratsuchi), Chapter 589, Statutes of 2017, which requires all petroleum refineries in California to install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate air district, as specified.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the 10 refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the BAAQMD regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fence-line, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from five to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, "Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fence-line monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned." Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in this bill either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

According to the Author

Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery…It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. SB 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

Arguments in Support

According to Earthjustice and a coalition of supporters, SB 674 will improve and create a statewide standard for the existing refinery fence‐line monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of surrounding communities.

Petroleum refineries and refineries of other fuel products are inherently dangerous operations and are significant sources of air pollution that put nearby community members at risk. California is home to numerous refineries that are some of the largest stationary emitters of toxic air contaminants, criteria pollutants, and greenhouse gases. Incidents at these refineries ‐ including explosions, fires, and flaring events ‐ threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. Research has shown many documented health risks for refinery fence‐line communities, including increased risk of asthma, cancers, and birth defects, as well as neurological and cardiovascular damage, among other conditions. These risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery.

Arguments in Opposition

According to the Western States Petroleum Association, refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the district with input from the local community, as it currently is today…

Fence-line monitoring systems should not presumptively be credible evidence to establish a violation because fence-line monitoring systems cannot distinguish refinery emissions from non-refinery emissions, and violations can only be determined based on applying prescriptive measurement methods at specific locations on an emissions source.

The bill also improperly focuses on administration requirements rather than corrective action. The detailed information required in the bill does not provide actionable information and should be summarized in quarterly reports that is consistent with current requirements.

FISCAL COMMENTS

According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, no direct state costs.

By imposing additional duties on local air districts, this bill imposes a state-mandated local program. However, statute provides air districts with the authority to adopt, by regulation, a schedule of annual fees for the evaluation, issuance, and renewal of permits to cover the cost of air district programs related to permitted stationary sources authorized or required under state law that are not otherwise funded.

In addition, and specifically related to this bill, statute requires the owner and operator of a refinery to be responsible for the costs associated with implementing Health and Safety Code section 42705.6 (the petroleum refinery air monitoring program), which this bill amends. Several air districts have adopted rules and regulations to comply with the monitoring requirements. For example, the SJVAPCD Rule 3200 requires refinery owners and operators to pay an initial fee to recover the district's cost to purchase and implement refinery-related community air monitoring systems, and pay an annual operations and maintenance (O&M) fee to recover the district's system maintenance and associated staff time costs. Similarly, the SCAQMD Rules 1180 and 310 require owners and operators of refineries to pay both installation fees as well as annual O&M fees. The rules state that these refinery-related community air monitoring fees are in addition to permit and other fees otherwise authorized to be collected from such facilities. Fee amounts vary by facility and are enumerated in the district's rules.

While this bill expands the scope of the refinery air monitoring program by, for example, including biofuel refineries and expanding the list of pollutants systems must monitor, local air districts presumably have the authority and ability to recoup their costs from facility owners and operators.

VOTES

SENATE FLOOR: 31-6-3

YES: Allen, Archuleta, Ashby, Atkins, Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer, Gonzalez, Laird, Limón, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Newman, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Smallwood-Cuevas, Stern, Umberg, Wahab, Wiener, Wilk

NO: Dahle, Grove, Jones, Nguyen, Niello, Seyarto

ABS, ABST OR NV: Alvarado-Gil, Hurtado, Ochoa Bogh

ASM NATURAL RESOURCES: 7-2-2

YES: Luz Rivas, Friedman, Muratsuchi, Pellerin, Ward, Wood, Zbur

NO: Hoover, Mathis

ABS, ABST OR NV: Flora, Addis

ASM JUDICIARY: 8-3-0

YES: Maienschein, Connolly, Haney, Kalra, Pacheco, Papan, Reyes, McKinnor

NO: Essayli, Dixon, Sanchez

ASM APPROPRIATIONS: 11-4-1

YES: Holden, Bryan, Calderon, Wendy Carrillo, Mike Fong, Hart, Papan, Pellerin, Soria, Weber, Wilson

NO: Megan Dahle, Dixon, Mathis, Sanchez

ABS, ABST OR NV: McCarty

UPDATED

VERSION: June 27, 2024

CONSULTANT: Lawrence Lingbloom / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092 FN: 0003640

SENATE THIRD READING

STR Bill Id:SB 674

Author:(Gonzalez)

As Amended Ver:September 1, 2023

Majority vote

SUMMARY

This bill makes several changes to the fence-line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional pollutants, applying to contiguous or adjacent refinery-related facilities, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

Major Provisions

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries and facilities that receive or provide more than 50% of the input or production to a refinery; and requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the refinery, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
2. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
3. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data;
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and non-routine operations at the refinery; and,
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
4. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans, as specified.
5. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format. Requires monitoring data to be archived and made available to the public online for download.
6. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of the specified notification threshold, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action. Requires the owner or operator of the refinery to prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within 14 days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
7. Specifies the notification threshold as the lowest available one-hour average of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, California Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the acute reference exposure levels as assessed by OEHHA, or, if not established, the historical concentration of any measured pollutant, if historical data is available.
8. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. Authorizes a refinery to rebut this presumption by providing evidence that the refinery was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.
9. Establishes a January 1, 2028 deadline for update or installation of community and fence-line air monitoring systems.
10. Require an air district, no later than July 1, 2027, to provide notice to the Legislature regarding its progress toward meeting the January 1, 2028 deadline.
11. Require all fence-line and community air monitoring systems installed before January 1, 2024 to continue in operation during the implementation of any additional requirements added by this bill.

COMMENTS

There are approximately 19 petroleum refineries in California. The largest refineries producing transportation fuels are clustered in the Los Angeles County cities of Carson, El Segundo, Torrance, and Wilmington; Richmond, Martinez, and Rodeo in Contra Costa County; and Benicia in Solano County. There are also smaller refineries in Los Angeles County and near Bakersfield. The large refineries are among the largest stationary sources of criteria pollutants, toxic air contaminants, and greenhouse gases in the state. In recent years, outages, fires, and other accidents have heightened community concerns surrounding the refineries.

On August 6, 2012, a substantial fire occurred due to a hydrocarbon leak at a crude oil processing unit at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond. The fire resulted in a large plume of black smoke and visible emissions from a refinery flare. The Contra Costa County Health Department issued a community warning and ordered a shelter-in-place for approximately five hours in Richmond and San Pablo. Thousands of residents sought medical treatment, with most suffering respiratory and/or eye discomfort. The incident prompted the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) to identify a series of follow-up actions to enhance the district"s ability to respond to similar incidents, including convening a panel of air monitoring experts and ultimately developing air monitoring guidelines for refineries, which were adopted in 2016.

On February 18, 2015, a major explosion occurred at the Torrance oil refinery, injuring four workers and shutting down the refinery for more than a year. The explosion also caused an 80,000-pound refinery component to land just a few feet away from a tank filled with hydrofluoric acid (HF), a highly toxic chemical used as an alkylation catalyst by only two refineries in California. Since the 2015 explosion, there has been growing public concern not only over HF, but also a series of fires, accidents, and unplanned and extensive flaring that has occurred at the Torrance refinery.

In 2017, the Legislature passed AB 1647 (Muratsuchi), Chapter 589, Statutes of 2017, which requires all petroleum refineries in California to install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate air district, as specified.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the 10 refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the BAAQMD regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fence-line, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from five to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, "Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fence-line monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned." Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in SB 674 either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

According to the Author

Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery…It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. SB 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

Arguments in Support

According to Earthjustice and a coalition of supporters, SB 674 will improve and create a statewide standard for the existing refinery fence‐line monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of surrounding communities.

Petroleum refineries and refineries of other fuel products are inherently dangerous operations and are significant sources of air pollution that put nearby community members at risk. California is home to numerous refineries that are some of the largest stationary emitters of toxic air contaminants, criteria pollutants, and greenhouse gases. Incidents at these refineries ‐ including explosions, fires, and flaring events ‐ threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. Research has shown many documented health risks for refinery fence‐line communities, including increased risk of asthma, cancers, and birth defects, as well as neurological and cardiovascular damage, among other conditions. These risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery.

Arguments in Opposition

According to the Western States Petroleum Association, refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the district with input from the local community, as it currently is today…

Fence-line monitoring systems should not presumptively be credible evidence to establish a violation because fence-line monitoring systems cannot distinguish refinery emissions from non-refinery emissions, and violations can only be determined based on applying prescriptive measurement methods at specific locations on an emissions source.

The bill also improperly focuses on administration requirements rather than corrective action. The detailed information required in the bill does not provide actionable information and should be summarized in quarterly reports that is consistent with current requirements.

FISCAL COMMENTS

According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, no direct state costs.

By imposing additional duties on local air districts, this bill imposes a state-mandated local program. However, statute provides air districts with the authority to adopt, by regulation, a schedule of annual fees for the evaluation, issuance, and renewal of permits to cover the cost of air district programs related to permitted stationary sources authorized or required under state law that are not otherwise funded.

In addition and specifically related to this bill, statute requires the owner and operator of a refinery to be responsible for the costs associated with implementing Health and Safety Code section 42705.6 (the petroleum refinery air monitoring program), which this bill amends. Several air districts have adopted rules and regulations to comply with the monitoring requirements. For example, the SJVAPCD Rule 3200 requires refinery owners and operators to pay an initial fee to recover the district"s cost to purchase and implement refinery-related community air monitoring systems, and pay an annual operations and maintenance (O&M) fee to recover the district"s system maintenance and associated staff time costs. Similarly, the SCAQMD Rules 1180 and 310 require owners and operators of refineries to pay both installation fees as well as annual O&M fees. The rules state that these refinery-related community air monitoring fees are in addition to permit and other fees otherwise authorized to be collected from such facilities. Fee amounts vary by facility and are enumerated in the district"s rules.

While this bill expands the scope of the refinery air monitoring program by, for example, including biofuel refineries and expanding the list of pollutants systems must monitor, local air districts presumably have the authority and ability to recoup their costs from facility owners and operators.

VOTES

SENATE FLOOR: 31-6-3

YES: Allen, Archuleta, Ashby, Atkins, Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer, Gonzalez, Laird, Limón, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Newman, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Smallwood-Cuevas, Stern, Umberg, Wahab, Wiener, Wilk

NO: Dahle, Grove, Jones, Nguyen, Niello, Seyarto

ABS, ABST OR NV: Alvarado-Gil, Hurtado, Ochoa Bogh

ASM NATURAL RESOURCES: 7-2-2

YES: Luz Rivas, Friedman, Muratsuchi, Pellerin, Ward, Wood, Zbur

NO: Hoover, Mathis

ABS, ABST OR NV: Flora, Addis

ASM JUDICIARY: 8-3-0

YES: Maienschein, Connolly, Haney, Kalra, Pacheco, Papan, Reyes, McKinnor

NO: Essayli, Dixon, Sanchez

ASM APPROPRIATIONS: 11-4-1

YES: Holden, Bryan, Calderon, Wendy Carrillo, Mike Fong, Hart, Papan, Pellerin, Soria, Weber, Wilson

NO: Megan Dahle, Dixon, Mathis, Sanchez

ABS, ABST OR NV: McCarty

UPDATED

VERSION: September 1, 2023

CONSULTANT: Lawrence Lingbloom / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092 FN: 0001422

SENATE THIRD READING

STR Bill Id:SB 674

Author:(Gonzalez)

As Amended Ver:July 12, 2023

Majority vote

SUMMARY

This bill makes several changes to the fence line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional chemicals, applying to auxiliary facilities, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

Major Provisions

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries and facilities that receive or provide more than 50% of the input or production to a refinery; and requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the refinery, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
2. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
3. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data;
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and non-routine operations at the refinery; and,
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
4. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans, as specified.
5. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format. Requires monitoring data to be archived and made available to the public online for download.
6. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action. Requires the owner or operator of the refinery to prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within five days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
7. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. Authorizes a refinery to rebut this presumption by providing evidence that the refinery was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.

COMMENTS

There are approximately 19 petroleum refineries in California. The largest refineries producing transportation fuels are clustered in the Los Angeles County cities of Carson, El Segundo, Torrance, and Wilmington; Richmond, Martinez, and Rodeo in Contra Costa County; and Benicia in Solano County. There are also smaller refineries in Los Angeles County and near Bakersfield. The large refineries are among the largest stationary sources of criteria pollutants, toxic air contaminants, and greenhouse gases in the state. In recent years, outages, fires, and other accidents have heightened community concerns surrounding the refineries.

On August 6, 2012, a substantial fire occurred due to a hydrocarbon leak at a crude oil processing unit at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond. The fire resulted in a large plume of black smoke and visible emissions from a refinery flare. The Contra Costa County Health Department issued a community warning and ordered a shelter-in-place for approximately five hours in Richmond and San Pablo. Thousands of residents sought medical treatment, with most suffering respiratory and/or eye discomfort. The incident prompted the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) to identify a series of follow-up actions to enhance the district's ability to respond to similar incidents, including convening a panel of air monitoring experts and ultimately developing air monitoring guidelines for refineries, which were adopted in 2016.

On February 18, 2015, a major explosion occurred at the Torrance oil refinery, injuring four workers and shutting down the refinery for more than a year. The explosion also caused an 80,000-pound refinery component to land just a few feet away from a tank filled with hydrofluoric acid (HF), a highly toxic chemical used as an alkylation catalyst by only two refineries in California. Since the 2015 explosion, there has been growing public concern not only over HF, but also a series of fires, accidents, and unplanned and extensive flaring that has occurred at the Torrance refinery.

In 2017, the Legislature passed AB 1647 (Muratsuchi), Chapter 589, Statutes of 2017, which requires all petroleum refineries in California to install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate air district, as specified.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the 10 refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the BAAQMD regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from 5 to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in SB 674 either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

According to the Author

Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery…It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. SB 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

Arguments in Support

According to Earthjustice and a coalition of supporters, SB 674 will improve and create a statewide standard for the existing refinery fence‐line monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of surrounding communities.

Petroleum refineries and refineries of other fuel products are inherently dangerous operations and are significant sources of air pollution that put nearby community members at risk. California is home to numerous refineries that are some of the largest stationary emitters of toxic air contaminants, criteria pollutants, and greenhouse gases. Incidents at these refineries ‐ including explosions, fires, and flaring events ‐ threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. Research has shown many documented health risks for refinery fence‐line communities, including increased risk of asthma, cancers, and birth defects, as well as neurological and cardiovascular damage, among other conditions. These risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery.

Arguments in Opposition

According to the Western States Petroleum Association, refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the district with input from the local community, as it currently is today…

Fence-line monitoring systems should not presumptively be credible evidence to establish a violation because fence-line monitoring systems cannot distinguish refinery emissions from non-refinery emissions, and violations can only be determined based on applying prescriptive measurement methods at specific locations on an emissions source.

The bill also improperly focuses on administration requirements rather than corrective action. The detailed information required in the bill does not provide actionable information and should be summarized in quarterly reports that is consistent with current requirements.

FISCAL COMMENTS

According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, no direct state costs.

By imposing additional duties on local air districts, this bill imposes a state-mandated local program. However, statute provides air districts with the authority to adopt, by regulation, a schedule of annual fees for the evaluation, issuance, and renewal of permits to cover the cost of air district programs related to permitted stationary sources authorized or required under state law that are not otherwise funded.

In addition and specifically related to this bill, statute requires the owner and operator of a refinery to be responsible for the costs associated with implementing Health and Safety Code section 42705.6 (the petroleum refinery air monitoring program), which this bill amends. Several air districts have adopted rules and regulations to comply with the monitoring requirements. For example, the SJVAPCD Rule 3200 requires refinery owners and operators to pay an initial fee to recover the district's cost to purchase and implement refinery-related community air monitoring systems, and pay an annual operations and maintenance (O&M) fee to recover the district's system maintenance and associated staff time costs. Similarly, the SCAQMD Rules 1180 and 310 require owners and operators of refineries to pay both installation fees as well as annual O&M fees. The rules state that these refinery-related community air monitoring fees are in addition to permit and other fees otherwise authorized to be collected from such facilities. Fee amounts vary by facility and are enumerated in the district's rules.

While this bill expands the scope of the refinery air monitoring program by, for example, including biofuel refineries and expanding the list of pollutants systems must monitor, local air districts presumably have the authority and ability to recoup their costs from facility owners and operators.

VOTES

SENATE FLOOR: 31-6-3

YES: Allen, Archuleta, Ashby, Atkins, Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer, Gonzalez, Laird, Limón, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Newman, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Smallwood-Cuevas, Stern, Umberg, Wahab, Wiener, Wilk

NO: Dahle, Grove, Jones, Nguyen, Niello, Seyarto

ABS, ABST OR NV: Alvarado-Gil, Hurtado, Ochoa Bogh

ASM NATURAL RESOURCES: 7-2-2

YES: Luz Rivas, Friedman, Muratsuchi, Pellerin, Ward, Wood, Zbur

NO: Hoover, Mathis

ABS, ABST OR NV: Flora, Addis

ASM JUDICIARY: 8-3-0

YES: Maienschein, Connolly, Haney, Kalra, Pacheco, Papan, Reyes, McKinnor

NO: Essayli, Dixon, Sanchez

ASM APPROPRIATIONS: 11-4-1

YES: Holden, Bryan, Calderon, Wendy Carrillo, Mike Fong, Hart, Papan, Pellerin, Soria, Weber, Wilson

NO: Megan Dahle, Dixon, Mathis, Sanchez

ABS, ABST OR NV: McCarty

UPDATED

VERSION: July 12, 2023

CONSULTANT: Lawrence Lingbloom / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092 FN: 0001323

Date of Hearing: August 23, 2023

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Chris Holden, Chair

SBPCA Bill Id:SB 674

Author:(Gonzalez) – As Amended Ver:July 12, 2023

Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: Yes Reimbursable: No

SUMMARY:

This bill makes several changes to the state’s fence-line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include additional pollutants and monitoring for biofuel refineries, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

Specifically, this bill, among other things:

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries and facilities that receive or provide more than 50% of the input or production to a refinery; and requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the refinery, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
2. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
3. Requires the air monitoring systems to monitor pollutants established by the appropriate air district, including specified pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazzard Assessment (OEHHA).
4. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data.
5. Authorizes an air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system based on specified criteria.
6. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured, and authorizes the air district to revise the list of pollutants after considering specified criteria.
7. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data.
8. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format.
9. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action. Requires the owner or operator of the refinery to prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within five days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
10. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.

FISCAL EFFECT:

No direct state costs.

By imposing additional duties on local air districts, this bill imposes a state-mandated local program. However, statute provides air districts with the authority to adopt, by regulation, a schedule of annual fees for the evaluation, issuance, and renewal of permits to cover the cost of air district programs related to permitted stationary sources authorized or required under state law that are not otherwise funded.

In addition and specifically related to this bill, statute requires the owner and operator of a refinery to be responsible for the costs associated with implementing Health and Safety Code section 42705.6 (the petroleum refinery air monitoring program), which this bill amends. Several air districts have adopted rules and regulations to comply with the monitoring requirements. For example, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District’s (SJVAPCD) Rule 3200 requires refinery owners and operators to pay an initial fee to recover the district’s cost to purchase and implement refinery-related community air monitoring systems, and pay an annual operations and maintenance (O&M) fee to recover the district’s system maintenance and associated staff time costs. Similarly, the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s (SCAQMD) Rules 1180 and 310 require owners and operators of refineries to pay both installation fees as well as annual O&M fees. The rules state that these refinery-related community air monitoring fees are in addition to permit and other fees otherwise authorized to be collected from such facilities. Fee amounts vary by facility and are enumerated in the district’s rules.

While this bill expands the scope of the refinery air monitoring program by, for example, including biofuel refineries and expanding the list of pollutants systems must monitor, local air districts presumably have the authority and ability to recoup their costs from facility owners and operators.

COMMENTS:

1) Purpose. According to the author:

Assembly Bill 1647, which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program…Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

2) Background. There are approximately 19 petroleum refineries in California. The largest refineries producing transportation fuels are clustered in the cities of Carson, El Segundo, Torrance, and Wilmington in Los Angeles County; Richmond, Martinez, and Rodeo in Contra Costa County; and Benicia in Solano County. There are also smaller refineries in Los Angeles County and near Bakersfield in Kern County. The large refineries are among the largest stationary sources of criteria pollutants, toxic air contaminants, and greenhouse gases in the state. In recent years, outages, fires, and other accidents have heightened community concerns surrounding the refineries. AB 1647 (Muratsuchi), Chapter 589, Statutes of 2017, requires community air monitoring and fence-line monitoring systems to be installed on and near petroleum refineries.

Refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. SCAQMD regulates the 10 refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and SJVAPCD regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.

In their 2022 report, “Crossing the Fenceline,” Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from five to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes bio-refineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” The requirements imposed in this bill use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by other districts.

3) Opposition. Among others in opposition, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) argues this bill “significantly expands prescriptive requirements for refinery fence-line systems statewide, many of which are not well-defined or feasible.” WSPA contends the definition of a “refinery” should explicitly exclude terminals and fueling stations. In addition:

Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the District with input from the local community, as it currently is today. Monitoring sections of a refinery perimeter that does not have receptors downwind of emissions sources will not provide meaningful and actionable data to the public.

Additionally, site-specific conditions including space, topography, adjacent non-refinery sources, and meteorology may severely limit the utility of installing a fence-line monitor, such as predominantly monitoring prevailing winds blowing into a refinery or from a non-refinery source. The determination of which pollutants to monitor should continue to reside with districts, so site-specific refinery configurations can be taken into account.

Analysis Prepared by: Nikita Koraddi / APPR. / (916) 319-2081

Date of Hearing: July 11, 2023

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY

Brian Maienschein, Chair

SBPCA Bill Id:SB 674

Author:(Gonzalez) – As Amended Ver:June 19, 2023

As Proposed to be Amended

SENATE VOTE: 31-6

SUBJECT: Air pollution: refineries: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

KEY ISSUES:

1. Should various data, reporting, and monitoring requirements of the state’s existing refinery fence-line monitoring program be expanded?
2. Should there be a rebuttable presumption that data from fence-line monitor systems yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law?

SYNOPSIS

Despite their critical role in, literally, fueling California’s economy, oil refineries generate significant environmental impacts to the surrounding communities. In addition to the potentially catastrophic consequences of industrial accidents at these facilities, refineries emit significant pollution into the surrounding communities. Seeking to reduce this pollution, and to better understand its impact, in 2017 the Legislature passed AB 1647 (Muratsuchi) Chap. 589, Stats. 2017, to establish a statewide refinery fence-line monitoring program to be implemented by local air districts. In the intervening years, several studies, including one by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment have identified new risks posed by refineries and the chemicals they use.

Seeking to expand on AB 1647, this measure adds several new aspects to the fence-line monitoring program. First, this bill explicitly requires monitoring for the 18 chemicals the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment identified as the most problematic used at refineries. Secondly, this bill increases the data collection and disclosure rules imposed on refineries using fence-line monitors. Additionally, should a monitor detect a problem, this bill requires refineries to conduct a root-cause analysis and remedy any identifiable problems or risk facing civil penalties. Of most note to this Committee, the bill adopts a rebuttable presumption that information collected by a fence-line monitoring system yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. Finally, this bill makes several definitional changes to the existing fence-line monitor program statute.

This bill is sponsored by a coalition of environmental justice organizations and community groups. The proponents highlight the need to protect communities downwind from refineries, which tend to be overrepresented by communities of color, from the harmful effects of emissions from these facilities. This bill is opposed by several energy and refinery organization who argue that the bill is overbroad and that the existing local approach to regulating refinery fence-line systems is more appropriate than the statewide standards contemplated by this bill. The proposed amendments to clarify the rebuttable presumption standard appear to resolve the remaining issues within this Committee’s jurisdiction, however, stakeholder discussions continue on the broader policy implications of this bill. The measure was previously heard and approved by the Committee on Natural Resources by a vote of 7 to 2.

SUMMARY: Updates the laws regarding the state’s fence line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries, increasing the standards for data quality, providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities, and adopting a presumption regarding the use of fence-line monitoring data in enforcement actions. Specifically, this bill:

1. Requires the appropriate local air district to establish pollutants for monitoring at refinery-related community air monitoring systems and refinery fence-line monitoring systems and shall include pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, including, but not limited to, the following pollutants identified in the office’s March 2019 Analysis of Refinery Chemical Emissions and Health Effects as candidates for air monitoring at a refinery:
   1. Acetaldehyde;
   2. Ammonia;
   3. Benzene;
   4. 1,3-butadiene;
   5. Cadmium;
   6. Diethanolamine;
   7. Formaldehyde;
   8. Hydrogen fluoride;
   9. Hydrogen sulfide;
   10. Manganese;
   11. Naphthalene;
   12. Nickel;
   13. Oxides of nitrogen;
   14. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons;
   15. Particulate matter;
   16. Sulfur dioxide;
   17. Sulfuric acid; and
   18. Toluene.
2. Authorizes an air district to exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and nonroutine operations at the refinery.
3. Requires an air district, on a five-year basis, to review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
4. Requires an air district and the owner or operator of a refinery to collect real-time data from the refinery-related community air monitoring system and the fence-line monitoring system and shall maintain records of that data for at least five years.
5. Requires the owner or operator of a refinery to post online quarterly reports that summarize pollutant levels, variations, and trends over a three-month period timeframe and notify the public of the availability of the reports.
6. Requires that the data generated pursuant to 4) be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format, as specified.
7. Requires the owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans and submit the audit information to the local air district and post the information online.
8. Requires the audit mandated in 7) to be conducted in accordance with the following schedule:
   1. An initial audit within three months of the fence-line monitoring system’s installation or by July 1, 2024 for existing systems;
   2. Every two years after the initial audit; and
   3. If an audit makes recommendations or identifies deficiencies in a fence-line monitoring system an follow-up audit within one month of completing the corrective action to remedy the deficiencies;
9. Requires the owner or operator of a refinery to notify the district and public as quickly as possible, and utilizing specified means of notice, of any exceedances of the lowest available one-hour average reference exposure or concentration levels set by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment or the United States Environmental Protection Agency that are detected by the fence-line monitoring system.
10. Requires, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, the owner or operator of a refinery to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action.
11. Requires an owner or operator of the refinery to prepare and submit a report to the local air district and post online within five days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
12. Requires the root cause analysis required by 10) to include a visual inspection to determine the cause of the exceedance and any of the following:
    1. Optical gas imaging;
    2. A leak inspection, as specified; or
    3. Other test or monitoring method approved by the local air district, the State Air Resources Board, or the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
13. Requires, if the root cause analysis requires corrective action, the refinery to conduct a reinspection of the source within 14 days of the corrective action and submit a report to the district and post online.
14. Imposes a civil penalty, consistent with existing penalties for unlawful non-vehicular air pollution emissions, for an owner or operator of a refinery that fails to conduct a root cause analysis and take corrective action within five days.
15. Presumes that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the local air district yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.
16. Permits a refinery to rebut the presumption provided in 15) by providing evidence that the refinery was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.
17. Requires that any guidance to refineries developed by a local air district regarding fence-line monitoring systems require the preparation of a quality control and assurance plans to ensure data quality and take into account technological capabilities and incorporate input from affected parties and, to the extent feasible be informed by refinery-related guidance in a monitoring plan prepared in accordance with existing law, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency guidance on quality assurance and management plans.
18. Requires the guidance to refineries prepared by an air district to be reviewed and updated every five years through a public process.
19. Specifies that nothing in this bill is to be construed to limit the authority or jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Air Resources Board, or the districts, and does not prohibit a city, county, or city and county from imposing more stringent regulations, limits, or prohibitions on a refinery.
20. Defines the following:
    1. “Auxiliary facilities” means any site necessary to support refining processes at a refinery, including storage tanks, hydrogen plants, sulfuric acid plants, port terminals, and electrical generation plants that receive or provide more than 50 percent of their input from, or production output to, the refinery, but does not include gas stations;
    2. “Biofuel” means biodiesel, renewable diesel, and renewable aviation fuel, and other liquid products derived from noncrude oil feedstock;
    3. “Fence-line monitoring system” means equipment that measures and records ambient air pollutant concentrations at or adjacent to a refinery and that detects and estimates the quantity of fugitive emissions, gas leaks, and other air emissions from the refinery and that may be useful for estimating associated pollutant exposures and health risks and in determining trends in air pollutant levels over time;
    4. “Refining processes” means the production, separation, conversion, treating, handling, or blending of gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, biofuel, petroleum distillates, lubricating oils, petroleum coke, asphalt, or petrochemicals, among other products derived from petroleum and alternative feedstock, if the alternative feedstock is refined through coprocessing or at a refinery that was converted from petroleum to alternative feedstock; and
    5. “Sensitive receptors” means hospitals, schools and day care centers, and such other locations as specified by the local air district or the California Air Resources Board.

EXISTING LAW:

1. Establishes the California Air Resources Board to regulate motor vehicle emissions, coordinate activities of air districts in accordance with the federal Clean Air Act, and implement the California Global Warming Solutions Act. (Health and Safety Code Section 39000 et seq.)
2. Requires, subject to the authority of the California Air Resources Board, local air districts to adopt and enforce rules and regulations to achieve and maintain the state and federal ambient air quality standards in all areas affected by non-vehicular emission sources under their jurisdiction. (Health and Safety Code Section 40001.)
3. Provides that in order to coordinate air pollution control activities throughout the state, and to ensure that the entire state is, or will be, in compliance with air quality standards, the Air Resources Control Board must do all of the following:
   1. Review regional air quality management attainment plans to determine whether the plans will achieve and maintain the state’s ambient air quality standards by the earliest practicable date;
   2. Review the rules and regulations and programs submitted by the regional air quality management districts to determine whether they are sufficiently effective to achieve and maintain the state ambient air quality standards;
   3. Review the enforcement practices of the regional air quality management districts and other local agencies delegated authority by regional air quality districts to determine whether reasonable action is being taken to enforce their programs, rules, and regulations. (Health and Safety Code Section 41500.)
4. Provides that a regional air quality management district board may establish, by regulation, a permit system that requires, except as otherwise provided, that before any person builds, erects, alters, replaces, operates, or uses any article, machine, equipment, or other contrivance which may cause the issuance of air contaminants, the person obtain a permit to do so from the air pollution control officer of the district. (Health and Safety Code Section 42300.)
5. Prohibits a person from discharging from any source whatsoever quantities of air contaminants or other material that cause injury, detriment, nuisance, or annoyance to any considerable number of persons or to the public, or that endanger the comfort, repose, health, or safety of any of those persons or the public, or that cause, or have a natural tendency to cause, injury or damage to business or property. (Health and Safety Code Section 41700.)
6. Provides that any person who violates the law regarding non-vehicular air pollutants or any rule, regulation, permit, or order of the state board or of a district, including a district hearing board, inclusive, is guilty of a misdemeanor and is subject to a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or imprisonment in the county jail for not more than six months, or both. (Health and Safety Code Section 42400.)
7. Requires the owner or operator of a petroleum refinery operating in the state to install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system as specified by the local air district. (Health and Safety Code Section 42705.6.)
8. Provides that nothing in 6) prevents any local or regional authority from adopting monitoring requirements more stringent than those set forth in this chapter or be construed as requiring the installation of monitoring devices on any stationary source or classes of stationary sources. (Health and Safety Code Section 42708.)
9. Defines, for the purpose of air quality monitoring, “sensitive receptors” to include hospitals, schools and day care centers, and such other locations as specified by the local air district or the California Air Resources Board. (Health and Safety Code Section 42705.5 (a)(6).)

FISCAL EFFECT: As currently in print this bill is keyed fiscal.

COMMENTS: In 2017, the Legislature adopted a refinery fence-line monitoring program to better protect the public from potentially harmful chemical emissions from oil and gas refineries. (AB 1647 (Muratsuchi) Chap. 589, Stats. 2017.) This bill builds upon those efforts by broadening the chemicals to be monitored, setting standards for the quality of data collected, increasing public disclosures, and providing that fence-line monitoring data is presumed to provide evidence of a violation of the law. In support of this bill, the author states:

Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

Chemicals used at oil refineries can be extremely hazardous to human health. Petroleum refineries are critical to the existing hydro-carbon driven economy. These facilities separate crude oil into a variety of petroleum products utilizing multiple physical and chemical separation techniques. The refining industry supplies several widely used everyday products including petroleum gas, kerosene, diesel fuel, motor oil, asphalt, the basic ingredients for plastics, and waxes. Unsurprisingly, the chemicals utilized in this complex process can be quite toxic. In 2019, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), in consultation with the California Air Resources Board, released a study that found that at least 188 distinct chemicals were being emitted from California’s oil refineries. (OEHHA, Analysis of Refinery Chemical Emissions and Health Effects (Mar. 2019) available at: https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/faqs/refinerychemicalsreport032019.pdf.) Of these 188 chemicals, OEHHA determined that 18 posed the greatest risk to human health and toxicity, thus meriting monitoring to protect the public.

In emphasizing the need for improved emission monitoring, OEHHA noted that the health impacts of these chemicals include, “noncancer health effects, carcinogenic effects, and effects on development or reproduction.” (Id. at 20.) The agency also stated, “Chemical emissions can be useful in assessing the acute and chronic health effects that are anticipated based on the degree of chemical exposure.” (Ibid.)

To lessen the risk to communities living in the shadows of oil refineries, California established mandatory fence-line monitoring programs. Until California can fully electrify its transportation and energy sectors, crude oil refineries will continue to play a critical role in supporting the state’s economy. However critical this infrastructure may be, the communities living in the shadows of California’s 19 refineries pay a significant price. For example, an August 2012 fire at a Chevron facility in the City of Richmond resulted in the Contra Costa County Health Department issuing a community warning and ordering a shelter-in-place for approximately five hours in Richmond and San Pablo. As a result of the thick smoke emanating from the fire, an estimated 15,000 members of the public sought treatment for “breathing problems, chest pain, shortness of breath, sore throat, and headaches.” (United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Final Investigation Report: Chevron Richmond Refinery Pipe Rupture and Fire (Jan 2015), at pp. 32-33, available at: https://www.csb.gov/file.aspx?DocumentId=5917.) Similarly, in 2015, an explosion at an Exxon Mobile refinery in Torrance resulted in “catalyst dust” being emitted into the surrounding community. (United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Investigation Report: ExxonMobile Torrance Refinery Electrostatic Precipitator Explosion (May 2017) at p. 24, available at: https://www.csb.gov/file.aspx?DocumentId=6023.)

While these two incidents highlight the harm to local communities from near-catastrophic calamities, everyday operations can also harm those living near refineries. Many refineries are forced to flare off excess hydrocarbons and potentially emit toxins into the local communities. Particularly troubling is that many of these communities are predominantly made up of people of color. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s “EJScreen” tool, the communities within 5 miles of those refineries are on average over 70% people of color, with some being as high as 95% people of color.

To better protect these communities from errant emissions, and to provide policy makers a better understanding of refinery emissions, the Legislature adopted AB 1647 to establish a mandatory refinery fence-line monitoring program. That bill generally left enforcement of the monitoring system program to local air districts. However, several of the proponents of this bill suggest that the local districts have not adequately, or are inconsistently, implementing the program. The proponents suggest that a more comprehensive statewide approach to fence-line monitoring standards is appropriate.

This bill seeks to build upon the framework established by AB 1647 by enhancing the fence-line monitoring program. First, this bill explicitly requires that the 18 chemicals identified by OEHHA in the 2019 study be monitored. The bill also enhances various data collection and public notice requirements of the existing program. The bill requires refineries to conduct a root cause analysis should a fence-line monitoring system detect unlawful emissions. Of note to this Committee this bill adopts a rebuttable presumption that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the local air district yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. Proposed amendments make it clear that a refinery can seek to rebut this presumption by demonstrating that the offending chemical did not come from the refinery. This bill clarifies that failing to properly conduct the above discussed root cause analysis or remediate any issues identified in the analysis exposes the refinery to civil penalties consistent with the existing law governing non-vehicular air pollutants. Finally, this bill adopts and revises a series of definitions regarding the fence-line monitoring program.

Proposed amendments clarify evidentiary presumptions to ensure all parties have due process. As noted, this bill can expose refineries to civil penalties for emissions and failure to remediate problems at a facility in a timely manner. The bill also adopts a presumption that the data provided by a monitor itself generates credible evidence that that refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. While the bill in print appears to presume that this presumption is rebuttable by the refinery in court, the existing language of the bill is not entirely clear. Seeking to avoid inadvertently creating a strict liability standard, the author is proposing to clarify that the refinery may offer evidence to rebut the presumption by demonstrating that the problem emission did not emanate from the facility. Accordingly, paragraph (4) of subdivision (h) of Section 42705.6 of the Health and Safety Code will now read:

(4) (A) A fence-line monitoring system approved by the district shall presumptively yield credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.

(B) A refinery may rebut the presumption established in subparagraph (A) by providing evidence that the refinery was not the source of pollution that triggered the fence-line monitoring system.

These amendments appear to address the concerns of the opposition as it pertains to this portion of the bill within the jurisdiction of this Committee.

Ongoing stakeholder discussions. In addition to the above-discussed portion of the bill, opposition raises questions about the scope of the bill and argue that the bill needlessly takes away discretion from local air districts. The opposition contends that due to the unique topographical and climate factors of each refinery, a site-specific approach is more appropriate than the program envisioned by this bill. Seeking to find common ground, the author, proponents, and opposition have all engaged in meaningful discussions seeking to craft amendments to improve the existing fence-line monitoring statute in a manner that is acceptable to all. Indeed, based on discussions involving Committee staff, proposed amendments to address some of these concerns appear imminent. However, as these issues are not within the expertise or jurisdiction of this Committee, only the above-described amendment regarding evidentiary presumptions will be considered before the Committee at this time.

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: This measure is supported by a coalition of environmental organizations, community groups, and environmental justice advocates. A coalition letter in support of the bill states:

Petroleum refineries and refineries of other fuel products are inherently dangerous operations and are significant sources of air pollution that put nearby community members at risk. California is home to numerous refineries that are some of the largest stationary emitters of toxic air contaminants, criteria pollutants, and greenhouse gases. Incidents at these refineries - including explosions, fires, and flaring events - threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. Research has shown many documented health risks for refinery fence-line communities, including increased risk of asthma, cancers, and birth defects, as well as neurological and cardiovascular damage, among other conditions. These risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery.

Recognizing the inherent danger of refineries and their associated health impacts, in 2017, the California legislature passed and Governor Brown signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1647 (Muratsuchi), which required refineries to install and maintain air monitoring systems along their fence-line and in adjacent communities and to provide real-time data and alerts to the community, first responders, and regulators when there are exceedances of emissions. The goal of AB 1647 was to create a statewide standard for refinery fence-line monitoring, and to achieve this objective, AB 1647 tasked regional air quality districts - the agencies responsible for regulating refinery emissions - with developing the rules that would dictate the program in their respective jurisdictions. It has been almost six years since the passage of AB 1647 and it is clear that there are serious flaws in the implementation of the statute’s requirements.

SB 674 will address and remedy these flaws by requiring refineries, as part of their fence-line monitoring obligations, to: conduct third-party audits of their monitoring systems; identify the root cause of excess emissions and perform corrective action; ensure proper facility coverage; provide adequate public notification when emission thresholds are exceeded; and make data from the fence-line monitors readily available to the public.

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION: This measure is opposed by several refiners, energy companies and their employees, and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA). In taking an oppose unless amended position, WSPA notes:

The bill significantly expands prescriptive requirements for refinery fence-line systems statewide, many of which are not well-defined or feasible.

Currently, air quality management districts (Districts), as well as air pollution control districts, have fence-line requirements that are tailored to their particular Districts. Data collected is reported to the respective District in accordance with applicable regulations. This bill could expand fence-line and community monitoring equipment requirements to facilities that are not refineries, such as terminals and fueling stations. The definition of a refinery should distinctly exclude terminals and fueling stations.

Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the District with input from the local community, as it currently is today. Monitoring sections of a refinery perimeter that does not have receptors downwind of emissions sources will not provide meaningful and actionable data to the public.

Additionally, site-specific conditions including space, topography, adjacent non-refinery sources, and meteorology may severely limit the utility of installing a fence-line monitor, such as predominantly monitoring prevailing winds blowing into a refinery or from a non-refinery source. The determination of which pollutants to monitor should continue to reside with districts, so site-specific refinery configurations can be taken into account. For example, a refinery without a Hydrogen Fluoride Alkylation unit should not be required to monitor for hydrogen fluoride.

REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:

Support

350 Bay Area Action
350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley
350 Humboldt: Grass Roots Climate Action
Action Now
Active San Gabriel Valley
Air Watch Bay Area
Aliso Moms Alliance
Asian Pacific Environmental Network
Azul
Bay Area Air Quality Management District
Bay Area-system Change Not Climate Change
Biofuel Watch
Breast Cancer Prevention Partners
California Communities Against Toxics
California Environmental Justice Alliance
California Environmental Voters
California Interfaith Power & Light
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Climate Change and Health
Center for Race, Poverty, and The Environment
Central California Environmental Justice Network
Central Valley Air Quality Coalition
Clean Seas Lobbying Coalition
Clean Water Action
Cleanearth4kids.org
Climate Action California
Climate Reality Project, Los Angeles Chapter
Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley
Coalition for Clean Air
Comite Pro Uno
Communities for A Better Environment
Community Action to Fight Asthma
Del Amo Action Committee
Democrats of Rossmoor
Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences
Earthjustice
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
Elders Climate Action, NorCal and SoCal Chapters
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Working Group
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
Health Officers Association of California
Indivisible California: Statestrong
Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County
Mono Lake Committee
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern California Recycling Association
Open Environmental Data Project
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
Regional Asthma Management and Prevention
Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee
Sacramento Area Congregations Together
San Francisco Baykeeper
Sierra Club California
Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action
Solano County Democratic Central Committee
Sunflower Alliance
Sustainable Rossmoor
Torrance Refinery Action Alliance
Union of Concerned Scientists
West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

Opposition (unless amended)

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
California Asphalt Pavement Association
State Building and Construction Trades Council of California
Western Independent Refiners Association
Western States Petroleum Association
World Energy

Analysis Prepared by: Nicholas Liedtke / JUD. / (916) 319-2334

Date of Hearing: June 26, 2023

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

Luz Rivas, Chair

SBPCA Bill Id:SB 674

Author:(Gonzalez) – As Amended Ver:June 19, 2023

SENATE VOTE: 31-6

SUBJECT: Air pollution: refineries: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

SUMMARY: This bill makes several changes to the fence line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional chemicals, apply to auxiliary facilities, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

EXISTING LAW:

1. Establishes the Air Resources Board (ARB) to regulate motor vehicle emissions, coordinate activities of air districts for the purposes of the federal Clean Air Act, and implement the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). (Health and Safety Code (HSC) 39000 et seq.)
2. Subject to the powers of the ARB, requires air districts to adopt and enforce rules and regulations to achieve and maintain the state and federal ambient air quality standards in all areas affected by non-vehicular emission sources under their jurisdiction. (HSC 40001)
3. Authorizes ARB and each air district to adopt rules and regulations to require the owner or the operator of any air pollution emission source to take such action as ARB or the district may determine to be reasonable for the determination of the amount of such emission from such source.
4. Authorizes an air pollution control officer to require from an applicant for, or the holder of, any permit provided for by the regulations of the district board, such information, analyses, plans, or specifications which will disclose the nature, extent, quantity, or degree of air contaminants which are, or may be, discharged by the source for which the permit was issued or applied.
5. Requires, under AB 1647 (Muratsuchi), Chapter 589, Statutes of 2017, the owner or operator of all petroleum refineries in California to, on or before January 1, 2020, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate air district, as specified. (HSC 42705.6)
6. Defines, under AB 617 (Cristina Garcia), Chapter 136, Statutes of 2018, “sensitive receptors” to include hospitals, schools and day care centers, and such other locations as the air district or ARB may determine. (HSC 42705.5)

THIS BILL:

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries and facilities that receive or provide more than 50% of the input or production to a refinery; and requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the refinery, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
2. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
3. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazzard Assessment (OEHHA), including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data;
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and non-routine operations at the refinery; and,
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
4. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans, as specified.
5. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format. Requires monitoring data to be archived and made available to the public online for download.
6. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action. Requires the owner or operator of the refinery to prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within five days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
7. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.

FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Senate Appropriations Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs.

COMMENTS:

1. Background. There are approximately 19 petroleum refineries in California. The largest refineries producing transportation fuels are clustered in the Los Angeles County cities of Carson, El Segundo, Torrance, and Wilmington; Richmond, Martinez, and Rodeo in Contra Costa County; and Benicia in Solano County. There are also smaller refineries in Los Angeles County and near Bakersfield. The large refineries are among the largest stationary sources of criteria pollutants, toxic air contaminants, and greenhouse gases in the state. In recent years, outages, fires, and other accidents have heightened community concerns surrounding the refineries.

On August 6, 2012, a substantial fire occurred due to a hydrocarbon leak at a crude oil processing unit at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond. The fire resulted in a large plume of black smoke and visible emissions from a refinery flare. The Contra Costa County Health Department issued a community warning and ordered a shelter-in-place for approximately five hours in Richmond and San Pablo. Thousands of residents sought medical treatment, with most suffering respiratory and/or eye discomfort. The incident prompted the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) to identify a series of follow-up actions to enhance the district’s ability to respond to similar incidents, including convening a panel of air monitoring experts and ultimately developing air monitoring guidelines for refineries, which were adopted in 2016.

On February 18, 2015, a major explosion occurred at the Torrance oil refinery, injuring four workers and shutting down the refinery for more than a year. The explosion also caused an 80,000-pound refinery component to land just a few feet away from a tank filled with hydrofluoric acid (HF), a highly toxic chemical used as an alkylation catalyst by only two refineries in the State of California. Since the 2015 explosion, there has been growing public concern not only over HF, but also a series of fires, accidents, and unplanned and extensive flaring that has occurred at the Torrance refinery.

Refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the 10 refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the BAAQMD regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from 5 to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in SB 674 either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

1. Author’s statement:

Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647, which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

1. The refineries’ perspective. According to the Western States Petroleum Association, “Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the district with input from the local community, as it currently is today…

“Fence-line monitoring systems should not presumptively be credible evidence to establish a violation because fence-line monitoring systems cannot distinguish refinery emissions from non-refinery emissions, and violations can only be determined based on applying prescriptive measurement methods at specific locations on an emissions source.

“The bill also improperly focuses on administration requirements rather than corrective action. The detailed information required in the bill does not provide actionable information and should be summarized in quarterly reports that is consistent with current requirements.”

1. Casting the net too wide? In addition to enhancing monitoring requirements on the petroleum refineries already covered by AB 1647, this bill expands monitoring requirements to biofuel refineries, as well as “auxiliary facilities,” which includes a wide range of facilities that may be outside the boundaries of the refinery. This includes storage tanks, hydrogen plants, sulfuric acid plants, port terminals, and electrical generation plants. The bill was recently amended to specifically exclude gas stations. The bill also includes handling and blending of refined products in the definition of refinery processes, even though these are activities that may be undertaken by persons with no association with the refinery and take place far away from the refinery itself.

The broad scope of these definitions appears to include facilities and activities where fenceline monitoring may be impractical or unnecessary.

1. Double referral. This bill has been double referred to the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:

Support

Earthjustice (co-sponsor)
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (co-sponsor)
350 Bay Area Action
350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley
350 Humboldt: Grass Roots Climate Action
Action Now
Active San Gabriel Valley
Air Watch Bay Area
Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
Azul
Bay Area Air Quality Management District
Bay Area-System Change Not Climate Change
Biofuel Watch
Breast Cancer Prevention Partners
California Communities Against Toxics
California Environmental Justice Alliance
California Environmental Voters
California Interfaith Power & Light
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Climate Change and Health
Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment
Central California Environmental Justice Network
Central Valley Air Quality Coalition
Clean Seas Lobbying Coalition
Clean Water Action
Cleanearth4kids.org
Climate Action California
Climate Reality Project, Los Angeles Chapter
Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley
Coalition for Clean Air
Comite Pro Uno
Communities for A Better Environment
Del Amo Action Committee
Democrats of Rossmoor
Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Working Group
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
Health Officers Association of California
Indivisible California Statestrong
Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County
Mono Lake Committee
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern California Recycling Association
Open Environmental Data Project
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP)
Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee
Sacramento Area Congregations Together
San Francisco Baykeeper
Sierra Club California
Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action
Solano County Democratic Central Committee
Sunflower Alliance
Sustainable Rossmoor
Torrance Refinery Action Alliance
Union of Concerned Scientists
West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

Opposition (unless amended)

Air Products and Chemicals
State Building and Construction Trades Council of California
Western Independent Refiners Association
Western States Petroleum Association

Analysis Prepared by: Lawrence Lingbloom / NAT. RES. /

 THIRD READING  

Bill No: SB 674

Author: Gonzalez (D), et al.

Amended: 4/10/23

Vote: 21

SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY COMMITTEE: 4-2, 3/29/23

AYES: Allen, Gonzalez, Menjivar, Skinner

NOES: Dahle, Nguyen

NO VOTE RECORDED: Hurtado

SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: 10-1, 4/18/23

AYES: Umberg, Wilk, Allen, Ashby, Caballero, Durazo, Laird, McGuire, Min, Wiener

NOES: Niello

SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: Senate Rule 28.8

SUBJECT: Air pollution: refineries: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

SOURCE: Earthjustice

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

DIGEST:

This bill makes several changes to the fence line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional chemicals, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Provides shared authority over toxic air contaminant emissions between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and local air districts. (Health and Safety Code (HSC) §39650 et seq.)
2. Requires, subject to the powers and duties of CARB, the local air districts to adopt and enforce rules and regulations to achieve and maintain the state and federal ambient air quality standards in all areas affected by emission sources under their jurisdiction, and to enforce all applicable provisions of state and federal law. (HSC §40001)
3. Requires each local air district to appoint an Air Pollution Control Officer (APCO) with specified duties and responsibilities. (HSC §40750 et seq.)
4. Authorizes an APCO, at any time, to require from an applicant for, or the holder of, any permit information, analyses, plans, or specifications that will disclose the nature, extent, quantity, or degree of air contaminants that are, or may be, discharged under the permit. (HSC §42303)
5. Requires, under AB 1647, the owner or operator of all petroleum refineries in California to, on or before January 1, 2020, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate district, as specified. (HSC §42705.6)
6. Defines, under AB 617 (C. Garcia, Chapter 136, Statutes of 2018), “sensitive receptors” to include hospitals, schools and day care centers, and such other locations as the district or state board may determine. (HSC §42705.5)

This bill, the Refinery Air Pollution Transparency and Reduction Act, amends the code section created by AB 1647, to:

1. Expand the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries and facilities that receive or provide more than fifty percent of the input or production to a refinery; and requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the refinery, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
2. Expand the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
3. Require that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by OEHHA, including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data.
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and nonroutine operations at the refinery.
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
4. Require an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans, as specified.
5. Provide for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format.
   1. The data must be archived and made available to the public online for download through an application programming interface or other widely recognized standard and backend components are to be optimized to minimize delays in accessing data.
6. Require an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action.
   1. The owner or operator of the refinery must prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within five days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
   2. The root cause analysis must include a visual inspection to determine the cause of the exceedance, as specified.
7. Provide that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.

Background

1. Living near a petroleum refinery. California is home to nineteen refineries, which separate crude oil into a wide array of petroleum products through a series of physical and chemical separation techniques. The refining industry supplies several widely used everyday products including petroleum gas, kerosene, diesel fuel, motor oil, asphalt, and waxes.

According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2022 Report Card, all nineteen of those refineries are in counties with a failing grade for PM pollution, and eighteen of the nineteen are in counties with failing grades for ozone pollution as well. According to the US EPA’s EJScreen tool, the communities within 5 miles of those refineries are on average over 70% people of color, with some being as high as 95% people of color. Taken together, these communities (according to the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 tool) are, on average, among the most pollution-burdened communities in the state.

In short, the air pollution from refineries is predominantly harming people of color in communities that currently suffer the greatest air pollution harms in the state. The racial inequity of that pollution burden deserves particular attention when evaluating changes to pertinent laws and regulations, such as this bill.

1. Implementation across three air districts. The 19 refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the ten refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.

In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline, Earthjustice (a co-sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from 5 to 20 between districts; only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.

The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in SB 674 either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.

Comments

1. Purpose of Bill. According to the author, “Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.”
2. A technical bill for a technical issue. This bill takes the roughly one-page text of AB 1647 and expands it to over five pages by including prescriptive details on chemicals to monitor, technical capabilities of monitoring equipment, and data quality assurances, among other things. Typically the Legislature does not codify this level of detail—and indeed even here some details may be better left to the implementing regulations of the affected air districts—but given the problem the author is seeking to solve, the approach is generally reasonable here.

As the committee contemplates this bill, it is worth emphasizing that the provisions of this bill come from a report based on five years of communities and advocates engaging with the implementing air districts. AB 1647 took the more traditional approach of broadly delegating technical decision making to the regulators. This bill gets into the weeds not because the author is seeking a “one size fits all” solution, but because the last five years of implementing AB 1647 have shown that doing so may be necessary to achieve the desired policy outcomes.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: Yes

SUPPORT: (Verified 5/9/23)

Earthjustice (co-source)

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (co-source)

350 Bay Area Action

350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley

Action Now

Active San Gabriel Valley

Air Watch Bay Area

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Azul

Bay Area-system Change Not Climate Change

Biofuelwatch

Breast Cancer Prevention Partners

California Communities Against Toxics

California Environmental Justice Alliance Action

California Environmental Voters

California Interfaith Power & Light

Center for Biological Diversity

Center for Climate Change and Health

Center for Race, Poverty, and the Environment

Central California Environmental Justice Network

Central Valley Air Quality Coalition

Clean Water Action

Cleanearth4kids.org

Climate Action California

Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley

Coalition for Clean Air

Comite Pro Uno

Communities for a Better Environment

Del Amo Action Committee

Democrats of Rossmoor

Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Environmental Defense Fund

Environmental Working Group

Good Neighbor Steering Committee

Indivisible CA Statestrong

Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County

Mono Lake Committee

Natural Resources Defense Council

Open Environmental Data Project

Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles

Regional Asthma Management and Prevention

Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee

Sacramento Area Congregations Together

San Francisco Baykeeper

Sierra Club California

Sunflower Alliance

Sustainable Rossmoor

Torrance Refinery Action Alliance

Union of Concerned Scientists

West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

OPPOSITION: (Verified 5/9/23)

Western States Petroleum Association

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: According to a coalition of environmental groups, including the sponsors, “The goal of AB 1647 was to create a statewide standard for refinery fence-line monitoring, and to achieve this objective, AB 1647 tasked regional air quality districts - the agencies responsible for regulating refinery emissions - with developing the rules that would dictate the program in their respective jurisdictions. It has been almost six years since the passage of AB 1647 and it is clear that there are serious flaws in the implementation of the statute’s requirements.

“SB 674 will address and remedy these flaws by requiring refineries, as part of their fence-line monitoring obligations, to: conduct third-party audits of their monitoring systems; identify the root cause of excess emissions and perform corrective action; ensure proper facility coverage; provide adequate public notification when emission thresholds are exceeded; and make data from the fence-line monitors readily available to the public.”

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION: According to the Western States Petroleum Association, “Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the District with input from the local community, as it currently is today…

“Fence-line monitoring systems should not presumptively be credible evidence to establish a violation because fence-line monitoring systems cannot distinguish refinery emissions from non-refinery emissions, and violations can only be determined based on applying prescriptive measurement methods at specific locations on an emissions source.

“The bill also improperly focuses on administration requirements rather than corrective action. The detailed information required in the bill does not provide actionable information and should be summarized in quarterly reports that is consistent with current requirements.”

Prepared by: Eric Walters / E.Q. / (916) 651-4108

5/10/23 15:29:22

**** END ****

SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

Senator Thomas Umberg, Chair

2023-2024 Regular Session

Bill No: SB 674 (Author:Gonzalez)

Version: April 10, 2023

Hearing Date: April 18, 2023

Fiscal: Yes

Urgency: No

Consultant: AM

SUBJECT

Air pollution: refineries: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

DIGEST

This bill makes several changes to the fence line monitoring system program for communities and petroleum refineries, including expanding the program to include monitoring for biofuel refineries and additional chemicals, increasing the standards for data quality, and providing enhanced processes for notifying affected communities.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

AB 1647 (Muratsuchi, Ch. 1647, Stats. 2017) established a statutory fence line monitoring system program that required community air monitoring and fence-line monitoring systems to be installed on and near petroleum refineries. The author and sponsors of the bill state that several deficiencies regarding the implementation of the program have arisen that undermine the intent of the program to increase transparency around refinery emissions and reduce these emissions when dangerous levels are reached. This bill seeks to address those deficiencies and strengthen the program to ensure that communities near refineries are being protected.

The bill is sponsored by Earthjustice and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and supported by numerous environmental organizations. The bill is opposed by the Western States Petroleum Association. This bill passed the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on a vote of 4 to 2.

PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE LAW

Existing law:

1. Provides shared authority over toxic air contaminant emissions between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and local air districts. (Health & Saf. Code § 39650 et. seq.)
2. Requires, subject to the powers and duties of CARB, the local air districts to adopt and enforce rules and regulations to achieve and maintain the state and federal ambient air quality standards in all areas affected by emission sources under their jurisdiction, and to enforce all applicable provisions of state and federal law. (Health & Saf. Code § 40001.)
3. Specifies various penalties, including civil penalties, for the violation the requirements related to non-vehicular air pollution control regulated by CARB and local air districts. (Health & Saf. Code § 42400 et. seq.)
4. Requires the owner or operator of all petroleum refineries in California to, on or before January 1, 2020, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate district, as specified. (Health & Saf. Code § 42705.6.)

This bill:

1. Expands the existing fence-line monitoring system program to also include biofuel refineries and requires the fence-line monitoring system to cover the entire perimeter of the refinery, unless it is infeasible based on substantial evidence.
2. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
3. Requires that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by OEHHA, including, but not limited to, eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   1. Expands the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including, but not limited to, covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data.
   2. Provides that an air district may exclude a pollutant for monitoring at a refinery-related community air monitoring system and refinery fence-line monitoring system if substantial evidence supports that real-time monitoring of the pollutant is technologically infeasible or the pollutant would not be released by refining processes during routine and nonroutine operations at the refinery.
   3. Requires an air district to, on a five-year basis, review the list of pollutants being measured and may revise the list of pollutants after considering advances in monitoring technology, reported refinery emissions, ambient air data collected by the refinery fence-line and refinery-related community monitoring systems, and any other relevant emissions information.
4. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery to conduct third-party audits, using an auditor approved by the district, of its fence-line monitoring system to ensure the system is providing accurate data, including conducting quality control checks, system calibration, and evaluation of quality control and assurance plans, as specified.

1. Provides for more enhanced notice to communities, including that data generated by these systems is to be provided to the public within 24 hours in a publicly accessible and machine-readable format.
   1. The data must be archived and made available to the public online for download through an application programming interface or other widely recognized standard and backend components are to be optimized to minimize delays in accessing data.
2. Requires an owner or operator of a refinery, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action.
   1. The owner or operator of the refinery must prepare and submit a report to the district and post online within five days of the exceedance explaining the root cause analysis findings and corrective action performed by the refinery.
   2. The root cause analysis must include a visual inspection to determine the cause of the exceedance, as specified.
3. Provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district presumptively yields credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law.

COMMENTS

1. Stated need for the bill

The author writes:

Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fencelines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.

1. Background

This bill expands the existing fence-line monitoring system established by AB 1674 to also apply to biofuel refineries, and defines “biofuel” as biodiesel, renewable diesel, and renewable aviation fuel, and other products derived from noncrude oil feedstock. The bill also enhances the existing program by including more chemicals that need to be monitored, higher standards on data quality, and stronger notice provisions to the community. The Senate Environmental Quality Committee analysis of the bill notes that:

California is home to nineteen refineries. According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2022 Report Card, all nineteen of those refineries are in counties with a failing grade for PM pollution, and eighteen of the nineteen are in counties with failing grades for ozone pollution as well. According to the US EPA’s EJScreen tool, the communities within 5 miles of those refineries are on average over 70% people of color, with some being as high as 95% people of color. Taken together, these communities (according to the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 tool) are, on average, among the most pollution-burdened communities in the state. […]

The nineteen refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the ten refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.^[1]

Earthjustice, one of the sponsors of the bill, raised concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline.^[2] These concerns include, among others, that the number of pollutants required to be measured range from 5 to 20 between the districts; not all districts have specific requirements for thresholds, notifications, and quarterly data reports; the requirements for placement of fenceline monitors vary greatly, only one district specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only one district requires a root cause analysis or corrective action by refineries; and all three districts have, at various times, exempted certain facilities even though AB 1647 does not authorize an exemptions to be granted to refineries. The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.”

1. Enforcement

The bill provides that a refinery that fails to conduct a root cause analysis and take corrective action within five days refinery is to be assessed a civil penalty the district pursuant to existing provisions of law in Article 3 (commencing with Section 42400) of Chapter 4 of the Health and Safety Code. This article provides for the enforcement for the entire part of law that applies to non-vehicular pollution control. It specifies that a court is to consider all relevant circumstances when deterring the fine to impose pursuant to specified sections, including, among others, the extent of harm caused, record of maintenance, the unproven or innovative nature of the control equipment, and financial burden on the defendant. (Health & Saf. Code § 42400.8.) The article also specifies various procedures for assessing certain civil penalties. (Health & Saf. Code § 42403.)

The bill provides that a fence-line monitoring system approved by the district shall presumptively yield credible evidence that may be used to establish whether a refinery has violated or is in violation of any plan, order, permit, rule, regulation, or law. Additionally, it requires, within 24 hours of a fence-line system detecting an exceedance of a historical one-hour average concentration of any measured pollutant, for the owner or operator of a refinery to initiate a root cause analysis to locate the cause of the exceedance and to determine appropriate corrective action.

1. Statements in support

A coalition of nearly 40 organizations, including the sponsors of the bill, write in support stating:

Petroleum refineries and refineries of other fuel products are inherently dangerous operations and are significant sources of air pollution that put nearby community members at risk. California is home to numerous refineries that are some of the largest stationary emitters of toxic air contaminants, criteria pollutants, and greenhouse gases. Incidents at these refineries - including explosions, fires, and flaring events - threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. Research has shown many documented health risks for refinery fence-line communities, including increased risk of asthma, cancers, and birth defects, as well as neurological and cardiovascular damage, among other conditions. These risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. […]

It has been almost six years since the passage of AB 1647 and it is clear that there are serious flaws in the implementation of the statute’s requirements.

SB 674 will address and remedy these flaws by requiring refineries, as part of their fence-line monitoring obligations, to: conduct third-party audits of their monitoring systems; identify the root cause of excess emissions and perform corrective action; ensure proper facility coverage; provide adequate public notification when emission thresholds are exceeded; and make data from the fence-line monitors readily available to the public.

1. Statements in opposition

The Western States Petroleum Association writes in opposition unless amended stating:

Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the District with input from the local community, as it currently is today. Monitoring sections of a refinery perimeter that does not have receptors downwind of emissions sources will not provide meaningful and actionable data to the public.

Additionally, site-specific conditions including space, topography, adjacent non-refinery sources, and meteorology may severely limit the utility of installing a fence-line monitor, such as predominantly monitoring prevailing winds blowing into a refinery or from a non-refinery source. The determination of which pollutants to monitor should continue to reside with districts, so site-specific refinery configurations can be taken into account. For example, a refinery without a Hydrogen Fluoride Alkylation unit should not be required to monitor for hydrogen fluoride.

Fence-line monitoring systems should not presumptively be credible evidence to establish a violation because fence-line monitoring systems cannot distinguish refinery emissions from non-refinery emissions, and violations can only be determined based on applying prescriptive measurement methods at specific locations on an emissions source.

SUPPORT

Earthjustice (sponsor)

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (sponsor)

350 Bay Area Action

350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley

Action Now

Active San Gabriel Valley

Air Watch Bay Area

Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)

Azul

Bay Area-system Change Not Climate Change

Biofuelwatch

Breast Cancer Prevention Partners

California Communities Against Toxics

California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) Action

California Environmental Voters

California Interfaith Power and Light

Center for Biological Diversity

Center for Climate Change and Health

Center for Race, Poverty, and The Environment

Central California Environmental Justice Network

Central Valley Air Quality Coalition

Clean Seas Lobbying Coalition

Clean Water Action

Climate Action California

Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley

Coalition for Clean Air

Comite Pro Uno

Communities for A Better Environment

Del Amo Action Committee

Democrats of Rossmoor

Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Environmental Defense Fund

Environmental Working Group

Good Neighbor Steering Committee

Indivisible CA Statestrong

Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County

Mono Lake Committee

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Open Environmental Data Project

Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles

Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP)

Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee

Sacramento Area Congregations Together

San Francisco Baykeeper

Sierra Club California

Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action

Sunflower Alliance

Sustainable Rossmoor

Torrance Refinery Action Alliance

Union of Concerned Scientists

West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

OPPOSITION

Western States Petroleum Association

RELATED LEGISLATION

Pending Legislation: AB 1465 (Wicks, 2023) would increase specified civil penalties for the violation of the certain requirements related to non-vehicular air pollution control. AB 2023 is pending in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.

Prior Legislation: AB 1647 (Muratsuchi, Ch. 1647, Stats. 2017) established a fence line monitoring system program that required community air monitoring and fence-line monitoring systems to be installed on and near petroleum refineries.

PRIOR VOTES:

Senate Environmental Quality Committee (Ayes 4, Noes 2)

**************

1. Sen. Environmental Quality Comm. analysis of SB 674 (2023-24 reg. session) as introduced Feb. 16, 2023, at p. 3-4. ↑

2. Crossing the Fenceline, Eartjustice (2022), available at https://earthjustice.org/document/crossing-the-fenceline-critical-reforms-to-californias-petroleum-refinery-emissions-monitoring-law. ↑

SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

Senator Allen, Chair

2023 - 2024 Regular

Bill No: SB 674

SUBJECT: Air pollution: refineries: community air monitoring systems: fence-line monitoring systems

DIGEST: This bill makes a number of changes to the refinery fenceline air monitoring program established by AB 1647 (Muratsuchi, Chapter 589, Statutes of 2017). These changes include, but are not limited to, more chemicals to be monitored for, more facilities to be included, higher standards on data quality, and more robust community notification processes.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Provides shared authority over toxic air contaminant emissions between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and local air districts. (Health and Safety Code (HSC) §39650 et seq.)
   
2. Requires, subject to the powers and duties of CARB, the local air districts to adopt and enforce rules and regulations to achieve and maintain the state and federal ambient air quality standards in all areas affected by emission sources under their jurisdiction, and to enforce all applicable provisions of state and federal law. (HSC §40001)
   
3. Requires each local air district to appoint an Air Pollution Control Officer (APCO) with specified duties and responsibilities. (HSC §40750 et seq.)
   
4. Authorizes an APCO, at any time, to require from an applicant for, or the holder of, any permit information, analyses, plans, or specifications that will disclose the nature, extent, quantity, or degree of air contaminants that are, or may be, discharged under the permit. (HSC §42303)
   
5. Requires, under AB 1647, the owner or operator of all petroleum refineries in California to, on or before January 1, 2020, install, operate, and maintain a fence-line monitoring system in accordance with guidance provided by the appropriate district, as specified. (HSC §42705.6)
   
6. Defines, under AB 617 (C. Garcia, Chapter 136, Statutes of 2018), “sensitive receptors” to include hospitals, schools and day care centers, and such other locations as the district or state board may determine. (HSC §42705.5)
   

This bill, the Refinery Air Pollution Transparency and Reduction Act, amends the code section created by AB 1647, to:

1. Define (or redefine) terms, including but not limited to:
   
   1. “Auxiliary facilities” to mean any site that provides more than half its production to the refinery that is necessary to support refining processes.
      
   2. “Refinery” and “refining processes” to encompass auxiliary facilities and certain non-petroleum feedstocks and products, including biofuels, as defined.
      
   3. “Sensitive receptor” to mean any of the following:
      1. A residence, including a private home, condominium, apartment, or living quarter;
      2. An education resource, as specified, including a park or playground;
      3. A community resource center;
      4. A health care facility;
      5. Live-in housing, including a long-term care hospital, hospice, prison, detention center, or dormitory; and
      6. A building housing a business that is open to the public.
         
2. Expand the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the refinery-related community air monitoring system.
   
3. Expand the requirements for the data generation capabilities of the fence-line monitoring system, including but not limited to covering the entire perimeter of the refinery and enabling real-time access to data.
   
4. Require that the air monitoring systems monitor pollutants identified by OEHHA, including but not limited to eighteen specific recommended chemicals or classes of chemicals.
   
5. Expand the requirements for air districts and refinery operators to maintain, summarize, and provide publicly the data collected from the air monitoring systems, as specified.
   
6. Require third-party audits of the fence-line air monitoring systems, as specified.
   
7. Require refinery owners or operators to notify the public of specified exceedances.
   
8. Require refinery owners or operators to perform a root cause analysis of specified exceedances, as specified and under pains of specified civil penalties.
   
9. Require air districts to prepare a data quality control and assurance plan.
   
10. Stipulate that the section does not limit any regulator from implementing a more strict regulation.
    

Background

1. Petroleum refineries. Petroleum refineries separate crude oil into a wide array of petroleum products through a series of physical and chemical separation techniques. The refining industry supplies several widely used everyday products including petroleum gas, kerosene, diesel fuel, motor oil, asphalt, and waxes.
   
   According to a March 2019 report from the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), done in collaboration with CARB and the California EPA’s Interagency Refinery Task Force, there were 188 chemicals identified as being emitted from California refineries at various levels. Among these 188, OEHHA developed a list of 18 chemicals that were the top candidates for air monitoring based on their toxicity, average levels of emissions from refineries statewide, and involvement in multiple refinery processes and incidences. OEHHA stated that “…the release of these chemicals from refineries does not necessarily mean that local communities face substantial exposures or significant health risks. However, it does increase their likelihood of exposure. Air monitoring of these chemicals may inform decisions that could reduce exposures.”
   
2. Living near a refinery. California is home to nineteen refineries. According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2022 Report Card, all nineteen of those refineries are in counties with a failing grade for PM pollution, and eighteen of the nineteen are in counties with failing grades for ozone pollution as well. According to the US EPA’s EJScreen tool, the communities within 5 miles of those refineries are on average over 70% people of color, with some being as high as 95% people of color. Taken together, these communities (according to the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 tool) are, on average, among the most pollution-burdened communities in the state.
   
   In short, the air pollution from refineries is predominantly harming people of color in communities that currently suffer the greatest air pollution harms in the state. The racial inequity of that pollution burden deserves particular attention when evaluating changes to pertinent laws and regulations, such as this bill.
   
3. Implementation across three air districts. The nineteen refineries in the state are clustered in three regions, each of which is regulated by a different air district. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) regulates the ten refineries in the greater Los Angeles region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulates the five refineries in the San Francisco Bay area, and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) regulates the four refineries in the Central Valley. Each of these three air districts has established a rule implementing the requirements of AB 1647, though the rules and processes differ between all three.
   
   In their 2022 report, Crossing the Fenceline, Earthjustice (the sponsor of this bill) raises concerns with the implementation of AB 1647 in all three air districts. Briefly, the number of pollutants required to be measured ranges from 5 to 20 between districts; not all districts have specific requirements for thresholds, notifications, and quarterly data reports; the requirements for siting of fenceline monitors vary significantly, only BAAQMD specifically includes biorefineries in its rule; only SJVAPCD requires a root cause analysis or corrective action; and all three programs have at various times exempted certain facilities, despite no such exemptions being provided for in AB 1647.
   
   The Earthjustice report states, “Without meaningful statewide oversight, each air district has created deeply flawed fenceline monitoring programs with massive loopholes that benefit oil companies and negate many of the community protections that the legislation envisioned.” Generally speaking, the requirements imposed in SB 674 either use or build upon the most health-protective of the three implementing rules for each feature of the program. In this way, the bill seeks to use solutions developed by some air districts to shore up the weaknesses in the programs developed by others.
   
4. Measuring air pollutants. Monitoring the presence and concentration of different pollutants in the air is easier said than done. A variety of technologies exist for detection, some of which rely on air passively coming in contact with and binding to a material that is then swapped out and tested periodically. This is a relatively low-cost approach but does not provide real time data. More technologically advanced tools like laser-based infrared systems can generate real-time data, but are much more expensive and may not be useful or reliable for all pollutants. Air pollutants range widely in their physical characteristics and their human health impacts. For example, while sub-2.5 micron particulate matter and hydrogen sulfide are both harmful air pollutants, the former is a solid that can physically damage lung tissue, and the latter is a colorless gas that can irritate the respiratory system and lead to convulsions and comas. The technologies to detect (and protect from) these pollutants need to be appropriately tailored and calibrated; there is no perfect one-size-fits-all air pollution detector.
   
5. “Credible and crunchable” data. Accurate air quality data alone do not help pollution-burdened communities. However, when those air quality data are used to accurately tailor protective measures, inform facility maintenance and repairs, or assess the public health impacts of specific exposures, then they can be hugely helpful to those communities. Thus, it is important that those data be accurate, precise, and in such a form as to allow apples-to-apples comparisons across time and location.
   
   The methods involved in data collection and reporting that generate “high-quality” data are technical, but ultimately achievable. They rely on meaningful comparisons to controls, quality assurance and quality control, and accurate collection of metadata (i.e. the data about how data were collected). Although these specifications may make the data more costly to collect and manage, ultimately data that are more expensive and more usable likely do more good than data that are cheaper but less usable.
   
6. Reference exposure levels. OEHHA determines Reference Exposure Levels (RELs) for airborne chemicals as required by California’s Air Toxics ‘Hot Spots’ Program. The REL assessments identify human systems (e.g. the respiratory system) or organs that could be affected by the non-cancer effects of the chemicals. These RELs can cover three types of exposure durations: acute (for infrequent 1-hour exposure), 8-hour (for repeated 8-hour exposures), and chronic (for continuous long-term exposure). OEHHA has determined that 67 of the 188 chemicals found to be released from refineries have RELs, including all 14 of the chemicals with the largest releases.
   

Comments

1. Purpose of Bill. According to the author, “Refining is an inherently dangerous process and a significant source of air pollution. Incidents at these refineries- including explosions, fires, and flaring events- threaten nearby community members, first responders, and refinery workers. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, are already at a higher risk for asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurological and cardiovascular damage among other conditions, and these risks are amplified the closer a person lives to a refinery. Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which created the Refinery Fence-line and Community Air Monitoring Program, sought to create statewide standards and practices to detect air pollution at refinery fence-lines, notify community members when there were dangerous levels of pollution, and aggregate the fence-line air monitoring data online for public access. It has been six years since the passage of AB 1647, and there are serious deficiencies in the implementation of the program. These flaws include an inconsistent implementation by air quality management districts, a failure to include a mechanism to ensure refineries notify the public of detected emission exceedances and follow up to locate and mitigate sources of toxic emission, and numerous other shortcomings in public notification. Senate Bill 674 will address these flaws and fortify the statewide standard for the refinery fence-line air monitoring program to ensure that adequate noxious pollutants are measured, and that best practices and technologies are deployed in order to protect the health and wellbeing of refinery fence-line communities.”
   
2. A technical bill for a technical issue. This bill takes the roughly one-page text of AB 1647 and expands it to over five pages by including prescriptive details on chemicals to monitor, technical capabilities of monitoring equipment, and data quality assurances, among other things. Typically the Legislature does not codify this level of detail—and indeed even here some details may be better left to the implementing regulations of the affected air districts—but given the problem the author is seeking to solve, the approach is generally reasonable here.
   
   As the committee contemplates this measure, it is worth emphasizing that the provisions of this bill come from a report based on five years of communities and advocates engaging with the implementing air districts. AB 1647 took the more traditional approach of broadly delegating technical decision making to the regulators. This bill gets into the weeds not because the author is seeking a “one size fits all” solution, but because the last five years of implementing AB 1647 have shown that doing so may be necessary to achieve the desired policy outcomes.
   
3. Expanding definitions. This bill expands a number of definitions involved in this program, several of which are notable for their impacts on the policy:
   
   1. “Auxiliary facilities” encompasses storage tanks and other operations necessary for refining that provide more than half their output to the refinery. While this does expand the original scope of AB 1647, the facilities included also process or contain hazardous materials. Monitoring their fencelines protects the same populations from the same pollutants generated in service of the same industrial process.
      
   2. “Refining processes” now includes fuels derived from petroleum as well as alternative feedstocks. This is notable as two Bay Area refineries are currently undergoing conversion from petroleum to biofuel refining (both of which are still subject to BAAQMD’s implementing rule). Despite the different sources, the pollutants generated and released in the refining processes are similar. This updated definition ensures that even as more refineries convert to biofuels, the neighboring communities will remain informed.
      
   3. “Sensitive receptor” is a term that has previously been used more generally in the context of AB 617 (C. Garcia, 2017) to “[include] hospitals, schools and day care centers, and other such locations as the district or [CARB] may determine.” Moreover, the term as it appears in AB 617 is referenced in several other code sections. Here, the term includes those locations, but also notably encompasses any residences or businesses open to the public. Given the significantly different scope here versus in previous uses, it may be less confusing to align its use here with previous instances.
      
      The committee may wish to amend the bill to define “sensitive receptor” as it appears in HSC §42705.5
      
4. The best data for the job. The original AB 1647 simply required that air monitoring data be collected in real-time, records be maintained of those data, and that (to the extent feasible) those data be provided to the public as quickly as possible. SB 674 takes a more prescriptive, technical approach to ensuring the data generated are useful, credible, and comparable across a range of times and locations.
   
   However, there are two competing priorities for the data contemplated in this bill: timeliness and quality. On one hand, in order for community members to take the necessary health protective actions, data need to be generated, compared to the appropriate reference level, and used to inform rapid notifications. On the other hand, for data to be truly high quality, they must include appropriate metadata and other important details that may take time. These goals are likely reconcilable, but care should be taken to ensure this bill does not conflate or confuse the requirements. Going forward, the author should continue to work with data experts and the implementing air districts to ensure best practices are utilized in providing timely and high-quality data.
   
5. Not all pollutants are created equal. As described in the background, OEHHA has found that 188 different chemicals have been found being emitted from refineries. The volume, frequency, and exposure potential of those chemicals vary greatly, but OEHHA did highlight 18 priority chemicals that were the top candidates for air monitoring based on their toxicity and emission levels.
   
   The Crossing the Fenceline report by Earthjustice highlights the differences between air districts in which pollutants are required to be monitored. SJVAPCD requires all 18 OEHHA priority chemicals and more, while SCAQMD omits some metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and BAAQMD requires only benzene, ethylbenzene, hydrogen sulfide, toluene, and xylene. In short, each district took the directive of AB 1647 and ultimately chose different sets of chemicals to measure in fenceline and community air monitoring systems.
   
   This bill endeavors to require all implementing air districts to, at a minimum, monitor the 18 priority OEHHA pollutants. Not all of these pollutants can be measured using the same technology. Not all of these pollutants can be measured meaningfully in real time. Not all of these pollutants are conceivably generated by every covered refinery. Yet, as currently written, all air monitoring systems would need to monitor all 18 pollutants. Moreover, refineries would need to notify the public and/or initiate a root cause analysis whenever certain specified levels were exceeded. These levels vary (or may not even exist) for each of the 18 chemicals.
   
   In the interest of providing greater technical specificity to the air districts than AB 1647 originally did while still leaving the implementing districts some discretion to maximize effective implementation, some changes may be needed.
   
   The committee may wish to consider allowing implementing air districts, in establishing the pollutants for monitoring, to exclude pollutants where substantial evidence supports that monitoring that pollutant in real-time would be either tehnologically infeasible to measure or inapplicable for the refinery; this exclusion should also be reviewed every five years to account for updated information or technology, alongside a periodic review of the data quality control and assurance plan.
   
6. Timelines. This bill represents significant changes to the design and operation of the fenceline and refinery-related community air monitoring systems established under AB 1647. Implementing those changes will take time; the bill currently provides two years. The bill also specifies timelines for refineries to follow for community notifications and corrective actions; these may need further refinement.
   
   It is the understanding of committee staff that the author will continue to engage the affected air districts and industries to balance the urgent need for public health protections with the material realities of implementing this bill.
   
7. Technical and clarifying amendments. Given the technical nature of this bill, a number of minor and conforming changes may be necessary to align the measure with existing laws, address technical challenges, and fully encompass the author’s intent.
   
   The committee may wish to make minor and technical amendments to this bill, including (1) clarifying that “auxiliary facilities” are ones that provide or receive more than 50% of production or input from a refinery, (2) updating guidance in a timely manner along with any updates to federal guidance, (3) stipulating that monitoring systems need only cover the entire perimeter of a refinery if it is feasible to do so, (4) clarifying that notifications should be based on one-hour average reference exposures, (5) aligning data quality and management plans with federal guidance, and (6) other non-substantial drafting and grammatical corrections.
   
8. Committee amendments. Staff recommends the committee adopt the bolded amendments contained in comments 3, 5, and 7 above.

DOUBLE REFERRAL:

If this measure is approved by the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, the do pass motion must include the action to re-refer the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Related/Prior Legislation

AB 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017) established the requirements for refinery-related community air monitoring systems and fenceline monitoring systems.

AB 1299 (Salas, 2019) would have exempted specified refineries from AB 1647. AB 1299 was moved to the inactive file on the Senate floor and eventually amended into an unrelated bill.

SOURCE:

Earthjustice
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

SUPPORT:

350 Bay Area Action

350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley

Action Now

Active San Gabriel Valley

Air Watch Bay Area

Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)

Azul

Bay Area-System Change Not Climate Change

Breast Cancer Prevention Partners

California Communities Against Toxics

California Environmental Voters

California Interfaith Power and Light

Center for Biological Diversity

Center for Climate Change and Health

Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment

Central California Environmental Justice Network

Central Valley Air Quality Coalition

Clean Water Action

Climate Action California

Climate Reality Project, San Fernando Valley

Coalition for Clean Air

Comite Pro Uno

Communities for A Better Environment

Del Amo Action Committee

Earthjustice

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Environmental Defense Fund

Environmental Working Group

Good Neighbor Steering Committee

Indivisible California Statestrong

Interfaith Climate Action Network of Contra Costa County

Mono Lake Committee

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Physicians for Social Responsibility-los Angeles

Richmond - North Richmond - San Pablo AB 617 Steering Committee

San Francisco Baykeeper

Sierra Club California

Sunflower Alliance

Sustainable Rossmoor

Torrance Refinery Action Alliance

West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs

OPPOSITION:

Western States Petroleum Association

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT:

According to a coalition of forty environmental and environmental justice groups in support, “The goal of AB 1647 was to create a statewide standard for refinery fence-line monitoring, and to achieve this objective, AB 1647 tasked regional air quality districts - the agencies responsible for regulating refinery emissions - with developing the rules that would dictate the program in their respective jurisdictions. It has been almost six years since the passage of AB 1647 and it is clear that there are serious flaws in the implementation of the statute’s requirements.

SB 674 will address and remedy these flaws by requiring refineries, as part of their fence-line monitoring obligations, to: conduct third-party audits of their monitoring systems; identify the root cause of excess emissions and perform corrective action; ensure proper facility coverage; provide adequate public notification when emission thresholds are exceeded; and make data from the fence-line monitors readily available to the public.”

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION:

According to the Western States Petroleum Association, “Refineries are unique, critical infrastructure, and should only be responsible for monitoring emissions from the refining process under the ownership and control of a company. The appropriate perimeter coverage should be a site-specific determination made by the District with input from the local community, as it currently is today. Monitoring sections of a refinery perimeter that does not have receptors downwind of emissions sources will not provide meaningful and actionable data to the public.

“Additionally, site-specific conditions including space, topography, adjacent non-refinery sources, and meteorology may severely limit the utility of installing a fence-line monitor, such as predominantly monitoring prevailing winds blowing into a refinery or from a non-refinery source. The determination of which pollutants to monitor should continue to reside with districts, so site-specific refinery configurations can be taken into account. For example, a refinery without a Hydrogen Fluoride Alkylation unit should not be required to monitor for hydrogen fluoride.”

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