March 1995. An explosion rips through the early morning in northwest Bakersfield, as gasoline fumes in an un vented refining tank go up in a ball of flames.
The explosion would kill 22-year-old Tracy Kildebeck whose Honda appeared to have ignited the fumes. His death resulted in a $5.5 million county settlement that also included provisions to clean up the land. "We just wanted to make sure World Oil was complying with all oversight from regulator bodies," says deputy district attorney John Mitchell.
It was the end for the 70-year-old refinery, but the beginning of a more in-depth effort to clean years of contamination that soaked into the soil and leeched into the groundwater below. "The practices in the 20s, 30s 40s and 50s are not what they are today. The environmental standards, and what was done," says Clay Rogers, water control board.
Today, some 16 years after the closure, the toxic chemicals still remain. A chemical scrubber hums away, drawing up and condensing oil hydrocarbons and vapors of the toxic chemical mtbe from a series of groundwater wells hundreds of feet below the surface. "Well, it certainly is a lot of time, but we have to recognize this refinery went into business in 1923 and these impacts occurred over decades," adds Rogers.
And Rogers admits the contamination is immense. "Since 1995 over 10 million pounds of petroleum hydrocarbons have been removed in the vapor phase, an additional 20 thousand gallons of petroleum hydrocarbon that are in the liquid phase have been removed from the site."
The MTBE hasn't been drawn into the municipal water supply in Bakersfield yet. But Tim Trealor of Cal Water says they're preparing for the possibility. "Doesn't mean it couldn't happen. So we remain vigilant. So we continue to test more frequently than the rules require."
In some cases that means testing every 3 months rather than every 3 years. "There is a cost, and there is a cost to consumer. I think if the consumer was making the decision to test or not test, I think they would be right alongside the company."
Cal Water draws it's nearest drinking water from a well about a half-mile away, near Vista West High School. A carbon filter installed in the system could buy the utility time if MTBE were ever to slowly seep into the supply. Question: If you could put percentages on it, is there at 10 percent chance, a 20 percent chance it could seep down?
"I can't put a percentage to that." Question: How worried about it are you though? "Well, we are concerned about it I mean if we weren't concerned about it, we wouldn't require all of the work to be done."
Perhaps more concerning to regulators---the toxic plume beneath the refinery is on the move. It's creeping west/northwest with the flow of water about 300 feet per year underneath Coffee Road toward the old PG&E power plant on Rosedale Highway.
The regional water control board has ordered World Oil to drop a string of new testing wells on PG&E's land to find out just how far the chemicals have migrated.
One of the groundwater wells already is operational and a sample tested positive for MTBE at 10 times the amount considered safe. A second sample out of that well did not detect anything.
And so regulators are asking for more tests and more sites. As concerns grow that a strong rain this winter could drive more of the contaminants in the soil into the groundwater. Question: Are you comfortable they have been monitoring it appropriately?
"Well, I'd like to see, as I talk to the water agency, one let's do another study on it, and I'd feel much more comfortable," says Kevin McCarthy, congressman Bakersfield.
Hydrocarbon contamination does degrade over time. But the regulators we talked to say it will be years if not decades before the contamination on the site is cleaned up to levels considered safe. So what is the federal government's responsibility here?
And are our legislators pushing hard enough for answers? Are there other problem areas of concern?
We'll continue our search for answers and report again soon on what we find.
