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Refinery reports yet another gas release
| Friday, Sep 26 2008 5:00 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Sep 29 2008 7:47 AM
The same day the Kern County Planning Commission recommended approving an expansion of the Big West of California refinery, an equipment failure at the facility vented sulfur gas into the air.
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A tanker truck pulls into Big West of California Refinery on Rosedale Highway.
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Big West officials reported releasing 500 pounds of sulfur dioxide vapor around 10:30 a.m., according to report they filed with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. The release was caused by a failure of the facility’s sulfur recovery system, the report said.
Big West officials could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
The company also notified Kern County Environmental Health Services Director Matt Constantine when the release occurred.
Constantine said the sulfur plant failure diverted gas to the refinery’s flare, which was then burned and released into the air as sulfur dioxide.
Big West was still reporting problems with the sulfur plant around 2 p.m., Constantine said.
That was around the same time a sulfur smell wafted through parts of downtown Bakersfield, though it’s unclear if the odor was related to the refinery release.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, high levels of sulfur dioxide can contribute to respiratory illness and aggravate heart and lung diseases.
Local air regulators have cited the refinery at least 19 times in the past two years for flaring excess amounts of carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.
Big West is also the suspected source of a heavy, petroleum odor in Bakersfield on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12. The odor sickened several students at a northwest Bakersfield middle school on the morning of Sept. 12 and prompted a flurry of odor complaint calls from the Westchester area the night before.
Big West discovered a leaky valve on a storage tank releasing gas around the same time the smell was being reported on Sept. 11, Constantine said.
While it’s impossible to know if the refinery valve was the source of the odor, Constantine said wind patterns on both days would have blown the odors from the refinery toward the areas where they were detected.