The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fined a local renewable fuels refiner $9,559 for violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act after the company operated a broken injection well, used it later to dispose of wastewater without permission and failed to properly monitor the facility.
Torrance-based Global Clean Energy Holdings Inc., doing business locally as Bakersfield Renewables LLC, agreed to pay the amount in a settlement dated Tuesday. The order calls for the company to plug and abandon a separate well on the refinery property, which is located at 6451 Rosedale Highway and was formerly known as Big West.
According to the settlement agreement, the company's actions risked contaminating local drinking water sources.
The company said in a statement Friday it has come across equipment that is "aging and in need of repair" as it works to refurbish the 510-acre refinery site that had been sitting idle for at least seven years prior to GCEH's purchase of the property in 2020.
"We have been working diligently to update that equipment while engaging the EPA to ensure we are in full compliance as we do so," the company stated.
GCEH is working to convert the southern portion of the 65,000-barrel-per-day refinery into a facility capable of turning used cooking oil, rendered fats and oil from a crop called camelina into 15,000 barrels per day of renewable diesel. The company has said it hopes to begin operation of the facility in the third quarter of this year.
The company's permits allow it to use on-site injection wells to dispose of nonhazardous refinery wastewater, including from tank farm water drains; surface runoff; truck and tank card loading racks; ground and soil remediation projects; and produced water from oil production.
Records show pressure in one of the refinery's injection wells fluctuated erratically between Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 18, 2021, because of a loss of mechanical integrity. The settlement agreement said tube testing on Feb. 24 confirmed holds in two tubing joints, as well as pressure failures in 11 additional tubing joints. It noted the well was shut in at the end of that 76-day period.
For four hours on March 1, 2021, the agreement said, injection occurred at the well even though the EPA had not authorized the company to resume use of the well. The document did not say exactly what kind of material was disposed of, other than to say it was wastewater.
The agreement also said GCEH was supposed to have installed measurement and recording devices to gather data on injection rates, temperature and pressure. But between May 20, 2020, and March 31, 2021, it said monitoring data was missing or incomplete, constituting a violation of the facility's permit.
The EPA noted it had contemplated a larger fine but, exercising its discretion, it scaled back the size of the penalty because the company had engaged in a good faith discussion and cooperated in resolving the situation. Plus, it said the company "had a limited ability to pay a penalty greater than the one assessed."
Besides capping an injection well on the site, the EPA said the company must submit a plan for installing a data management system and replace and calibrate all monitoring devices at the site that have not been calibrated in the last 12 months.
