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Tuesday April 29, 2003, 11:15:57 PM
The Kern County District Attorney's Office sued ChevronTexaco Corp. Tuesday, seeking nearly $5 million in penalties for secretly dumping water contaminated with a controversial gasoline additive into a west Kern oil field.
The company halted injection of water tainted with MTBE into the oil wells after it was exposed by The Californian a little over a year ago and a regulatory official said it was illegal without prior authorization.
ChevronTexaco spokesman Greg Hardy said the water did not pose any health or environmental hazards because it was being injected deep into oil wells. Hardy also said the firm had tried to negotiate a settlement with the District Attorney's Office "and is very disappointed that they have filed this complaint."
The complaint filed by the White Collar Crime Section of District Attorney Ed Jagels' office charges that the company's actions amounted to an unfair business practice under state law.
Deputy District Attorney John Mitchell charged in the complaint that ChevronTexaco disposed of more than 4 million gallons of tainted water in the Cymric Field near McKittrick between Nov. 7, 2000, and April 1, 2002. The suit seeks $4.75 million in fines.
The tainted water was trucked in from Cambria, a scenic coastal town near Hearst Castle, about 100 miles northwest of Bakersfield.
It was pumped out of the ground beneath a former Chevron service station, where gasoline containing MTBE had leaked from an underground storage tank. The additive was threatening to contaminate community water wells and a nearby creek and local authorities there ordered the company to clean it up.
MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, has been added to gasoline in California for years to make it burn cleaner and reduce air pollution from vehicle emissions. But tiny amounts of MTBE cause water to smell and taste bad, and leaks like that in Cambria have polluted many lakes and wells around the state. A suspected carcinogen, it has been ordered phased out of the gasoline supply by Gov. Gray Davis as fast as ethanol or other clean-air additives can be phased in.
Chevron trucked the water to west Kern and added it to water being turned into steam and injected into oil wells to soften the heavy, thick crude oil and make it easier to pump out.
Chevron officials said at the time they did not realize what they were doing was illegal.
"When ChevronTexaco learned that it might not be in compliance with its injection permit it immediately stopped using the water," Hardy said.
But the complaint in the suit says the permit for Chevron's steam injection operations from the state's Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources required that "a chemical analysis of the fluid to be injected shall be made and filed with this division whenever the source of injection fluid is changed, or as requested by this office."
The suit also says Chevron expected to save about $15 million by injecting it into the Kern wells, rather than shipping it to a proper disposal site.
Hal Bopp, the division's Kern County representative, said the company did not notify his office of the new source of fluid, and he learned of it from a Californian reporter.
Chevron soon began trucking the water to a commercial hazardous waste disposal firm in the Los Angeles area.
But for the last four months, Hardy said the company has been hauling it to a licensed wastewater treatment plant operated by the city of Santa Maria, near San Luis Obispo and much closer to Cambria.
He said the company is certain the new method of disposal is legal and safe.
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