Introduction. Our Barron Park neighborhood borders the Stanford Research Park. This interface is overdue for an update to the Performance Standards to regulate and guide its development.  The Planning Commission and the Staff deserve credit, in particular Curtis Williams with whom we have been discussing this issue for over six months, for their constructive efforts. By planning projects appropriately ahead of time, mistakes and bad decisions don’t happen, the kind of mistakes that bring aggravation to residents and require costly corrective actions by the businesses.

 

The Performance Standards proposal also includes, for the very first time, a specific component addressed to Hazardous Materials. Over the years, actions at various times by the businesses operating in the Stanford Research Park with hazardous materials have created unsafe conditions for residents who live nearby. The proposal on Hazardous Material from the Planning Commission recognizes that some restrictions are required, but it does not go far enough.

 

We have three specific recommendations we would like the Council to accept.

 

• Eliminate the provision in section 18.23.100 (vi)(b) that would allow CPI,  the facility that is virtually in our backyards, to increase by 25% the  amounts of extremely hazardous materials it uses and stores when it already has so much that an accidental release could devastate our area of Palo Alto;

 

• Include an additional section that would require City Council approval when any facility proposes to use or store amounts of hazardous materials on any site that exceed California Title 19 threshold levels. Such a facility would have the potential for creating serious health consequences in the case of an accident or natural disaster to the wider community, to those living and working beyond its site boundaries;

 

• Provide some leadership and create a plan that would encourage CPI, which uses and stores hazardous materials many times the Title 19 thresholds so close to our homes, to lower its dependence on - and its inventory of- extremely hazardous materials.

 

Background. Over the past twenty years, there has been a heightened awareness of environmental issues by businesses and the city, and an overall strengthening of city and state regulations.  Most of the companies that were the sources of the hazardous materials releases and who contaminated our underground waters in the past have changed their ways, left the Stanford Research Park or moved those activities elsewhere. 

 

However there is one exception. Those of us with homes close to CPI feel we are living with a dangerous situation, with a great risk to the health and safety of our neighborhood should there be an accident or a natural disaster that would release the hazardous chemical materials stored there. Varian built this plating shop and associated hazardous materials storage facilities. Even though the houses were already there, Varian positioned them at the very back of their site, which meant they are as close to the residences as they could possibly be. The plating shop is on the side of the building facing the houses and the hazardous chemical bunker storage area is against the back wall of the CPI site that abuts the residential zone.

 

 

 

This situation had developed years ago for historical reasons. Many current residents were not aware of the level of risk to them and their families from an accident - until recently.  Varian reorganized in 1995 and the facility is operated by CPI as a manufacturing site, not as a research and development center. Two years ago, CPI decided to consolidate all of its California manufacturing operations in Palo Alto and closed its facility in an industrial area of San Carlos. Without any notification to the residents, the Planning Department allowed the facility next to Barron Park to rebuild to increase its manufacturing capacity and increase its inventory of extremely hazardous materials.  We engaged with the Planning Department last spring and participated in many meetings and actions with the Planning Commission this past fall to help develop a set of Performance Standards that would, among other things, not allow this set of events to happen again. 

 

Regulations of Hazardous Materials and Offsite Consequences. Many of us were blindsided by the accident at CPI when toxic fumes drifted into our neighborhood last February. We have educated ourselves and we are aware of the large amounts of extremely hazardous materials used and stored by CPI just over the back fence from residences on Chimalus Drive.  Following the accident, we became aware of the critical situation in the event of a catastrophic accident. We learned of the Community Right to Know Laws, the Clean Air Act and the pioneering legislation in California in the early 90’s that began to require identification of facilities where extremely hazardous materials are stored in such large amounts that an accidental release could endanger the public outside of the site boundaries. All of these laws were the outgrowth of the Bhopal disaster in India in 1986, when thousands of individuals were killed and thousands more maimed off site by a toxic gas plume from a Union Carbide chemical plant.  In California, the federal and state programs were consolidated into the California Accidental Release Prevention Program (CalARP), in 1999 and final regulations were promulgated by the State of California in 2004 as Title 19.  

 

Title 19 Regulations. The Title 19 regulations identify a set of extremely hazardous materials and threshold levels. Sites that use and store any of these materials above the threshold levels are subject to this program. There are 25 facilities that fall under this program in Santa Clara County, which is administered by the Department of Environmental Health. Only two are in the city of Palo Alto: one is the waste water treatment plant near the Bay; the other is CPI near the residents of Barron Park. The presence of a manufacturing facility using hazardous materials above Title 19 thresholds within 100 feet of residences in Palo Alto nowadays would be considered an example of atrocious and reckless zoning.

 

CPI is a Title 19 facility because it uses and stores two hazardous chemicals above Title 19 thresholds: nitric acid and potassium cyanide. They are required to file a Risk Management Plan, or RMP, which contains several required elements. One of these is a disclosure of the amounts of extremely hazardous materials on their site. In 2004, CPI had 3200 lbs of nitric acid. This was three times the Title 19 threshold of 1000 lbs. In 2006, CPI had increased the amount of nitric acid to 4160 lbs, or more than four times the Title 19 threshold.

 

The provision in the Performance Standard proposal would allow them to increase this by another 25% to 5200 lbs, or more than five times the Title 19 threshold. In 2004, CPI disclosed it had 402 lbs of potassium cyanide on its site, mostly in solution, but more than 100 lbs in a storage drums. The total is already four times the Title 19 threshold of 100 lbs. In 2006, after the reconstruction of their manufacturing facility, CPI disclosed they had increased the amount of potassium cyanide on their site to over 630 lbs, more than a 50% increase. If they were allowed another 25% increase above the 2006 amounts, they would have almost 800 lbs of potassium cyanide or eight times the Title 19 threshold.

 

CPI uses and stores acid and potassium cyanide in the same plating shop and in the same general storage areas. They are required to keep these materials strictly separate, but in a natural disaster or if there were a serious malfunction of their equipment, the materials could spill and combine and that would produce hydrogen cyanide gas, one of the most toxic of all gases. It is all the more dangerous because it does not have an acrid, irritating odor that makes people quickly aware of the existence of a dangerous situation.

 

The US Department of Health and Human Services has published "Medical Management Guidelines" for hydrogen cyanide ( http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/MHMI/mmg8.html).  The guidelines point out that the odor does not provide adequate warning of hazardous concentrations (and it is estimated that 20-40% of the population cannot even smell it).  Symptoms of poisoning can begin within seconds to minutes, and hydrogen cyanide poisoning can produce death in minutes.  "Hydrogen cyanide poisoning is marked by abrupt onset of profound toxic effects that may include syncope, seizures, coma, gasping respirations, and cardiovascular collapse, causing death within minutes."

 

So it is clear why we say that CPI has extremely large quantities of extremely hazardous materials literally just over the back fence from residences on Chimalus Drive.

 

The Possible Consequences of an Accidental Release at CPI. The health and safety of a large number of people in Barron Park is imperiled by an accidental release of hazardous materials at CPI. Accidental releases can occur because of human error, equipment failure, industrial sabotage, an act of terrorism or a natural disaster such as an earthquake. Earthquakes in particular are a significant concern because the entire emergency response scenario assumes that the Hazardous Response Unit of the PAFD would be able to respond immediately. In the case of a major earthquake, we do not have any idea of how long it would take for the PAFD to respond, nor what their first priority would be when they would be able to respond.  A study published by researchers (Joint Seismic and Technological Disasters: Possible Impacts and Community Preparedness in an Urban Setting, by L.J. Steinberg, V. Basolo, R. Burby, J.N. Levine, and A.M. Cruz, Natural Hazards Review, Vol 5, pp 159-169, Nov 2004) states that  “ If these releases occur near residential communities, large numbers of people are placed at risk and simultaneously must cope with the effects of the earthquake…even in a community with a substantial community outreach program, many residents are under prepared for an earthquake, hazardous materials release, or a conjoint disaster.”

 

Title 19 requires companies to identify what they consider serious accident scenarios in that would lead to releases of hazardous materials in their Risk Management Plan.  CPI considered that one of the tanks of plating liquids or acid might rupture or the storage drum of potassium cyanide spills and combines with acid stored nearby. Once an accident scenario is defined, the extent of the offsite consequences is determined using standardized rules and computer models allowed for by the Title 19 regulations. These rules include assumptions on the weather and the wind. The conditions could vary, and in addition, an accident could actually involve multiple tanks, so the accident and the consequences could be worse than what is in the RMP. The event that led to the release of nitric acid vapors on Feb 2^nd from CPI was not in any of the accident scenarios in their Risk Management Plan. It proves the point that you can’t predict all accidents – you can hope for the best, but you must prepare for the worst.

 

In any event, the accident scenario and the offsite consequences that CPI disclosed in their RMP provide an example of what the impact of a serious accidental release would be to the community. The definition of the affected area is in the 2^nd paragraph of the 18.23.100 (v) in the proposal of Hazardous Materials. For toxic gas releases, the affected area extends to what is called the ‘toxic endpoint.’ The following figure shows the area that could be affected by toxic vapors from a serious accident that sent nitric acid vapor or hydrogen cyanide vapor fumes into the air.  

 

The circle extends about 1000’ ft, 1/5 of a mile. We call this the Barron Park Danger Zone.  There are actually two circles, depending upon whether the release were to occur in the plating shop or in the chemical storage area. Within the circle are over 125 homes, several apartment buildings, and for the zone surrounding the chemical storage area,  a hotel and businesses along El Camino. We are talking about hundreds of residents – not to mention the workers at CPI and in adjacent buildings if the release occurred during working hours. Those closest to the accident center would be very severely affected and may not survive. Those at the edges and beyond, depending upon the wind and weather, would most likely not suffer permanent injury.  

 

Assessing Risk of a Title 19 Facility   Title 19 rules are regulations on registration of hazardous materials; they identify the facilities where releases could affect the general public off site. They do not limit the amounts of hazardous materials a facility may store, nor do they quantify the risk, but they do clearly identify the hazard. It is the role of the zoning regulations to consider the hazard when it comes to Title 19 facilities and to make decisions that would limit the risk.

 

Summary and Recommendations. Our first recommendation is that you to strike out that provision allowing for a 25% increase in materials used and stored by CPI that are already above Title 19 threshold limits.The provision in section 18.23.100 (vi)(b) of the Performance Standards proposal pertains to facilities that already have hazardous materials above Title 19 thresholds and are within 300’ of residential property line. There is only one such facility in Palo Alto that this would apply to, and it is CPI. The risk to our health and safety from an accident at CPI would be raised even further should CPI be allowed to increase the amounts of hazardous materials above Title 19 threshold limits by an additional 25%. Because of the risk the present amounts of hazardous materials pose to residents, any further increase is unacceptable. We think the risk is already too high. Allowing a 25% increase would only make a very bad situation even worse.

 

Second, we feel that facilities with hazardous materials above Title 19 thresholds present such serious risks to the community from an accidental release that it sets them distinctly apart from other sites that use hazardous materials. The State of California created these Title 19 regulations for exactly that purpose. We feel that the city should consider very carefully before allowing any site in the future with Title 19 facilities to operate in Palo Alto. We propose that the City Council set regulations for allowing Title 19 facilities that are commensurate with the risk they present.  The City Council itself should approve any application for a new Title 19 facility in Palo Alto, or when existing facilities propose increasing their inventory of hazardous materials above the Title 19 thresholds.

 

However, as long as CPI uses and stores such large amounts hazardous materials so close to our homes, our neighborhood is vulnerable. We face the risk of a large toxic release that would be tantamount to a disaster. There are ways to reduce the consequences of future accidents and natural disasters – like improving structural integrity of buildings before an earthquake strikes. Similar pro-active measures would reduce the possibility of any future toxic chemical release turning into a major disaster.

 

Our third recommendation is for the City Council to establish a policy that would induce CPI to lower its dependence on extremely hazardous materials. The plating materials and processes used by CPI were developed in the middle of the 19^th century. There are better, cleaner and more environmentally friendly ways to do this type of work.  We think the city should encourage CPI, if it wants to stay in Palo Alto, to innovate and adopt more modern and safer methods and materials. Over time, CPI would reduce the amounts of extremely hazardous materials it uses and stores so that in some reasonable time frame, say three years, it would no longer be subject to the California Title 19 regulations. There are a number of ways to achieve this. The city could set some benchmarks in the code,  and convene a group of outside experts who would work with the facility to help it innovate and adopt more modern methods. Because the hazardous materials CPI uses are costly to purchase, costly to store and use, and costly to dispose of, we are convinced that this initiative would be in the long term business interest of CPI. At the same time this would advance the health and safety of the surrounding community.

 

In conclusion, we feel the risk is clear – we feel we are already in a dangerous situation. Increasing the amount of hazardous materials in our backyards is unacceptable. We want the council to roll back the provision that would allow CPI to increase the amounts of hazardous materials it has above Title 19 thresholds by a further 25%. We also would like there to be a provision in the zoning code that would require the City Council itself to give approval to any new Title 19 facilities anywhere in Palo Alto. And we want the Council to give a clear signal to CPI that city of Palo Alto wants to work with it to reduce its hazardous materials and thereby lower the risk of a disaster associated with a chemical release to the neighboring community.