A Chevron worker was taken to hospital after an odour was reported around the company's tank farm last Thursday night.
Chevron spokesperson Ray Lord said the refinery received two odour-related calls at approximately 10: 30 p.m. on Aug. 2.
"We initiated our usual odour investigation protocol, and an odour was confirmed by our on-duty operations staff. At this time, our investigation has not been able to identify a definitive cause of what appeared to be a very transient odour," he wrote in an email to the NOW. "One refinery employee working in the tank farm area at the time did report experiencing some discomfort and was attended by our on-site first-aid personnel. He was taken to a local hospital for observation, subsequently released and will be returning to work."
According to Lord, the odour "appeared to be quite localized and very short-lived."
"I want to emphasize that at no point did Chevron believe that this odour presented any risk to the surrounding community and that minimizing any impacts from our operations, including odours, is an important priority for the refinery," Lord said.
Burnaby Heights resident Judi Marshall lives close to the Chevron's tank farm, near the foot of Willingdon, and experienced the odour on Thursday night.
"It really started to stink in our house, so right after 10 p.m., we started shutting our windows," Marshall said.
Marshall and a neighbour headed to Chevron's tank farm to investigate.
"We could hear the noise, and we could smell the smell," Marshall said. "It stunk. It didn't smell like gasoline, it smelt like a toxic-waste kind of smell coming from Chevron. It was definitely petroleum based."
The two talked with a security guard, who suggested they call the shift supervisor, which the neighbour did. Marshall called Metro Vancouver, which is responsible for monitoring air quality, but they didn't have any information. Marshall also called Chevron but didn't hear back.
"Obviously it was something, because someone went to the hospital, but I think that's really irresponsible for the refinery to not call back."
Lord said he was in direct contact with the neighbour and Marshall on Friday morning and apologized.
"I have subsequently investigated how the original calls were received and reviewed the process with the personnel on duty at the time," Lord said. "In an effort to improve our systems, changes to be made will include further staff training along with more complete documentation and tracking of how public calls are managed when they are received."
So-called "nuisance odours" are not unusual for residents living close to Chevron's refinery and tank farm, but Marshall said this case was particularly bad.
"I had to close our windows, and I had a headache, and the house stunk the next morning. On a scale of one-to-10 of how bad things are, this was a 10," Marshall said. "Sometimes it smells like you are filling a gas tank. This was a really heavy, toxic smell."
Marshall is a former member of Chevron's community advisory panel and a founding member of BRACE, a citizens' action group that opposed Chevron's proposed expansion in the late '90s. She wants Metro Vancouver to investigate cases like this rather than relying on Chevron for information.
"I feel there's a real problem with Metro Vancouver calling the refinery to find out what's going on instead of doing an investigation, especially when they know someone has gone to the hospital," she said.
Ray Robb, an environmental regulation and enforcement division manager for Metro Vancouver, said an officer was on site the next day to investigate. While Metro Vancouver is still looking into it and nothing is confirmed, the odour may have been caused by some cleaning work.
"I don't know the specifics, (but) they had been cleaning out the ponds and decided to use a different piece of equipment, (a different vacuum truck) which resulted in more emissions," Robb said.
There were also a lot of people on site who weren't adversely affected and sent to hospital, so Robb suspects the smell was not a health risk. Lord confirmed the pond cleaning was a suspected source for the smell.
According to Robb, there are harmful chemicals in petroleum products, but humans can smell them even at safe levels.
"They smell at concentrations far, far below concentrations where they are harmful, so they will be detected by people - far, far below the harm level," he said. "I'm not imaging it as a potential health threat to the community. - It's someone cleaning out ponds, - often at the bottom, they're stinking."
That said, Metro Vancouver's job is to make sure odours don't adversely impact neighbours, health risk or not, and Robb said Marshall's experience was unacceptable.
"That's not the kind of thing we consider acceptable. Businesses have the right to operate, but they do not have the right to severely affect people's quality of life. That's not acceptable, period," Robb said.
Marshall also called for some kind of system to alert residents in case of any emergencies at the refinery.
"We need to be able to access this information immediately when this happens. We need to know if we need to leave the area and what we should do," she said. "Not (giving) out information is not helping people. It's harming, actu-ally."
Last August, the NOW reported that Chevron was in discussions with the City of Burnaby to set up some kind of emergency notification system for local residents and that Chevron offered to cover part of the costs.
According to meeting minutes from Chevron's community advisory panel, Chevron met with deputy city manager Chad Turpin in April, and the matter now lies in the city's hands.
Turpin was not available for immediate comment, but he told the NOW last year that the city was very interested in the idea.
