Sunoco Needs to Clear Air

Philadelphia's own Sunoco Inc. posted quarterly profits this month of $329 million - three times what it earned in the same quarter last year - while consumers were paying more than ever for Sunoco gasoline. Last year, Sunoco CEO John Drosdick made more than $39 million in salary and stock options. These massive numbers tower over the relative pocket change Sunoco refuses to spend to prove itself a good neighbor to the low- and middle-income residents who live in the shadow of the company's Southwest Philadelphia refinery.

Despite community demands for at least the last two years, Sunoco has refused to spend a mere $7 million to reduce the storage and use of the deadly chemical hydrogen fluoride at this refinery. Nearly 400,000 pounds of hydrogen fluoride is stored and used in the refining process, in very close proximity to thousands of neighborhood residents. These same residents are already dealing with the health effects of Sunoco's pollution. Is it fair that they also live in fear of a major accident or attack?

The Inquirer has reported several times that hydrogen fluoride, if released, could endanger the lives of up to 4.4 million people living in the Philadelphia region. Contact with the chemical can cause severe respiratory problems and heart damage and even liquefy bones. Inhaling it can be fatal. While no community releases of hydrogen fluoride have occurred, a 1987 accident at the Marathon Corp. refinery in Texas City, Texas, forced 3,000 people from their homes and sent more than 1,000 to the hospital. The nature of that leak minimized its impact; a similar leak at Sunoco's Southwest Philadelphia refinery could be even more disastrous, even deadly.

Sunoco's response to community concerns is that, even though other refineries have switched to safer alternatives for almost 20 years and only a third of the nation's refineries still use hydrogen fluoride, there's not enough evidence to suggest a change would be good.

How much evidence does Sunoco need that switching is the responsible thing to do?

Two years is plenty of time for Sunoco to make the necessary changes, but dragging its feet when it comes to community health and safety is nothing new. In 1997, fines against Sunoco for violating environmental regulations were allocated to buy 10 emergency-notification sirens. Eight years later, the company has yet to install the last of the sirens or make the other nine operational, effectively ensuring that residents will remain in the dark should a life-threatening accident occur.

Sunoco asserts that it is proud of its spending on environmental projects, but thus far most of that spending has been the direct result of court orders. Even its recent $130,000 settlement with the Community/Labor Refinery Tracking Committee, a Southwest Philadelphia residents' group, came after costly negotiations in which the residents were forced by Sunoco's lawyers to drop some of their most pressing concerns, including the threat of hydrogen fluoride. That lawsuit was filed by residents over more than 1,000 violations of federal law, including illegal releases of the carcinogens benzene and ethylbenzene.

Sunoco has proven that it is unwilling to be a good neighbor to the people of Southwest Philadelphia.

It's time for Sunoco to prove itself the responsible company it says that it is. Seven million dollars is less than 3 percent of the company's quarterly bottom line. If Sunoco cares about the health of the community surrounding its Southwest Philadelphia refinery, it needs to spend this pocket change to protect families who live in its shadow.