Is Chevron’s air monitoring website useful to Richmond residents? The public is asked to weigh in.

At 6:33 p.m. on Aug. 6, 2012, two days after moving into her new house in Atchison Village, Marisa Goul looked out her window and saw a towering pillar of black smoke curling into the sky over the Chevron Refinery. 

Five minutes later, Richmond’s Community Warning System sirens split the air. Her new neighbors told her to shelter in place. Goul began sealing shut all her windows and doors with the roll of painters tape from her recent move. 

“I’m buying a house right next to the refinery. What the hell am I doing?” she remembers thinking to herself. 

In the weeks following the fire, 15,000 residents sought medical attention for “ailments including breathing problems, chest pain, shortness of breath, sore throat and headaches,” according to the Final Incident Report by the Chemical Safety Board. 

The ensuing legal battles and community pressure resulted in the installation of fenceline and community air monitors and a public-facing air monitoring website in 2013. 

As part of a February 2024 settlement of a lawsuit Chevron had filed against the Bay Area Air Quality Management District over new emissions rules, Chevron promised to improve its website to provide links to fenceline and other air monitoring data. Residents have said the air-monitoring map is difficult to navigate and lacks clear takeaways about health impacts of the measured compounds.

How to transform the website into a more useful tool for residents will be the focus of a public meeting hosted by the refinery Thursday, at CoBiz Richmond. Chevron and Sonoma Technology, the software developer that created the website, will give a presentation explaining the site and solicit public feedback for improvement.

Chevron’s air monitoring website shows real-time ambient concentrations of PM 2.5, which is particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, and 16 other chemical compounds at six sites: three along Chevron’s fenceline and three in nearby neighborhoods. 

“It’s less accessible to your average person, your average dad that just got back from work at 5 p.m.,” said Kevin Ruano, who interacted with the website when he worked as an air quality analyst. Ruano said the current website design is legible primarily to researchers and regulators. 

It’s also only available in English, though most Richmond residents speak a language other than English at home.

All 17 of the monitored compounds are byproducts of petroleum refining operations, but many are emitted from other industrial activities, as well as automobile emissions, agriculture, and wildfire smoke. 

Data on emissions specific to the refinery is not publicly available, but Chevron does track this data with a continuous emissions monitoring system, and shares it with the Air District and 35 other regulatory agencies on a quarterly basis, according to the Air District. 

On Tuesday, the Air District announced it had fined Chevron $900,000 after finding that 20 of the monitors were limited in the amount of emissions they could measure.

“This means that if emissions increase beyond legal limits, they could go undetected and unreported, leaving both Chevron and the Air District without critical information about real-time air quality impacts,” the agency said in a news release. 

The fines came when Chevron did not fix the problem by the Air District’s deadline, the release said. The company has since made the necessary upgrades, it added. 

Public weighs in

Community members have already made requests for changes to make the website a more intuitive and legible tool to monitor air quality, Chevron spokesperson Caitlin Powell said.

In October, the website expanded access to historical data from 90 days to five years in response to users’ requests. Other suggestions include a homepage banner that shows more clearly whether overall air quality is healthy, color-coded indicators next to each compound to reflect how levels relate to health-based thresholds, and the removal of wind measurements that “clutter the map.” 

Chevron is working to implement the banner, Powell said, but wind indicators “should not be removed,” as they can help show where a compound originates. She said there already is a system for showing whether compounds are above or below health thresholds, but Chevron plans to add tutorials showing users how it works.

Kathleen Sullivan, a longtime Richmond resident and retired president of Black Women Organizing for Political Action, was part of a community advisory group that Chevron presented the website to in September. 

“We all stood there and said, ‘the community’s not going to be able to digest this technical information,’” Sullivan said. 

She added that she is looking forward to the promised updates and hopes they will increase accountability for Chevron and other polluters in the area.

Of two dozen community members polled by Richmond Confidential at locations surrounding the refinery, including the Richmond Flea Market, Point Richmond and Wildcat Creek Trail, only Goul was familiar with the website. 

Goul lives a few blocks away from one of the three community air monitors installed in 2013. 

While the data is timely, reliable, and, in her case, localized some hundred feet from her house, Goul said she’s only used the website once or twice. 

“It’s pretty opaque as to what they’re emitting and its effect on us,” Goul said. 

All she wants to know is if it is safe to go about her day normally, especially on days when there is a strong odor in the air.

“I can’t sell my house. You know what I mean? I’m here. It’s just hoping for the best,” she said.

To stay informed, Goul relies on the weather app on her phone, which displays information based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s widely used AQI scale, which measures concentrations of PM 2.5. Standing outside of her workplace in November, she pulled up the app and it showed 50 in a yellow circle, air quality “acceptable,” with health risks for sensitive groups.

“It’s less about actually knowing the exact concentration of whatever pollutant is being measured and more about understanding the potential health outcomes that are associated with that pollutant,” said Rebecca Sugrue, an environmental engineer who has studied air monitoring in Richmond. 

Richmond residents experience a rate of asthma-related emergency department visits that is twice the state-wide average, according to data from the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

PM 2.5 is one of the primary pollutants associated with increased asthma rates and is also linked to cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and cognitive decline. In early 2024, the EPA strengthened regulations on PM 2.5 emissions calling fine particulate matter “one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution,” and noting, “an extensive body of science links it to a range of serious and sometimes deadly illnesses.”

The Chevron Refinery is the largest single emitter of PM 2.5 in the region, accounting for 63% of this particulate matter in the air above the Richmond-San Pablo area, according to the Air District’s 2024 Path to Clean Air report. 

City Councilmember Sue Wilson said she has not used Chevron’s website and relies instead on Purple Air, which uses crowd-sourced air monitoring to provide free air quality data. 

“ I monitor air quality because I’ve got a kid,” Wilson said. “ I’m raising a kid here and my kid is growing her lungs in this environment.”

“It’s great to have monitoring going on, but the second step of that has basically got to be outrage and also an admission that those numbers mean something for what happens in our bodies,” Wilson said, adding that Chevron could lower its emissions through available technologies.

“It’s expensive, right? But so are lungs,” Wilson said. 

The implementation of a wet gas scrubber, which would reduce PM 2.5 emissions, has been stalled in the permitting process and mired in bureaucratic back and forth since just after the 2024 settlement.

“Chevron’s permit application is currently incomplete, and the Air District plans to issue a second follow up letter in December 2025,” the Air District told Richmond Confidential in an email on Nov. 19. 

In response, Powell suggested the Air District has stalled the process by not issuing the permits in a “timely manner.” She said Chevron applied for the scrubber permit in April 2024. The Air District requested information from the company, which Chevron responded to in June 2024 and last January, within the required time frame, according to Powell.

Chevron officials also met with Air District management in March of this year, she said, and at that time, asked that the scrubber permit be issued by January 2026.

As of now, the permit status remains incomplete.

This story was updated to correct the dates of Chevron’s response to the Air District’s request for information about the gas scrubber.

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