Texaco settles oil spill suit for $1.5 million

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, December 2, 2005

MARTINEZ - Martinez will receive $1.5 million from Texaco Trading and Transportation Inc., under a settlement announced Thursday over a 1997 oil spill that damaged local marshlands.

The leak from a 20-inch pipeline spilled as many as 13,000 gallons of crude oil into a regional park on the Suisun Bay shoreline, killing wildlife and marsh grasses.

Local environmental groups had complained that minimal efforts were made to restore the grasses.

The state Department of Fish and Game withdrew a cleanup order after Texaco agreed to replace the top 12 inches of marsh topsoil. State and county prosecutors dropped criminal charges in 2000 in exchange for a $138,000 settlement.

The city of Martinez later sued Texaco for damages, saying the cleanup was inadequate. A federal judge dismissed the suit, saying the state's settlement resolved the case, but that ruling was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

At the time of the leak, the refinery that was the source of the leak was run by a Texaco and Shell Pipeline Co. partnership, called Equilon Enterprises. Shell and Equilon also were named in the lawsuit.

Under the settlement filed in federal court Thursday, the companies also agreed to formally apologize to the city for the environmental impact of the spill and promise to do its best to prevent spills.

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