The crude oil refinery. Phase one: economic windfall. Phase two: ecological wasteland.
At its height, this facility - in a location I won't disclose, other than to say it lies somewhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco - refined 20,000 barrels of oil a day, and was capable of storing another 870,000.
Hazardous waste produced at the plant - such as sulfide sludge and mono-ethanolamine - had to be hauled off-site for disposal. Who knows where it is now (probably in this bottle of Arrowhead I'm sipping on).
The refinery's parent company proposed a $100-million expansion to the facility in the early 1980s. Neighbors succeeded in blocking the move, protesting that the plant represented an environmental hazard to the surrounding community. Because the site's profitability depended on the expansion, the company closed its doors in 1984.
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Since 1984, the company has tried repeatedly - and unsuccessfully - to sell the property off.
Frustrated by their failure to develop the site into an industrial park, they came up with a new idea: have the site re-zoned for residential development.
They even tried to have this ammonium sulfide tank converted into a Baby Gap.
Okay, I made up the thing about Baby Gap, but still...residential development? So far they've failed to line the right pockets.
(One potential town slogan the company batted around, should the re-zoning scheme bear fruit).
U.S. Oil Production in 2008 - 5 billion gallons. U.S. Oil consumption - 238 billion gallons.
"EMERGENCY LOADING RACE SHUTDOWN." Not sure what that means.
One day I should put together a collection of all the forgotten chairs I've photographed at these sites.
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"Revolt thru art." Ugh.
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Wandering through this place was surreal. We only covered about a fifth of the site.
Environmental warhead.
Inside the control room.
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We were restricted to ground level exploration, as so many of the staircases and ladders on site had rusted and collapsed.
A quarter mile north, shuddered company housing lies in about the same state as the plant.
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I always wonder if families that move on know what shenanigans their house has been up to in their absence.
View from inside the barbecue grill.
Taaka vodka. It doesn't get much worse than that.
Oops...spoke to soon.
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