As the man of last resort, Rod Pacheco is the single most powerful and influential man in this matter. The Riverside District Attorney is the last chance to discover and remediate an "environmental crime" 957 feet from a clean water aquifer in Riverside County in the City of Corona. In this case, the task is easy. Shell has "agreed to find and remediate any garage sump or hydraulic lifts." Rod Pacheco already has a tough reputation for white collar crime and it is my understanding that "the civil courts in Riverside have already been taken over by criminal trials with civil trials being put on hold" at his direction. Since Rod Pacheco became D.A., recently one court room had 302 cases being prosecuted by him in just one afternoon. Accordingly, I am sure Rod Pacheco is well aware that if the District Attorney's Office does nothing, Shell gets a "free pass" to sell all its Texaco service stations and not clean up th environmental problems Shell is fully aware of and is wilfully trying to avoid; and a "free pass" to retailers who maliciously left toxic wastes in garage sumps along with buried hydraulic lifts and hydraulic fluids buried under their service stations. That there are some number of 13,000 former Texaco stations, nation wide, makes this a serious matter that any conscientious district attorney is sure to address (see Problem Defined). I am confident the Riverside District Attorney will do an effective job, as always. Shell Oil is already more than two thirds of the way through a mass sell off of all its service stations and probably already sold Satish Chopra his 230 S. Lincoln station under "PMPA" federal guidelines. To add to the urgency in this issue, all the stations Shell is selling are the best stations that are left after the mass sell off when new tanks were mandated in California and marginal stations were closed. The stations Shell is selling now are the highest performing locations that have all the latest gasoline containment systems such as "double wall fiberglass tanks" and electronic leak monitoring and detection systems. They are meant to be operated indefinitely (irrespective of the fact Shell stations have an abnormally high gasoline containment failure rate). That guarantees that the garage sumps and hydraulic lift systems will absolutely leak, eventually, and pollute the environment. Neither the Governor, State Water Board or Shell Oil can refute that fact. It would defy the "Law of Entropy."
I am sure as the Riverside District Attorney, Rod Pacheco, knows the facts of this situation and the responsibility he has to not only clean up Satish Chopra’s Corona station(s), but for Shell to test and remediate, as necessary, any of the other 71 stations in Riverside County. Riverside is the 1st county. Being the 1st, the precedent (and only chance) for Shell cleaning up the 13,000 former Texaco stations nationwide will be determined here. I respectfully request and expect the Riverside District Attorney to pay attention to this matter accordingly. As such, I sincerely thank Rod Pacheco and commend him for the courtesy and professionalism his office has brought to this issue. It is much appreciated and speaks well for the District Attorney's excellence in service to the constituents of Riverside County.
For correspondence with the Riverside District Attorney click here. Contact Info: Rod Pacheco, District Attorney, Riverside District Attorney's Office, 4075 Main Street, Riverside, CA 92501, PH: (951) 955-5431, FX: (951) 358-5017
Joe Asbury, Investigator, Bureau of Investigation Environmental Crimes
I met with Joe Asbury on June, 14, 2006. I have nothing but high praise for the way that meeting was conducted. The meeting was left with Joe Asbury getting back to me after contacting IST Laboratories (see The Solution). With the district attorney involved, the Water Board finally acknowledged it did not allow the abandonment of the equipment at that location and the Investigator was able to confirm that it would be a criminal offense if evidence of intentional abandonment is found. With SeeitReal.com, Shell can no longer profess "contrived ignorance" over the issue of abandoned sumps and lifts under former Texaco stations. We are only one definitive test from uncovering the truth.
The wait now is for the Riverside District Attorney to take the next painless and free step of convincing Riverside County do a definitive under slab GPR test. There are no good reasons for not doing a definitive test. I am sure no one wants to let a possible felon off the hook and allow a clean water aquifer to become polluted. In that the Water Board never does any testing for under-slab pollution, other than perimeter test wells, the Water Board will never catch any leaks from a deep diving plume like what happened in Tallevast Florida (article here). Additionally, the EPA has research that says standards methods of detection and abatement can actually make deep diving plumes worse (research article here). Accordingly, there is no question the public needs the DA's help in this matter. I thank Joe Asbury for his professionalism and expertise in sorting through this. I am available at any time if the Riverside District Attorney's Office needs any further assistance. SeeitReal.com needs the public to watch this issue to insure a definitive test is done.
Update August 29, 2007: Riverside County did a test via an "outside consultant" that came out "inconclusive. SeeitReal.com has provided the information for doing a definitive test to the Riverside District Attorney, Shell Oil and the LA Times (via Judy Pasternak an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C.). Nothing is settled until a definitive test is conducted. The author of this website has continually offered to pay for that test.