Contra Costa Administrator Phil Batchelor's assistant stepped into the closed-session Board of Supervisors meeting, whispered something to his boss and slipped him a note.
Clearing his throat, Batchelor announced: "There's been a very large explosion at Tosco."
"I remember it like it was yesterday," state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said. It was Feb. 23, 1999, when an accidental explosion killed four workers and severely burned a fifth at a troubled Martinez refinery. Many say it was the low point for Contra Costa's refinery belt. The timing could not have been worse.
A month earlier, then-supervisor DeSaulnier helped pass an industrial-safety ordinance that placed stringent controls on a handful 
of Contra Costa's refineries and chemical plants after a decade of serious industrial accidents.
Despite the inauspicious start, the strict ordinance — celebrating its 10th anniversary in January — became a model for the nation. Contra Costa and Richmond, which adopted the county ordinance in 2002, have yet to record a single refinery or chemical plant accident this year — an unprecedented achievement. Since the county ordinance's inception in 1999, there have been no worst-case incidents at the eight facilities it covers.
Compare that with 1993-99, when those plants had endured eight Level 3 incidents — the worst — killing six workers, injuring almost 50 others and sending more than 23,000 residents Advertisementto hospitals for treatment.
"There's been a change in how facilities are handling their business," said Randy Sawyer, Contra Costa Hazardous Materials Programs director. "Prevention programs have improved dramatically."
Such a strict ordinance was necessary for a county that hosts more hazardous materials per capita and per geographical size than any other county in the state, he said.
Industry experts from around the country have taken note.
"By reputation, Contra Costa 
is known to be among the most proactive programs in the country," said Scott Berger, director of Center for Chemical Process Safety, a nonprofit organization that addresses safety needs in the chemical, pharmaceutical and petroleum industries. "Usually, people look to Contra Costa as an indicator of where process safety is heading, in a regulatory sense, in the future."
New Jersey recently enacted its own statewide toxic release program, including safer technology language that mirrors Contra Costa's.
On Tuesday, Sawyer's agency will report the good news to the Board of Supervisors.
"I think the ordinance has been successful," said John Gioia, of Richmond, who was a freshman supervisor when the ordinance was adopted.
"If you want to run a refinery in a heavily populated area, you need to be as safe as possible."
It was not an easy path. Before the Industrial Safety Ordinance, the county had the short-lived Good Neighbor Ordinance, triggered by the 1993 General Chemical release that sent a sulfuric acid cloud through Richmond. More than 22,000 people had to visit the hospital. Approved in 1996, refineries and chemical plants quickly challenged the union-sponsored legislation in court amid concerns that it would force them to build new plants.
As the Good Neighbor Ordinance stalled, Supervisor DeSaulnier, along with then-supervisor Joe Canciamilla, brought together industry executives, union leaders, environmental groups and residents to work on new regulations.
These were not always pleasant meetings.
"You were dealing with very powerful Fortune 500 companies with lots of money, very vocal environmental agencies and labor. "... There were a lot of meetings where it looked like it would die," DeSaulnier said. "It was a long, long process, but it's one of the things I'm proudest of being involved in."
Environmentalist leader Denny Larson helped organize communities surrounding Contra Costa's refineries and spoke out against the ordinance at the time.
"Residents were scared, concerned and shocked at the lack of responsibility officials from the company and county," said Larson, who now runs the Refinery Reform Campaign. "It was very important to make 
sure companies in Contra Costa understood that no matter what happened on site, it was your responsibility that it not cross the fence line."
After months of negotiations, industry and labor both lent support to the ordinance, although environmental groups felt it did not reach far enough. Shortly after a court struck down the Good Neighbor Ordinance, supervisors narrowly passed the Industrial Safety Ordinance and it was adopted Jan. 15, 1999.
A month later, Tosco workers attempted a risky operation to replace piping around a crude-processing unit while it was still operating.
When the workers were ordered to cut out the part, hot petroleum spewed out, ignited and killed four workers. A fifth was severely burned. "Despite serious hazards caused by the inability to drain and isolate the line — known to supervisors and workers during the week before the incident — the low-risk classification was not re-evaluated, nor did management formulate a plan to control the known hazards," a federal agency concluded.
"Those four people wouldn't have died if they followed good work procedure," Sawyer said. In its infancy, most of the ordinance's regulations had not yet been implemented at refineries.
After the accident, the county partially shut down the plant and had consultants review the Tosco's safety culture. Two mergers later, Tesoro now operates the Martinez refinery.
"There is no doubt that in the early '90s and even late '90s the safety culture we had was nothing like how we operate today," said Alan Savage, Tesoro's environment, health and safety manager, who worked under Tosco.
"It wasn't that Tosco managers wanted to be unsafe, but what was first talked about at every daily meeting was "... production," Savage said. "Now, the first thing discussed in every meeting is safety."
The county ordinance kick-started a new era of refinery safety, he said.
"The industry was headed there, but the Industrial Safety Ordinance brought more structure and discipline toward it and therefore accelerated "... it," Savage said.
Although only Tesoro's Martinez facility must heed the ordinance, Savage said the company's six other refineries outside Contra Costa also observe new safety procedures.
"(The Martinez facility) plays very much a leadership role in what is acceptable in safety," he said.
In the past decade, Tesoro has changed procedures for minor routine operations and big ones.
On the routine end, workers must carry a bright orange flag when crossing a refinery street.
A major work project, such as removing large bolts with fist-size nuts, is now done remotely from 1,000 feet away rather than manually in confined spaces with an air wrench.
The industry also recognizes that safety helps the bottom line.
"There's a very real correlation between reliability and profitability and safety. Those three things really go together," Savage said.
Chevron, which has had five major accidents at its Richmond refinery since 1999, is headed for its safest year ever, said spokesman Brent Tippen. The ordinance did not change any refinery operations, he said.
"With the addition of ISO, some of our work processes were adjusted and a couple of new ones were created, so the ISO may have had less impact upon us than some of our competitors," Tippen wrote in an e-mail. The Richmond refinery has used the city's safety ordinance and another guide to develop work processes, he said.
The county's ordinance adds another level of regulations to the California Accidental Release Prevention Program. Contra Costa's program requires firms to have a risk-management plan, triennial audits, simplification of operating procedures and unannounced inspections. Facilities must respond to safety recommendations.
"You're looking at things differently; instead of putting safeguards in place, they're looking at how to avoid it altogether," Sawyer said.
The ordinance allows the county to levy minor fines. However, Contra Costa can arrest refinery workers on a misdemeanor — up to six months of jail — if evidence determines misconduct led to injuries.
In 2006, the county amended the ordinance to require safety culture and security vulnerability assessments.
Such broad regulations are needed in an industry that has inherent dangers and stiff competition, DeSaulnier said.
The industry pushes "to get as much volume out and you're pushing to do it at the cheapest level possible," DeSaulnier said.
A decade later, the ordinance has won support from some of its most ardent critics, including Larson.
"I think the ordinance has been very successful," Larson said. "Certainly there's a lot more to do in Contra Costa "... like the daily emissions from refineries."
Henry Clark, head of the West County Toxics Coalition, a neighborhood advocacy group, echoed those sentiments.
"They came along kicking and bucking and unwillingly and we need to understand that attitude is still there despite the 10th anniversary and no accidents this year," said Clark, who wants more pollution controls.
The community effort left its own legacy.
Larson created the "Bucket Brigade" in 1995 which armed Contra Costa residents with five-gallon plastic buckets turned into air sampling devices to monitor releases from refineries and chemical companies. That low-tech project has spread to communities neighboring refineries across the globe.
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