Refinery pollution may drop sharply
Toxic air pollution spikes from California’s 21 refineries may be sharply curtailed in the wake of a U.S. Court of Appeals decision Friday in Washington.
In a suit brought by the Sierra Club and other groups, the court struck down a 14-year-old federal regulation that allowed refineries, chemical plants and other industrial plants to exceed pollution limits during start-ups, shutdowns and equipment outages.
Public health advocates in Southern California’s oil refinery hub hailed the decision, saying that facilities routinely operate in malfunction mode to evade pollution caps.
“We are elated,” said Jesse Marquez, head of the Wilmington-based Coalition for a Safe Environment, a plaintiff in the suit. He noted that telltale flares and billowing smoke can be seen on a near-weekly basis in the area.
The Environmental Protection Agency regulation amounted to a “gaping loophole,” according to the plaintiffs, represented by Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm. The court agreed, saying the agency had exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act.
“Under this notorious exemption, industrial facilities have been allowed to operate like a fleet of junk cars parked in neighborhoods, spewing smoke, misfiring, stalling and chugging,” said Marti Sinclair, a Sierra Club official.
A 2004 report by the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project, titled “Gaming the System: How the Off-the-Books Industrial Upset Emissions Cheat the Public Out of Clean Air,” detailed how the 1994 regulations allowed facilities to emit tens of millions of pounds of excess toxic pollutants annually.
The Earthjustice lawsuit described clouds of toxic pollutants from Wilmington refineries during power outages in 2005 and 2007. The refineries could not be prosecuted because of the EPA regulation, the suit states.
William Tanner, a spokesman for ConocoPhillips, which owns refineries in Wilmington, Santa Maria and San Francisco, said he could not comment on the lawsuit.
“Our preference is never to flare,” he said. “However, flares are federally approved safety devices that allow refining operations to shut down in an environmentally sound manner.”
Local air pollution rules require industries to reduce flares by 2012. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has set up a list-serve so that residents can be notified when flares occur.
Several major industrial groups opposed the environmental groups in the lawsuit, including the American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, American Forest & Paper Assn. and National Petrochemical & Refiners Assn.
The lawsuit also accused industrial complexes in Texas and Louisiana of unnecessarily emitting large quantities of toxic gases.
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