EPA: Let's Ignore Oil Refinery-Caused Air Pollution
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles 
on 08.27.07
The EPA — seemingly defying both common sense and safety concerns — recently issued an analysis concluding that the risks to human health and the environment posed by oil refinery emissions were low enough to warrant no further regulations. As an alternative to eliminating controls to "manage" the toxic emissions spewed by refineries, the agency has proposed requiring additional emissions reductions for certain storage vessels and wastewater treatment units. This, it predicts, could enable refineries to reduce emissions by 1,000-4,600 tons per year from 153 facilities — saving them up to $4 million annually in the process.
In doing so, however, the EPA would be flouting a crucial requirement of the Clean Air Act — a law it itself enacted over 4 decades ago. "The EPA is officially proposing to ignore acknowledged risk levels that are 70 times higher than allowed by law," said John Walke, Clean Air Program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Under the law's provision, the agency is supposed to first verify whether the first round of MACT (maximum achievable control technology) standards sufficiently reduces lifetime cancer risks from refinery pollution to less than 1-in-1 million.
If the risks exceed that figure, the EPA is supposed to mandate better controls to protect the public by lowering the risk levels. The EPA has disputed this provision, arguing that the appropriate threshold should be raised to 100-in-1 million. Since their analysis found emissions from oil refineries to pose risks of 70-in-1 million, agency officials have claimed that the best approach would be to do nothing.
Call us paranoid, but that doesn't exactly put our minds at ease. As Walke explained: "Nearly one in three Americans lives within 30 miles of a refinery. This ruling subjects the public to increased cancer risks and other chronic health hazards. Oil companies have the technology and the resources to fix this problem, but EPA wants to let them off the hook." Isn't it nice to know that our government has our best interests at heart?
Via ::Environment News Service: EPA Proposes to Ignore Oil Refinery Air Pollution (news website)
See also: ::BP: Short for "Bad Pollution", ::Illinois Ups The Pressure On BP - Looking At Indiana-Issued Air Permit, ::Fewer EPA Cops on the Beat
Image courtesy of northbaywanderer via flickr
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Living within 30 miles of at least one oil refinery, this worries me.
what gets me about this is that it is basically for peanuts. chump change.
it may be an issue of the cost benefits being poorly worded, but it seems that this 4 million is for the industry as a whole. divided evenly over the 153 refineries, that is 26 thousand in savings each, less than the yearly wage of one janitor (in the basic chemical manufacturing industry, janitors average 31,360 per year, http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes372011.htm).
i am always amazed not by the fact that businesses such as this will destroy the environment or put consumers at great risk, but that they will do it for such small amounts of money.
The oil sands in Alberta are responsible for a staggering 20% of all of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, and it's set to undergo fivefold expansion by 2020.
5 barrels of water and 1000 cubic meters of natural gas for every one barrel of reformed bitumen. (not counting the carbon that will be releaed when the oil is eventually burned).
Check out VBS.tv's documentary TOXIC ALBERTA for more on this, plus a heartbreaking look at how poor planning is leaving people desperate and homeless in a boom town.
But don't put up wind mills cause they're... ugly.
Yes, let's just ignore this whole issue of pollution and global warming because it's just bad for the economy. This has been ongoing since the dawn of industrialization so I shouldn't be surprised.
I hope everyone will please take the time to write to their government reps to let them know this is unacceptable. Also, write the directors of the EPA to do the same.
And lastly, write to your potential candidates for 2008 because they need to know what people want *before* they get into power - they will be doing so much networking during their campaigns and this could make a real impact on what pollution and energy bills are passed.
All of these can be assessed via online e-mail communications.
I worked for big oil company for 15 years in the up stream part of it. Not nearly as bad as refining end of things. I always noticed that 3 to 5 times as many people died in service at the refineries. Their was a lot less pensions payed for those poor soles in my less than scientific serve.