Court ruling could clamp down on Calif. refinery emissions
Los Angeles Times 12/19/2008 – Toxic air pollution spikes from California’s 21 refineries may be sharply curtailed following a U.S. Court of Appeals decision in Washington on Friday.
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, shut-downs and equipment outages.
The lawsuit also accused industrial complexes in Texas and Louisiana of unnecessarily emitting large quantities of toxic gases.
Public health advocates in Southern California’s oil refinery hub hailed the decision, saying facilities routinely operate in malfunction mode to evade pollution caps.
“We are elated,” said Jesse Marquez, head of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for a Safe Environment, a plaintiff in the suit.
The Environmental Protection Agency regulation amounted to a “gaping loophole” according to the plaintiffs, represented by Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm. “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 refineries near the Port of Los Angeles during power outages in 2005 and 2007. The refineries could not be prosecuted because of the EPA regulation, the suit said.
