Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Trump
Administration Allows Thousands of Corporations to Bypass Environmental Rules
E. Knickmeyer, C. Bussewitz, J. Flesher, M.
Brown, M. Casey
August 24, 2020
Associated Press/PBS
Thousands of oil and gas operations, government
facilities and other sites won permission to stop monitoring for hazardous
emissions or otherwise bypass rules intended to protect health and the
environment because of the coronavirus outbreak, The Associated Press has
found.
The result: approval for less environmental
monitoring at some Texas refineries and at an army depot dismantling warheads
armed with nerve gas in Kentucky, manure piling up and the mass disposal of
livestock carcasses at farms in Iowa and Minnesota, and other risks to
communities as governments eased enforcement over smokestacks, medical waste
shipments, sewage plants, oilfields and chemical plants.
The Trump administration paved the way for the
reduced monitoring on March 26 after being pressured by the oil and gas
industry, which said lockdowns and social distancing during the pandemic made
it difficult to comply with anti-pollution rules. States are responsible for
much of the oversight of federal environmental laws, and many followed with
leniency policies of their own.
AP’s two-month review found that waivers were
granted in more than 3,000 cases, representing the overwhelming majority of
requests citing the outbreak. Hundreds of requests were approved for oil and
gas companies. AP reached out to all 50 states citing open-records laws; all
but one, New York, provided at least partial information, reporting the data in
differing ways and with varying level of detail.
Almost all those requesting waivers told
regulators they did so to minimize risks for workers and the public during a
pandemic — although a handful reported they were trying to cut costs.
The Environmental Protection Agency says the
waivers do not authorize recipients to exceed pollution limits. Regulators will
continue pursuing those who “did not act responsibly under the circumstances,”
EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in an email.
But environmentalists and public health experts
say it may be impossible to fully determine the impact of the country’s first
extended, national environmental enforcement clemency because monitoring
oversight was relaxed. “The harm from this policy is already done,” said
Cynthia Giles, EPA’s former assistant administrator under the Obama
administration.
EPA has said it will end the COVID enforcement
clemency this month.
Refinery giant Marathon Petroleum, already
struggling financially before the pandemic, was one of the most aggressive in
seeking to dial back its environmental monitoring. On the same day EPA
announced its new policy, the Ohio-based company asked Indiana officials for
relief from its leak detection, groundwater sampling, spill prevention,
emissions testing and hazardous waste responsibilities at its facilities
statewide.
“We believe that by taking these measures, we
can do our part to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus,” Tim Peterkoski,
environmental auditing and processes manager for Marathon Petroleum, told the
Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Marathon also pushed for and was granted
permission to skip environmental tests at many of its refineries and gas
stations in California, Michigan, North Dakota and Texas.
Spokesman Jamal Kheiry said Marathon sought
broad regulatory relief early in the pandemic, when it was uncertain how long
lockdowns would last or how its operations would be affected. But the company
continued emissions monitoring and other activities and usually met deadlines,
he said.
Penny Aucoin, a resident of New Mexico’s
oil-rich Permian Basin, said since the pandemic, she and her husband have spent
days begging regulators to investigate surges of noxious gas or hisses that
they feared could signal a dangerous leak from one of the many oil and gas
companies operating near their mobile home.
“There’s nobody watching,” Aucoin said. “A lot
of stuff is going wrong. And there’s nobody to fix it.”
Maddy Hayden, New Mexico’s environmental
spokesperson, said her agency stopped in-person investigations of citizen
air-quality complaints from March to May to protect staff and the public but
stood ready to respond to emergencies.
Almost every state reported fielding requests
from industries and local governments to cut back on compliance. Many were for
activities like delaying in-person training or submitting records by email
rather than paper. Others, however, were requests for temporary exemptions or
extensions on monitoring and repairs to stop the flow of harmful soot, toxic
compounds, disease-carrying contaminants or heavy metals, AP found.
Regulators, for example, waived in-person
inspections at parts of a former nuclear test site in Nevada, switching to
drive-by checks.
North Carolina allowed Chemours Co., which is
cleaning up dangerous PFAS industrial compounds in drinking water, to pause
sampling of residential wells because it would require entering elderly
residents’ homes.
Saint-Gobain, whose New Hampshire plant has
been linked by the state to water contaminated with PFAS chemicals, has
requested delaying smokestack upgrades that would address the problem. The
company says the delays are necessary partly due to problems the company’s
suppliers and contractors have faced because of the coronavirus.
State Rep. Rosemarie Rung, a Democrat who uses
bottled water due to the PFAS contamination, said the company was “just
dragging their feet.”
The AP’s findings run counter to statements in
late June by Susan Bodine, EPA’s assistant administrator for enforcement, who
told lawmakers the pandemic was not causing “a significant impact on routine
compliance, monitoring and reporting” and that industry wasn’t widely seeking
relief from monitoring.
A separate analysis of EPA enforcement data
shows 40% fewer tests of smokestacks were conducted in March and April compared
with the same period last year, according to the Environmental Data and
Governance Initiative, a network of academics and non-profits.
Hewitt, the EPA spokesman, said the agency did
not know why there were fewer tests but pointed to the plunge in economic
activity accompanying the pandemic, and said closed facilities would have been
unable to test smokestacks.
Oil and gas companies received a green light to
skip dozens of scheduled tests and inspections critical for ensuring safe
operations, such as temporarily halting or delaying tests for leaks or checking
on tank seals, flare stacks, emissions monitoring systems or engine
performance, which could raise the risk of explosions.
Taken together, the missed inspections for
leaks could add hundreds or thousands of tons of greenhouse gases to the
atmosphere, and could be making refinery work more dangerous, said Coyne
Gibson, a former oil and gas engineer and a member of the Big Bend Conservation
Alliance in Texas.
“The whole point of leak detection is to avoid
people being harmed from a leak of toxic material,” said Victor Flatt,
environmental law professor at the University of Houston. “If you suspend leak
detection, you don’t even know if it’s happening.”
Monitoring and other pollution regulations
often are depicted as legally mandated paperwork requirements, said Philip J.
Landrigan, a biology professor and director of the Program for Global Public
Health and the Common Good at Boston College. But air pollution alone increases
risks of heart disease, stroke, lung disease and premature births, and when
environmental standards are not held to, “as surely as night follows day there
are going to be an increased number of deaths from those causes,” Landrigan
said.
EPA’s policy was “primarily related to record
keeping, training and flexibility in the timing of routine inspections where
there may have been limited personnel or capabilities due to COVID-19,” said
Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president at
The American Petroleum Institute, which pushed
for the policy. He maintained the industry’s pollution control equipment
continues to operate.
In North Dakota, regulators granted
Oklahoma-based ONEOK’s request to bypass groundwater sampling at its natural
gas liquids processing plant in Garden Creek, where regulators said at least
837,000 gallons of natural gas liquids have spilled from a leak since 2015.
ONEOK skipped sampling because of safety
concerns about third-party contractors traveling during the pandemic, and the
company resumed sampling in June, spokesman Brad Borror said.
"Almost every state reported fielding
requests from industries and local governments to cut back on compliance."
Some states were generous with exemptions.
Arkansas granted a blanket, months-long waiver to oil and gas companies for
safety testing of temporarily abandoned wells and other activities.
Alaska authorized delayed inspections at dozens
of massive tanks used to store petroleum, and let companies defer drills
designed to ensure they can quickly respond to major oil spills. It also said
the state would take no action against companies for not complying with some
air pollution regulations in instances related to COVID-19.
In Wyoming, regulators gave breaks on air
emissions rules in about 300 cases, mostly for oil and gas companies, including
ExxonMobil and Sinclair.
It wasn’t just huge industry that requested the
exemptions.
As supply chains broke down at the start of the
outbreak, Minnesota granted more than 90 waivers on how many animals could be
stuffed into feedlots, potentially raising risks of water contamination from
manure. Farms and landfills in Iowa received variances on animal disposal
regulations to allow for the mass burial and composting of livestock.
Michigan approved or was reviewing requests
from several cities to delay replacing lead water pipes or testing for lead,
spurred in some instances by the Flint water crisis.
Eric Schaeffer, a former director of EPA’s
office of civil enforcement under President George W. Bush, dismissed
assurances from governments that reducing monitoring during the outbreak
wouldn’t lead to a surge in pollutants.
“It’s like saying we’re going to remove the
radar guns and remove speedometers, but you still have to comply with the speed
limit,” said Schaeffer, now head of the Environmental Integrity Project advocacy
group. “That doesn’t make sense.”
The following Associated Press reporters
contributed to this story. Ellen Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City, Cathy
Bussewitz reported from New York City, John Flesher reported from Traverse
City, Michigan, Matthew Brown reported from Billings, Montana, and Michael
Casey reported from Boston.
Donations
can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame
Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email:
mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
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