Major Malfunction
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Major Malfunction Air Pollution from Industrial Malfunctions and Maintenance in Texas in 2017 Major Malfunction Air Pollution from Industrial Malfunctions and Maintenance in Texas in 2017 Luke Metzger and Grant Durow, Environment Texas January 2019 Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the Environmental Integrity Project for providing the data for which this analy- sis was done. We also thank Josh Kratka of the National Environmental Law Center, Gabriel Clark-Leach and Ilan Levin of Environmental Integrity Project, Neil Carman of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and Adrian Shelley of Public Citizen for their review of drafts of this document, and for their valuable insights and suggestions. Thanks also to Brian Zabcik of Environment Texas and Elizabeth Ridlington of Frontier Group for editorial support. Environment Texas Research & Policy Center thanks Houston Endowment for making this report possible. The authors bear responsibility for any factual errors. The recommendations are those of Environment Texas Research & Policy Center. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our funders or those who provided review. 2018 Environment Texas Research & Policy Center. Some Rights Reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 U.S. License. To view the terms of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/3.0/us. Environment Texas Research & Policy Center is a 501(c)(3) organization. We are dedicated to protecting our air, water and open spaces. We investigate problems, craft solutions, educate the public and decision-makers, and help the public make their voices heard in local, state and national debates over the quality of our environment and our lives. For more information about Environment Texas Research & Policy Center or for additional copies of this report, please visit www.environmenttexascenter.org. Layout: To The Point Collaborative, tothepointcollaborative.com Cover: Valero oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. Credit: Environmental Integrity Project/Garth Lenz, International League of Conservation Photographers Table of Contents Executive Summary . 4 Air Pollution in Texas ...................................................9 Top Polluters During Emissions Events . 11 Clean Air Permitting and Enforcement . 18 How Texas handles emissions events .............................................................18 Few violations result in penalties .................................................................20 Enforcement under attack .......................................................................22 Conclusion and Recommendations .......................................24 Methodology ..........................................................26 Appendices . 29 Notes . 37 Executive Summary ndustrial facilities in Texas continue to violate According to reports filed by companies through their Clean Air Act permits by releasing large the State of Texas Electronic Emissions Reporting amounts of air contaminants during “emissions System (STEERS) in 20172, 275 companies report- Ievents” or “upsets” — the regulatory terms used to ed 4,067 breakdowns, maintenance incidents, describe unauthorized emissions from equipment and other emissions events that resulted in breakdowns, process malfunctions, operator errors or the release of more than 63 million pounds of maintenance work. illegal air pollution. Emissions events are supposed to be accidental, Some pollutants, including benzene and par- unanticipated releases of air pollution. However, the ticulate matter, are especially harmful to human data show that these events occur so frequently as health. Two Houston-area facilities —Magellan’s to be almost routine at some facilities, and often Galena Park Terminal and Dow’s Freeport chemi- involve large releases of health threatening pollution. cal plant— took the top two spots statewide A recent study found that emissions events in Texas for unauthorized releases of benzene, a known lead to the premature deaths of at least 16 people carcinogen. and $148 million in health-related costs per year.1 Photo: Staff Dow Chemical Company, Freeport, Texas. 4 MAJOR MALFUNCTION §¥†‡ Table ES-1: Top 10 Emitters of Benzene During Malfunction and Maintenance4, 2017 Rank Facility Name Facility Owner County Total Pounds 1 Galena Park Terminal Magellan Terminals Holdings, Harris 12,835 Seaway Pipeline Inc., KM Liquids Terminals LLC 2 Dow Texas Operations Freeport The Dow Chemical Company Brazoria 8,870 3 Flint Hills Resources Port Arthur Flint Hills Resources Port Arthur, LLC Jefferson 6,712 Facility 4 Big Tony Compressor Station MarkWest Energy East Texas Gas Company Panola 4,797 5 Chevron Phillips Chemical Cedar Chevron Phillips Chemical Company Harris 4,215 Bayou Plant 6 Shell Oil Deer Park Shell Oil Company and Harris 4,156 Shell Chemical LP 7 Equistar Corpus Christi Plant Equistar Chemicals, LP Nueces 4,030 8 Exxon Mobil Chemical Baytown Exxon Mobil Corporation Harris 3,604 Olefins Plant 9 Silvertio 76 17 Unit P 1H Anadarko E&P Onshore LLP Loving 2,338 10 Parks Compressor Station Targa Pipeline Mid-Continent WestTex LLC Midland 2,274 Photo: Environmental Integrity Project/Garth Lenz, International League of Conservation Photographers Valero’s Port Arthur refinery had the high- est unauthorized emissions of particulate matter, linked to a range of cardiovas- cular problems, including heart attacks, strokes, and congestive heart failure3, fol- lowed by Arkema’s Crosby chemical plant and Phillips 66’s oil refinery in Borger. Members of the public submitted hun- dreds of complaints to the Texas Com- mission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) regarding emissions events in 20175. In one case, after the Seminole Gas Process- ing Plant in west Texas reported an unau- thorized release of more than 1.1 million Valero oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. pounds of sulfur dioxide over the course Executive Summary 5 Table ES-2: Top 10 Emitters of Particulate Matter During Malfunction and Maintenance, 2017 Rank Facility Name Facility Owner County Total Pounds 1 Valero Port Arthur Refinery The Premcor Refining Group Inc. Jefferson 287,810 2 Arkema Crosby Plant Arkema Inc. Harris 20,180 3 Borger Refinery Phillips 66 Company Hutchinson 12,033 4 Pasadena Refining System Pasadena Refining System Inc. Harris 11,958 5 Sweeny Refinery Phillips 66 Company Brazoria 9,921 6 Valero McKee Refinery Diamond Shamrock Refining Company, LP Moore 9,851 7 Western Refining El Paso Western Refining Company, LP El Paso 3,308 8 Marshall Plant Cabot Norit Americas, Inc. Harrison 3,186 9 Owens Corning Insulating Owens Corning Insulating Systems, LLC Ellis 2,145 Systems Waxahachie Plant 10 ISP Technologies Texas City Plant ISP Technologies Inc. Galveston 1,921 of sixteen days6, a complaint was filed with the Despite the thousands of violations totaling hundreds TCEQ alleging that the emissions were “impact- of millions of pounds of unauthorized pollution, and ing children at a summer camp.”7 despite hundreds of citizen complaints, the vast major- Figure ES-1. Enforcement Actions Agains Emissions Events 2011-2017 6 MAJOR MALFUNCTION ity of violations escape any consequence. The TCEQ an emissions event as a separate violation10, a levied financial penalties against just 58 facilities practice called “speciation,” TCEQ could collect in 2017 8. Looking back over the last seven years, the as much as $2.3 billion in fines for 2017 emissions total number of enforcement orders filed by TCEQ events. is less than 3 percent of the total number of emis- TCEQ has wide discretion in determining the sions events recorded by the agency in that time. amount of a penalty and rarely assesses the maxi- The trend since 2011 is that enforcement actions are mum. The agency’s penalty policy11 directs staff to declining. calculate a penalty based on factors including the In the few cases when fines are issued at all, the degree of harm and a facility’s past record of com- fines are on average a fraction of what TCEQ is au- pliance. In 2017, TCEQ levied a total of $1,281,047 in thorized to levy. Under state law, TCEQ is authorized fines for emissions events12, or $0.02 per pound of to collect penalties as high as $25,000 per day per unauthorized emissions. violation9. To fill the void, environmental groups and local • If TCEQ levied the maximum penalty against governments in Texas have been forced to file suit emissions events in 2017, using the agency’s to enforce air pollution limits when the government practice of counting each 24-hour period of an fails to do so. event as a single violation regardless of how • Last year, Petrobras’s Pasadena Refining Systems, many individual pollutants were released, they Inc. — which had ranked number one in Texas could have collected at least $277 million in fines. for unauthorized releases of particulate matter • If instead the TCEQ followed the practice of the in 2016 according to a 2017 study13 — settled a EPA and the Texas Attorney General’s Office lawsuit with Environment Texas and the Sierra and counted each pollutant released during Club, agreeing to reduce emissions events and Photo: Staff Pasadena Refining Systems Incorporated, Pasadena, Texas. Executive Summary 7 pay a $3.5 million penalty14. Since our first analy- • Revoke a facility’s permit after repeated viola- sis of emissions events in 2016 and since the tions until the facility implements plans to citizen lawsuit was filed against it, Petrobras has return