State to limit discharge of chemicals
Water-pollution permit renewal requires alerts to be sent after spills
Colorado issued a new, long-overdue water-pollution permit to Suncor Energy on Wednesday that restricts the amount of “forever chemicals” and other harmful pollutants the company’s Commerce City refinery can discharge into Sand Creek, an important source of water for drinking and agricultural irrigation in the state.
Officials with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment touted the new permit as more stringent than previous water-pollution permits that have regulated the oil refinery.
It’s the first time the refinery’s permit will limit the amount of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — also known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals” — that are discharged into Sand Creek. The permit also will add first-time limitations on salt, arsenic and a group of compounds known as BTEX that are dumped into the water.
State officials said the permit’s conditions were crafted after countless meetings with environmental advocates and people who live near the refinery.
“It’s more restrictive than the previous permit in a couple of ways,” said Trisha Oeth, the state health department’s director of environmental health and protection. “One, it will limit the amount of pollutants that Suncor can discharge into Sand Creek and other downstream waters. There’s also a component in there to prevent future spills and seeps, so there’s a really robust inspection and maintenance requirement.”
The permit also will require Suncor to begin sending emergency notifications to the public when it spills toxic chemicals into the creek so people know the dangers of fishing or swimming in the water, Oeth said.
Leithan Slade, a spokesman for the Canadian energy company, said Suncor officials just received the new permit Wednesday morning and were reviewing it. He declined to comment further.
Environmentalists who weighed in during the state’s permitting process were poring over the permit Wednesday to learn what measures were in it. Already, some found weaknesses.
Mike Freeman, a senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office, said the permit gives Suncor an “extraordinarily long time to comply with permit limits.”
The company won’t have to meet its PFAS limits at its main discharge point for three years. For several other pollutants, Suncor will get more than six years to comply, Freeman said.
“That timeline is problematic because this is only a five-year permit,” he said. “In other words, this permit should expire before Suncor would have to comply with these limits.”
The water permit next will be sent to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has 90 days to approve or reject it.
Suncor is Colorado’s only refinery and it faces intense scrutiny from environmentalists and people who live in the neighborhoods that surround the Commerce City plant who are concerned about the large amounts of pollution it pumps into the air and water. That public pressure has pushed state environmental regulators to tighten the rules the refinery operates under.
In past years, Suncor has operated under two waterpollution permits, but the state consolidated those into one this time.
The new permit will regulate wastewater pollution from outfalls that discharge chemicals used in the refining process into Sand Creek. The largest discharge point, known as Outfall 20, pours up to 3.5 million gallons of water daily into the creek.
The permit also will regulate stormwater pipes where rain and snowmelt run off Suncor’s property into sewer systems and streams. Three of those stormwater pipes have been reclassified as wastewater outfalls because of the amount of pollutants they release into waterways, said Kaitlyn Beekman, a spokeswoman for the water quality control division.
Suncor’s water permits were last renewed in 2012 and are supposed to be updated every five to seven years. However, the state health department did not start the current renewal process until 2021.
It took almost three years to craft the latest permit because of the extensive number of public hearings the state held and because it issued more than one request for information from Suncor, Oeth said.
“All of that is to make sure that with these more stringent requirements that we got it right and that we’re going to withstand any challenges,” she said.
The amount of PFAS that Suncor is allowed to discharge has been a growing concern within environmental circles.
Sand Creek was listed in 2019 as one of Colorado’s PFAS hotspots because of the chemicals that run into the water from the refinery.
The new permit will limit Suncor’s PFAS discharges to 70 parts per trillion per day at each wastewater outfall. Suncor has until May 1, 2027, to get into compliance at Outfall 20.
But it must comply with the 70-parts-per-trillion limit at three other wastewater outfalls by May 1, 2025, Beekman said.