Keep our air clean
When federal leadership fails, corporations have a responsibility to do the right thing.
Just because a person has a leadership role in the current or any administration doesn’t mean that he is knowledgeable in his role. And when an embattled leader like Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt takes a wrong turn, the companies under the agency’s jurisdiction shouldn’t just follow along as a matter of course.
We’re talking about Pruitt’s reckless reversal of a 1995 policy under which all “major” air polluters, such as power plants and factories, would always be regulated under stricter standards. This would hold even if the companies reduced pollution. In the Houston-Galveston area, the 18 facilities that fit that bill include Huntsman Petrochemical Plant in Conroe, Geon-Oxy Vinyl in La Porte and the Equistar Chemicals La Porte Complex in La Porte, according to a report released Tuesday by the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit.
Although historically voluntary compliance by industry hasn’t always been productive, we urge Oiltanking Texas City Terminal in Texas City, Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., Pasadena Plastics Complex in Pasadena and the other companies potentially affected by the reversal to be good citizens in this situation and refrain from lowering their standards.
If all eligible facilities use the loophole to the maximum extent possible, the amount of hazardous air pollutants emitted could increase by 146 percent annually to a total of 450 tons, according to the report. It’s hard to grasp a number that size, but it’s four times the weight of a blue whale, the largest mammal on earth.
It should give all 18 companies pause that there was no federal analysis of the potential health effects of this change in policy or even whether the likely benefits would be greater than the potential environmental costs.
The nonprofit report’s analysis showed that many of the 18 facilities are located in communities in the Houston-Galveston area that are highly vulnerable to the harmful effects of air pollution. There are nine hospitals and 78 schools located within a three-mile radius of these facilities, according to the report. Some of these schools and hospitals are located within three miles of more than one facility that might increase its emissions of hazardous air.
Half of these facilities are located in areas where more than 1 in 5 people live in poverty and where people of color make up more than 30 percent of the population.
The affected companies can’t fall back on the comfort of process here either. Responsible leaders involve stakeholders in decision-making before taking action. Pruitt didn’t bother asking for public input before the withdrawal. Instead, EPA has said that it will seek public comment on the withdrawal of the rule — after the fact.
Corporations do have ethical responsibilities that go beyond their employees’ individual moral duties, and those responsibilities may sometimes include leading when federal leadership falls short. Area corporations should show Pruitt what responsible stewardship of the air looks like and ignore his precipitous reversal.