ITC plume casts shadow
With Deer Park fire in mind, advocates fight company’s permit request
Patricia Gonzales felt flabbergasted when she saw the newspaper notice about Intercontinental Terminals Co. — a company whose name she wouldn’t forget after a 2019 fire at its Deer Park tank farm sent a plume of dark smoke over the region.
ITC was asking Texas’ environmental agency to adjust what pollution it was allowed to release from another tank farm, this one near Gonzales’ home in Pasadena. On the list: carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and particulate matter. The 52-year-old medical phone line operator, who had formed a nonprofit to advocate
for her community, alerted an attorney.
Gonzales wanted to understand what exactly ITC was proposing. She’d lived around petrochemical plants long enough to lose faith that they would necessarily do the right thing: “We don’t trust these refineries around here to be good stewards,” she said.
Air quality permit requests such as the one ITC is seeking are routine — in fact, the executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had already given preliminary approval to this one. But the company’s high profile caught the eye of advocates such as Gonzales and of attorneys, who argue the agency
is letting ITC off too easy.
TCEQ declined to comment on that criticism. But in emailed responses to questions, the agency said it had reviewed the permit and determined the emissions would harm neither the environment nor public health. An ITC spokesperson in a written statement reiterated similar points.
With the 2019 blaze and environmental disaster still on their minds, advocates simply contend state rules should be applied differently. In a public comment period soon to close, they’re making one last stand.
‘Stink-a-dena’
When she saw the news ad, Gonzales contacted Colin Cox, then an attorney for Lone Star Legal Aid. Cox learned TCEQ over the last decade had approved three separate permits for ITC to build out the Pasadena facility, which stores chemicals for transport.
The company applied in late 2018 to amend its air quality permit to reflect the as-built facility. That was common. What irked Cox was that the three earlier stages of permitting allowed ITC to represent the facility as three entities instead of one, thereby avoiding more stringent emissions regulations.
Harris County Pollution Control, in a letter dated Feb. 8, 2019, said it thought the company inappropriately classified what it was doing too.
ITC sees it differently. TCEQ approved each construction project with set emissions limits. A different type of permit, known as a Title V permit, regulates the storage terminal as a whole.
A public comment period ended March 22, 2019 — five days after the Deer Park facility first caught fire. Officials during the disaster ordered some residents to shelter in place after finding elevated levels of benzene, a carcinogen. Toxic runoff prompted a dayslong closure of the Houston Ship Channel. Schools sent kids home.
On the day the public comment period ended, after 11 tanks had burned, fires reignited again.
The Harris County Attorney’s Office requested TCEQ give residents another chance to weigh in.
On behalf of Gonzales’ advocacy group, Caring for Pasadena Communities, Cox too implored the agency to hold a public meeting and reconsider the facility’s pollution requirements.
“The Texans who live here desperately need an effective regulatory agency to safeguard their air quality,” Cox wrote in a December 2019 letter. “TCEQ must hold ITC to the appropriate standards.”
He reminded the agency that the situation was bad enough that people already call the city of Pasadena “Stink-a-dena.”
Another chance
People now have a chance to comment in light of the disaster. The formal comment period ends Friday.
On Jan. 12, TCEQ staff and ITC consultants took part in the statesponsored virtual public meeting that Cox had hoped for, prepared to answer any question. A translator was poised to explain everything on another line in Spanish.
Shanon DiSorbo, a consultant representing ITC, made the point again that the permit application was linked to “three discrete projects previously reviewed by TCEQ.”
An informal Q&A period ensued. Tedious answers were difficult to follow. About 25 people, including advocates, residents and reporters, listened.
Among them were Cox, now a staffer with the Environmental Integrity Project, and two other Lone Star Legal Aid attorneys, Heejin Hwang and Rodrigo Cantú, both of whom were working on the case and familiar with helping residents track complicated issues like this.
Hwang and Cantú agreed with Cox that ITC used a “false categorization,” as Hwang explained it, to avoid requirements on what are considered “major emitters.” The projects have instead been classified as minor, the attorneys said.
They believe the minor classification cuts ITC a break from tougher regulation.
“These are just additional checks on the facility and ways to further assure the public that the facility is not harming public health,” Hwang said. “So when TCEQ and the company choose to categorize their application and their permit so that it could avoid these additional requirements, then it reduces public confidence in what the facility is doing.”
Cox knew it wasn’t too late for the agency to address this; he didn’t think they would.
The moderator called for feedback. Four participants took the opportunity to excoriate the company and agency.
Michael Moritz, a 25-year-old engineer, learned about the meeting on Twitter. He remembered the Deer Park explosion. His advice to the agency was straightforward: It should “act for the citizens,” he said, “and not for the representation of a single private company.”
With that, the meeting closed. The agency’s executive director will respond next to the comments, then it can issue final approval of an application already found to be in compliance with the rules.