Study shows some Louisiana refineries among top U.S. water polluters
The oil industry plays a big role in Louisiana’s economy, as does the seafood industry. Both employ thousands of workers and generate billions in economic activity and tax dollars.
On several levels, the two industries are intertwined. Recreational fishers know that some of the best catches can be had near or under oil and gas rigs. Refinery owners likewise know they have a legal and moral duty not to adversely impact our fisheries by discharging dangerous levels of pollutants into local waterways.
There’s the rub. We’ve long supported Louisiana’s oil and gas industry because of its enormous economic impact, but we cannot ignore the findings of a recent study of 81 U.S. refineries conducted by the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit that advocates for better enforcement and implementation of environmental laws. The EIP study found eight south Louisiana refineries discharging some of the nation’s highest concentrations of heavy metals, nitrogen and other pollutants into rivers, estuaries and other waterways.
The refineries are not the only ones at fault. The study also points a finger at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental regulators for failing to enforce federal Clean Water Act standards that have been in place for decades.
Many of those standards, the study adds, have failed to keep pace with advances in water treatment methods.
Some Louisiana refineries appear multiple times on the nation’s top 10 water polluters lists:
— The Marathon refinery along the Mississippi River in Garyville ranked fourth for releases of nickel and eighth for selenium discharges. Those two toxic metals, even in minute quantities, can mutate fish, mangle their reproductive systems and travel up the food chain. Worse, the EIP study notes that EPA does not limit refinery discharges for either nickel or selenium.
— The Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles ranked seventh for nickel discharges and fifth for ammonia releases. Phillips’ Alliance refinery near Belle Chasse ranked first for ammonia releases and ninth for discharges of nitrogen, a major contributor to algae blooms and massive “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico. Phillips closed its Alliance refinery in late 2021, citing damage from Hurricane Ida.
— The Exxon Mobil refinery in Baton Rouge ranked 10th for selenium discharges and sixth for the release of “total dissolved solids,” a cocktail of byproducts from the refining process that can boost water salinity, harming fish and tainting public water systems.
— The Citgo Lake Charles refinery ranked seventh in ammonia discharges and eighth in nitrogen pollution.
Louisiana refineries comprised half of the top 10 ammonia polluters. Besides the three named above, the Valero refinery in Norco ranked second, and the Chalmette Refinery ranked eighth. Ammonia can harm the internal organs of fish and other animals.
The EIP is a credible source for this kind of information. Its co-founder and executive director, Eric Schaeffer, served as director of EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement from 1997 to 2002. The organization’s mission is to show how regulators’ failure to enforce and implement environmental laws increases pollution — and to hold regulators as well as polluters accountable for failing to enforce or comply with environmental laws.
Years ago, the feds delegated environmental enforcement to the states through the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act — subject to EPA oversight. In Louisiana, the Department of Environmental Quality bears that responsibility in addition to enforcing state regulations.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan recently visited “cancer alley” in the River Parishes and promised to improve enforcement. The EIP study offers a blueprint for updating those relevant standards, which were last revised in 1985. It also sounds a clarion call for better enforcement of existing laws — and enhanced monitoring — by both federal and state regulators.