Supreme Court Action on EPA "Loophole" 1

[sshep]

Did you guys see this: The US Supreme Court declined to review a decision by a lower court relative to pollution caused by plants during start-up, shutdown, and upsets. Basically this means that plants must comply with their permitted emission limits at all times, and enforcement agencies are not allowed to waive these limits.

http://www.eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2010/03/08/2

By effectively upholding the lower court ruling, there will be a lot more potential for fines, criminal liability, and civil cases against chemical plants and refineries. Could be a real wake-up for some companies.

Best wishes,
sshep

 

[MJCronin]

Its time to give up........ this is the last straw

In a year or two we will all be working at Wal-Mart anyway

 

[CJKruger]

sshep, thanks for this post, very interesting.

Do I understrand this correct: The EPA cannot relax your emission targets during startup, shutdown and malfunctions (SSM).

But can they have different fines for exceeding it during normal operation versus SSM ?

 

[dcasto]

In region 7, the EPA interperts permits this way for example.

When installing TEG dehydration, engineers typically design the gas inlet to be some nominal high temperature, say 110 F During the 2 or 3 hours per day, in jul;y and august when the gas temps go to 115, operations would just kick in that little bit of spare circulation capacity and move on. then in the winter, the pumps are slowed way dow. Net effect, the average TEG circulation is still lower than the expect worst case.

OH no, EPA now has us put recorders and we must demonstrate that TEG circulation is always under the permitted value every secon, no minute, hour, day, week, month or year averaging. There is no credit for a unit being down either.

 

[dcasto]

there is a loophole in the loophole that can be used. You'll need to fiquire it out, think OSHA.

 

[sshep]

My observation after 25 years in the industry is that although oil and chemical companies really are being allowed to profit unfairly at the expense of the environment and the public, there really needs to be a global mechanism to force periods of obscene profits (such as when oil reached $140/bbl) to be plowed back into modernization.

I am from the USA currently working in South Africa. While the government in RSA gives lip service to environmental targets, the real fact is that an almost unbearable stench daily blankets the town I live in. The haze from the plant makes it often unseeable from even 1 km away in mid afternoon. The particulate cloud is a brown streak in the sky visible for over 100km. Hundreds of tons of chemicals are often just vented off under an environmental accounting principle that if it can't be proved pollution left the site, then it is (somehow) rationalized to stay on the site. How can the USA compete with countries that are so environmentally lax?

My fear of this "loophole closure" is that heavy enforcement will make USA industries even less competitive than they already are with third world countries. We may indeed all end up working for Walmart.