Image credit: Bryan Parras
Along with the cold weather that impacted Texans this month came thousands of pounds of uncontrolled and unmonitored air pollution from refineries, chemical plants, and gas processing plants. Using loopholes in state environmental laws that allow large emergency flares to dump unlimited amounts of unburned chemicals into the air, Texas neighborhoods living downwind of these facilities got a big dose of extra pollution.
From excessive flaring in Texas City and Valero in Houston’s Manchester community to gas releases in West Texas, communities were hit hard not only by the freeze but also by pollution. As temperatures dropped between February 2 and February 7, Texas industrial facilities reported releasing thousands of pounds of toxic pollution. The sad fact is that accurate air pollution amounts are likely much higher, but without more precise air monitoring systems, we’re left with crude engineering estimates. These releases – known as “emission events” for the reporting of “excess” amounts of air pollution by the companies who file them – are the unfortunate result of a state-level system designed to let polluters off the hook.
The Sierra Club has a lot to say about this broken system, but before we get into the weeds, let’s take a look at exactly what happened last week.
According to self-reported company data submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Texas industrial facilities reported at least 77 separate pollution incidents that began and ended sometime between February 2, 2022 to February 7, 2022. Some incidents lasted a short time while others lasted as long as a full day. Almost all of them involved dumping pollution into downwind communities. And they were occurring everywhere from the Gulf Coast to East Texas to Dallas to West Texas.
Two of the most egregious events were the 12 hours of flaring at the Valero Refining facility in Manchester; and a power outage in a local private grid in Texas City which led to the Valero Texas City Refining facility spewing a combination of sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (bearing carcinogenic carbon compounds that are unburned VOC chemicals), and other pollutants for 24 hours (mainly from its large elevated flare system).
Smoke is toxic. It’s known to contain complex benzenes called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, and are recognized as cancer-causing substances. PAHs are typically found in tiny smoke particles classified by the EPA as fine particles (or PM2.5) because they are microscopic - less than 2.5 microns in size. The tiny size of PM2.5 soot particles allows them to rapidly enter the delicate lung tissue or alveolar sacs where they enter the bloodstream. Soot and other pollutants then trigger asthmatic attacks and other breathing problems.
Smoking flares mean that the burning of the volatile organic compounds is incomplete, and that causes thousands of toxic chemicals to be spewed into the air as invisible gasses and visible smoke, especially if the flares are improperly designed such as being too small to handle the mass volume of chemicals during a major process incident of equipment failure and shutdown. Well designed emergency flares should not smoke if they are properly designed to handle the maximum capacities from process units, operated properly using the correct steam assist ratios going to the flares, and well maintained in cases where the refractory materials and flare structure need regular inspections.
Are industrial plants improperly designed to handle upsets and SSM (Start-Up, Shut-down and Malfunction) events?
A key question to ask is: Are hundreds of older Texas industrial plants improperly designed to safely process the large volumes of gasses inside massive process units such as ethylene and propylene cracking towers several stories tall?
A majority of the area’s petrochemical factories don’t have tools to contain or destroy waste gas when they have to shut down quickly. These could include above ground storage or below ground storage capacity to handle the large volumes of gasses during SSM events or robust flare gas recovery systems (FGRS) to safely destroy waste gases. As a result they burn off or “flare” excess gases causing heavy smoke in violation of TCEQ’s Regulation I rule that prohibits smoking events for more than five minutes in a two-hour period. Smoking events are unsafe but are all too routine in Texas.
Residents of the Midland-Odessa area were affected again with a variety of oil and gas infrastructure failing as icy conditions gripped the Permian Basin. Incidents were reported at gas processing plants, tank batteries, and pipeline facilities. As is often the case, a variety of pollutants were emitted in West Texas as a result, including methane - the main component of gas and a climate disruptor.
Example - Valero’s Texas City Refinery, February 4-5
In the case of Texas City, the refinery’s flare system blasted out a dirty mix of propylene, particulate matter (unburned toxic VOCs), and sulfur dioxide for at least twelve hours according to its self-report. How would you like to be living next to this refinery while it is emitting these high levels of pollution? How would you like it if you had to breathe this toxic air during a freeze and in a home that also had no power? That is what happened in Texas City.
For more info: Power outage in Texas City leaves nearly 20,000 customers in the dark, forces plants to flare, officials say
In all, according to the self-report, over 374 pounds of particulate matter, 9,231 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 144 pounds of propylene were emitted from two different flares. The facility has no specific authorization to emit either particulate matter nor propylene, while the sulfur dioxide emissions were 10 times their limits.
Example: Valero - Manchester City, February 7
The Valero Manchester event, which lasted “only” 12 hours, had slightly lower amounts of pollution released on February 7, but nonetheless was a massive pollution plume in the community, as can be seen in this local news footage.
For more info: Valero Houston Refinery flare putting off thick smoke in southeast Houston
Again, according to the self-reports, Valero emitted some 156 pounds of butenes (0 pounds allowed), 251 pounds of Nitrogen Oxides (about twice their permit limits), 450 pounds of particulate matter (0 pounds allowed), 329 pounds of propylene (0 pounds allowed) and about 1,060 pounds of sulfur dioxide. In most cases, those emissions busted through permit limits, but under Texas’s affirmative defense rules will likely lead to no enforcement action.
Sierra Club community organizer Bryan Parras also took this illustrative video from a nearby roadway. Videos are worth a thousand words: DSC_6929.MOV
So how did Texas allow this to happen?
As bad as the pollution itself was, what folks might not be aware of is that Texas’s “SSM” (start-ups, shut-downs, and malfunctions) rules highly favor industry’s right to pollute with virtually no repercussions. For years, community organizations and the Sierra Club have been bringing lawsuits and comments against Texas’s weak loophole riddled flaring rules that provide a quasi-legal cover for industry during non-normal operations. Other than their requirement to report emission events to TCEQ, industries face little repercussion from these out-of-the-ordinary (except they seem to happen all the time) emission events from TCEQ. Indeed, Texas industries currently are allowed to declare an “affirmative defense” of their pollution, protecting them from robust enforcement action.
According to a recent report of state data analyzed by the Environmental Integrity Project and the Environment Texas Research and Policy Center, Texas industries reported releasing 46 million pounds of illegal air pollution in 2020, a decrease of 54 percent from 2019 caused by the COVID-19 economic downturn.
The emissions last year during industrial accidents, shutdowns, and other “upset” events were about a third lower than the 72 million pound average over the previous five years, but in 2021 both Uri and hurricanes plagued the Lone Star State.
It is important to remember that industries are required to report emission events to TCEQ within 24 hours of the event, but it is also important to note that industry often later files corrected reports. Flares are the primary air pollution sources during SSM events at refineries, chemical plants, and gas processing plants, but other equipment may be involved as well unless a plant specifies that the emissions are solely from the elevated flares.
Unfortunately, unless the particular facility has been required to install continuous air pollution monitoring (VOCs, PM2.5, SO2, H2S, NOx, CO) equipment on the large elevated emergency flare systems, the flared volumes of pollution reported are simply estimates based on emission factors. However, air monitoring CEMS do exist (except for VOCs and PM2.5) on all the heaters, boilers, cracking towers, sulfur recovery units, and other major equipment burning fossil fuels. Thus, the emission event reporting from the flares should be viewed as a “best guess” of impacts. It is also important to note that each individual event could have a multitude of causes, from the freezing temperatures to operator errors to other issues unrelated to the winter weather.
Context: What is happening with SSM rules?
After years of inaction, in 2015, the Obama EPA issued a directive known as the Startup, Shutdown and Malfunction Rule (SSM). It stated that in Texas and 35 other states, industrial facilities had to follow legal guidelines when shutting down, starting up a plant, or suffering some sort of a malfunction that led to emissions. An example in Texas were the massive pollution events that occured when industries shut down operations in the hours before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017 and other areas of the Gulf Coast. Had it been fully implemented, the rule would have protected communities of color from massive amounts of pollution from refineries, coal plants , gas processing plants, and other sources of air pollution and toxics.
As Sierra Club’s attorney Andrea Issod wrote in a 2017 blog, “The SSM rule is an important public health protection that holds polluters accountable for massive pollution bursts that disproportionately impact low-income communities and communities of color who live around industrial plants. For far too long, polluters in certain states have taken advantage of SSM loopholes that allow unlimited amounts of harmful air pollution to be spewed into neighboring communities during regularly occurring startup, shutdown or malfunction events.”
Unfortunately, our own state government along with other states and industry groups went to court and successfully pressed the Trump administration’s EPA to file an order to reverse this rule, putting the communities that live nearby at increased health risk.
After the Trump Administration order, a broad coalition of environmental and community groups challenged the EPA’s plan to reopen the SSM loopholes in Texas. The coalition included Sierra Club, Air Alliance Houston, Citizens for Environmental Justice, Community In-Power & Development Association, Downwinders at Risk, Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, and Texas Campaign for the Environment.
“Before the COVID-19 outbreak, we already had people suffering from severe asthma, emphysema, and lung cancer in these communities, and now Trump’s EPA is trying to dump more pollution on us while we deal with the pandemic,” said Suzie Canales, Director of Citizens for Environmental Justice. “By reintroducing this loophole, Trump’s EPA is giving corporate coal plant and oil refinery polluters a reprieve from their responsibility to not poison us, and leaving us to fend for ourselves during a national emergency.”
The Biden Administration has announced it will revisit the SSM Rules, and consider not only putting the 2015 rule back in place, but also beginning a wider rulemaking on these types of emissions. How that happens is complicated and it may take several years to sort out the rulemaking and existing court cases on this issue. EPA has asked the court to send the rule back to the agency and that is where it is now. We have been advocating for the EPA to reissue the SIP Call rule for Texas ASAP.
We expect some action by the end of the year but unfortunately at the moment, many Texas communities have to bear the brunt of this regulatory inaction.
One potential additional fix could be Texas’s Sunset Commission, which is in the midst of a review of the TCEQ. The Sunset Commission is scheduled to release a preliminary report in April 2022 with a public meeting scheduled for this summer. In December 2021, forty-one organizations submitted the following recommendations to the Sunset Advisory Commission staff reviewing the TCEQ, including specific recommendations on SSM and upset emissions.
The Sierra Club will be working with our partners to submit additional recommendations, hosting public events and showing up in force at the official Sunset public hearings later this year. But in any case, even the sunset process will not be resolved until the Legislature is back in session in 2023.
“Our communities already face daily pollution burdens, but these events just add to the very real health impacts and respiratory distress,” noted Parras. “We need both the Sunset Commission and the Biden Administration to actually step up and protect Texans from this pollution, and from the local state agency that continues to allow it to happen.”