Groups sue to force EPA's hand on oil and gas emissions
The way environmental groups see it, there’s a gaping hole in what the public knows about toxic chemicals released into communities. A wide range of factories and facilities must report to a key federal inventory, but not the companies that extract oil and gas.
Environmental and open-government groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency two years ago to add the industry to its Toxics Release Inventory, saying the agency’s own estimate suggests those firms emit more hazardous air pollutants than any sector except power plants. The EPA has yet to respond. This morning nine groups sued to press for action.
“The oil and gas extraction industry is somewhat unique in being really almost the last major industry group not to report,” said the suit’s lead attorney, Adam Kron of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit group that presses for enforcement of pollution laws. “We’re not talking about a tiny industry that doesn’t matter.”
The EPA did not comment on the suit. A spokeswoman said the agency hadn't received it yet.
Related: EPA hopes disclosure leads to greenhouse gas reductions
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., doesn’t ask the court to order the EPA to include the extraction industry in the inventory — though that could be the subject of a later suit. For now, the plaintiffs simply want the EPA to act on the 2012 petition, whether yay or nay.
Two trade groups, the American Petroleum Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, did not respond to requests for comment. But the tug-of-war over the Toxics Release Inventory isn’t a new battle. The EPA considered including oil and gas extraction firms in the 1990s and chose not to do so.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a Pennsylvania-based industry group, argued in a response to the 2012 petition that the agency’s original decision remains the right one.
Though the industry has grown substantially since the 1990s, the many thousands of wells and related sites dotting rural and urban landscapes don’t individually emit enough chemicals to get above the threshold required for firms to report to the Toxics Release Inventory, the coalition said in a 2012 filing with the EPA.
Related: EPA's Toxics Release Inventory doesn't offer full picture of pollution
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Big Oil, Bad Air. Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
