Reply #4: and from yesterday: EPA lets refineries miss deadline [View All]

[maddezmom]

EPA lets refineries miss deadline - again
Associated Press

FORT WORTH -- Federal officials have quietly allowed the nation's oil refineries to miss court-ordered deadlines to reduce air emissions, prolonging the public's exposure to dangerous pollutants, a newspaper investigation has found.

Nearly every time, the Environmental Protection Agency failed to tell the courts or the public about the deadline extensions, even when legal settlements required it to do so, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported today.

Because of those extensions, the EPA's Petroleum Refinery Initiative has not achieved the air quality improvements that the agency has claimed, the newspaper found.

Under the initiative, the EPA uses legal settlements known as consent decrees to resolve decades of alleged pollution violations. In return for installing pollution controls and paying a fine, companies are immediately released from all legal liability.

Tom Skinner, the EPA's top enforcement official, touted in an October news release that settlements under the initiative have reduced emissions of air pollutants by 200,000 tons per year at 48 refineries in 24 states.

But a review of data conducted by the newspaper found the reductions actually total only about a fifth of that amount.





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