Several environmental groups are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review and update its regulations governing industrial flares in a case that could have repercussions for Louisiana’s energy industry.
The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, contends that the EPA has failed to update two groups of air pollution standards for such flares, which are mechanisms that destroy pollutants in waste gases, including compounds that result in smog, through combustion. Such flares are used in petrochemical facilities, gas-processing plants and large landfills.
The EPA has not updated some of the standards governing industrial flares for 34 years, according to the complaint. The agency is mandated by statute to review and update such regulations every eight years, the lawsuit states.
Energy industry studies and EPA data has shown that the efficiency of the flares is well below the desired goal of eliminating 98 percent of the toxic emissions, according to the complaint. Many flares at ethylene production facilities are now operating under outdated requirements that reduce the efficiency to 90 percent or lower, the data shows.
“This means that those flares would emit five times as much pollution as a flare operating at 98 percent,” Adam Kron, an attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project who filed the lawsuit, told the Louisiana Record.
Energy facilities should be able to make relatively low-cost changes, such as adding better monitoring equipment and changing the location of monitoring equipment to better capture flares’ combustion zones, to comply with updated regulations, according to Korn.
“Our lawsuit would not force EPA to make any one specific update,” he said. “Rather, we’re asking EPA to comply with its duty to review the flare standards and then, using its own discretion, to determine what updates are needed, if any.”
The issue is particularly important to communities of color and lower-income regions, where oil and natural gas production and processing facilities, as well as other petrochemical plants, are disproportionately located, according to the complaint.
In Louisiana, the oil and gas industry generates an estimated one-quarter of state revenues and employs one-sixth of the state’s total workforce, a report by Southern Louisiana University estimates. The flares are a common sight in the southeastern part of the state.
The Louisiana Chemical Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.