COLORADO, USA — State regulators now have to rewrite pollution rules at Colorado's only oil refinery after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sided with activists who said Colorado's rules didn't go far enough.
The EPA objection, filed Monday, was the first victory for GreenLatinos, an environmental group whose Colorado chapter is led by Ean Thomas Tafoya.
"I've been working on Suncor for 10 years," he said. "You can't do it without a lawyer."
His lawyers at the environmental law group Earthjustice filed the petition regarding Suncor's Clean Air Permit for Plant 2 with the EPA on behalf of GreenLatinos, the Elyria and Swansea Neighborhood Association, Cultivando, Colorado Latino Forum, Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club.
In a 99-page decision, released this week, the EPA told the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to reexamine its proposed permit. "The order directs CDPHE to evaluate whether additional operational requirements are needed to assure compliance with carbon monoxide and opacity limits at the plant’s fluid catalytic cracking unit. It also directs CDPHE to determine whether previous plant modifications were analyzed properly and, if necessary, to incorporate additional applicable requirements into the permit," the EPA said in a release.
"When I heard the news I thought we're making progress," Tafoya said. "Years ago we never used these tools, we're getting more sophisticated in our legal analysis."
The coalition did not get everything it wanted -- the EPA declined to deny the permit, meaning Colorado will still issue a revised renewal of the permit.
This week, Suncor disclosed 15 permit violations between June 15 and July 15. They include 45 barrels of crude oil overflowing from a tank onto the ground and 13 hours of emissions venting from a sulfur pit directly into the air in Commerce City.
"These changes that we're asking for hopefully can result in less noncompliance, less incidents that are taking place there," Tafoya said.
Shutting down the plant is his eventual goal, but he said small regulatory wins like the one this week advance the movement -- and not just at Colorado's only refinery.
Because as we're advancing legal strategies around refineries, we're helping create new legal strategies for people fighting refineries," he said.
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